New Red Dead Redemption 2 mod enhances realism through weather tweaks

Rockstar Games shocked the world with its sequel to their western open-world title, Red Dead Redemption, in 2018.

However, the game and its online counterpart have received little or no updates over the past four years. The developer focused on rereleasing GTA 5 and Online and working on the next title in the same series.

The modding community, however, has not left RDR 2's side and has provided consistently. The latest addition is a mod named Vestigia, made by a team of modders led by NO12.

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What is the Vestigia mod all about in Red Dead Redemption 2?

According to NO12, Vestigia completely transforms multiple aspects in RDR 2 and is basically four-mods-in-one. The entire team toiled for over a year to turn this idea into reality, and the results were astonishing.

The multiple facets of Vestigia include two mods that improve the weather and its visuals, one that focuses on flora and fauna, and the last one working on bettering NPC AI.

Speaking of the weather, RDR 2 already featured an impressive system that received lots of praise upon release. However, Vestigia somehow managed to outdo Rockstar and make it even more realistic.

The improved weather mechanics now showcase a more gradual and realistic change in the weather while traveling across regions. The visuals have also been heavily altered, and the results can be seen while experiencing torrential downpours, dust storms, and fog in-game.

Flora and fauna in the vanilla version of RDR 2 also showcase a broad spectrum. However, players sometimes have spotted things that break the immersion, like deer grazing on a field next to a pack of wolves.

Vestigia works on this mechanic and forces animals to spawn in logical locations.

The forests also have thicker underbrush, and all flora interact more realistically with John and Arthur. Water also produces lots more foam and bubbles when jumping or running in.

The last but by no means the least improvement Vestigia brings to Red Dead are the changes to NPC AI population and interaction. The title features various towns and cities like Valentine, Rhodes, Strawberry, and Saint Denis, among others.

The mod increases the NPC cap limit to 255, drastically changing the liveliness factor, and there is a visual hustle-bustle in towns.

However, Vestigia doesn't just spawn in a bunch of NPCs and leave it there. The mod makes sure to improve upon the already impressive AI interactions in Red Dead. The NPCs now talk to each other more often and act as more than just place fillers.

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In terms of support, the state of the game is disappointing, and Rockstar's decision to focus more on GTA has led to many angry tweets. That said, modders like NO12 and team attempt to keep Red Dead alive in some way, shape, or form.

The developer's recent community update also clearly underlined the fact that Red Dead Online will now get even fewer content updates as all resources are being focused on GTA 6.