Friday, October 26, 2018

Red Dead Redemption 2



Check out Eli Smith and Walker Shepard from the Down Hill Strugglers, playing on the score and the in-game music for Red Dead Redemption 2 - which comes out today! It is a truly amazing game, a Western set in 1899.

You will find Eli playing banjo on the game's cinematic score, as well as contributing to the in-game music. In the world of the video game you will hear Eli playing banjo, guitar, jaw harp, mandolin and whistling and Walker playing the fiddle. Eli also arranged and adapted old and traditional songs, re-written to fit the game, and taught the songs to the actors who play the characters...  And if you look real close you will find him in the game, in the role of a cowboy, sitting at a campfire playing guitar...

Eli and Walker worked on this game off and on for about 2 1/2 years and are very happy to see it finished and issued to the world.

Says one reviewer:
"If there is anything here in this game that feels actually, genuinely perfect, it's the music."

Says another reviewer:
"Rockstar Games’ new open-world western opus is exhaustively detailed and exhaustingly beautiful, a mammoth construction of which every nook and cranny has been polished to an unnerving shimmer. It is a stirring tribute to our world’s natural beauty, and a grim acknowledgment of our own starring role in its destruction. It tells a worthy and affecting story that weaves dozens of character-driven narrative threads into an epic tapestry across many miles and almost as many months. When the sun sets and the tale has been told, it leaves players with a virtual wild-west playground so convincingly rendered and filled with surprises that it seems boundless."

And another:
"Even more impressive is the selection of original music that references in-game locations and events. Hearing a song about the fictitious city you’re in that references all the other fictitious locations around really helps make the world feel even more alive and connected."