Tools, Immersion, and Medium Specificity in Red Dead Redemption 2
Sources and Significance – Blog 2
This post looks at how Red Dead Redemption 2 uses game-specific tools to create immersion, and how that connects to debates around medium specificity
Immersion Through Interaction
Red Dead Redemption 2 is often called “cinematic,” but what makes it stick isn’t spectacle on its own. The game’s impact comes from interaction: the steady pacing, the dense environments, the soundscape, and the way player agency is threaded into everyday moments. That makes it a good case for thinking about medium specificity the idea that each medium has its own strengths and should lean into what it can do uniquely well (Lessing, 1766; Arnheim, 1938).
Medium Specificity in Games
If medium specificity matters, then games shouldn’t just imitate film language. They should use what film can’t: participation, time, and presence. In RDR2, narrative meaning often arrives through routine rather than constant cutscenes. Riding for long stretches, setting up camp, cleaning weapons, hunting, and simply watching the world change all become part of the story experience. These actions slow the player down and make the world feel inhabited. A film could show these moments, but it wouldn’t produce the same effect because the player’s involvement the choice to do them, to stay with them is the point.
The Game as a Total Work of Art
The game also fits the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art” where multiple elements combine into one unified experience (Wagner, 1849). Visual realism, ambient sound, performance capture, music, and environmental storytelling all reinforce each other. But unlike opera or theatre, RDR2 requires participation. Immersion isn’t just received; it’s co-produced through action and attention.
At the same time, the game exposes a tension between immersion and control. The open world feels free, but the main story remains largely fixed, which creates friction between player agency and narrative direction. It echoes the lecture concern that immersive media can guide and manage the audience, even while offering the feeling of freedom.
Conclusion
Overall, Red Dead Redemption 2 shows how games create meaning through medium-specific design. Its immersion comes from interaction, pacing, and lived-in routine, suggesting that the strongest “cinematic” moments in games often happen when the game stops trying to be film and commits to what only games can do.
References
Arnheim, R. (1938) Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lessing, G.E. (1766) Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. London: J. Ridley. Wagner, R. (1849) The Artwork of the Future. Leipzig: Otto Wigand. Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bollmer, G. and Suddarth, A. (2022) ‘Embodied parallelism and immersion in virtual reality gaming’, Convergence, 28(2), pp. 579–594. Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2 [Video game]. Rockstar Games.
