Red Dead Redemption was easily one of the best games created for the previous generation of consoles.

Its incredible mix of stunning visuals, easy-to-use gameplay, a harrowing story and one of the best gaming soundtracks all coalesced to give a unique experience unlike anything we've seen before. Sure enough, the game was a huge success for Rockstar and, as well as this, acted as a stunning conclusion to the character of John Marston.

Sure, there was Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, but that was a DLC and doesn't really count. Ever since the XboxOne launched, fans of the original have been crying out for a ported version of either Red Dead Redemption or a remake of Red Dead Revolver.

As it turns out, we're getting something much better - a brand new game that's apparently set before Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption. According to a leaked gameplay map found of NeoGAF and confirmed by a Rockstar insider, the game is currently in development and, not only that, will have ties to Mafia 3 - another Rockstar / TakeTwo game.

Here's the map in question.

So, thoughts? Look, we absolutely loved Red Dead Redemption and the thoughts of using current-gen consoles for it sounds fantastic. It's all about the tone and the atmosphere with Red Dead, so here's hoping there's a similar creative team working on this. As to it being a prequel, that makes sense.

We know John Marston died at the end of Red Dead Redemption and Jake Marston is, well, not really a viable choice to continue playing on. The whole idea behind Red Dead Redemption was that the Old West and the frontier spirit was dying out. You can't really push that on any further, so what do you do? You go back to the start.

As it stands, there's nothing in the way of official confirmation on any of this - but it does look promising. It's expected there'll be some sort of formal announcement at E3 later this year.

 

Via TechRadar