Red Dead Redemption 2: How Big the Map Is & How Long it Takes to Cross the World

How Big the Map Is in Red Dead Redemption 2 & How Long it Takes to Cross the World

It’s clear that in developing Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games was looking to redefine the benchmark for open world games. But that wasn’t going to be easy given that open world designs have moved on significantly from five years ago, and the eight years since Red Dead Redemption. Yet that’s exactly what they’ve done – the scale and detail of the map are breathtaking. We just had to find out how big the map is in Red Dead Redemption 2 is and how long it takes to cross the world.

First, let’s recap exactly what the map is comprised of. There are five regions in the game, which we believe are supposed to represent the southwestern United States. In the game, these are called: Ambarino, West Elizabeth, New Hanover, New Austin, and Lemoyne. Geographically, they are most likely representing the states that stretch from Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to the swampland of Louisiana.

Now, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a big game, but it isn’t quite the thousands of square miles that would actually equate to in a 1:1 scale comparison. We haven’t actually measured the map yet, but we have recorded ourselves riding across it on horseback with a timer for reference. Let’s take a look at that below:

So there you have it, it takes 16 minutes almost exactly to cross the map of Red Dead Redemption 2 on horseback. We’re obviously riding at a full sprint the whole time, but we’re not able to ride as the crow flies (in a straight line). We also took a few tumbles along the way, which delays us even further thanks to Red Dead Redemption 2’s hyper-realism when it comes to collision mechanics.

For those reasons, it’s hard to compare the map size to other games based on simply comparing other videos. Of course, in other map crossing video’s we’re also often using a different method of transport: running, sailing, even flying in the case of Far Cry 5. But there is one comparison that stacks up quite favorably: Assassin’s Creed Origins.

In Origins, we traversed the Egyptian map on horseback. What’s really interesting is that the times came out identical to Red Dead Redemption 2. It took us almost exactly 16 minutes as well.

So how big does this all make the map in Red Dead Redemption 2? Well, as we said earlier, we’re still hard at work trying to measure the map, which is all the more tricky since there’s no distance measurement when dropping waypoints as there is in other open world games. But at this stage, if we had to guess we’d say it was roughly the same sort of size as Origins: 30 mile².

That would place the map firmly inside the top 10 biggest maps we’ve ever measured. You can read our full breakdown of the 25 biggest open world games here.

That’s all the information we have for how big the map is in Red Dead Redemption 2 is and how long it takes to cross the world. For more useful guides on the game, check out our Red Dead Redemption 2 wiki page.