Sometimes the cost of a big, open world is lower fidelity in each environment—not so in Red Dead Redemption 2, which manages to be both meticulously constructed and impossibly huge. More than that, Red Dead is a period piece of sorts taking place from 1899 to 1907; but who's keeping score with all those fussy details, right? Would anyone notice if the specifics were flubbed here and there?
Yeah, it's the internet we're talking about, of course someone would. YouTuber Any Austin decided to conduct an ad hoc in-game census of Red Dead 2's fictional town Valentine, including "employment status, employment industry, income level, age, and overall health." He compared his findings with real census data from 1907 United States and found that, by some metrics at least, the game's batting average was "pretty amazing."
