A Red Dead Redemption 2 fan decided to check how accurately Rockstar portrayed life in the Wild West. The author of the YouTube channel Any Austin conducted a census of the residents of Valentine and compared the results with real data from the United States in 1907.
We will conduct a census of NPCs in the town of Valentine. It will include employment, field of work, income level, age, and health status. The goal is to collect enough data to compare Valentine (a fictional town from 1907) with real demographic data from the Wild West.
He tracked the behavior of NPCs, their routes, and reactions. He found sheriffs and merchants quickly — their lines immediately indicate their profession. It's more complicated with passersby: due to the random generation of characters, he had to divide the map into sectors and study them at time intervals.
The collected data showed that RDR 2 quite accurately conveys the era. The unemployment rate was 4.5% compared to the real 1.8%. The distribution of professions and the wealth of residents also turned out to be close to the statistics of the early 20th century. The main discrepancy is the condition of the teeth: "people have too many teeth", although lost teeth were common then.
The author of the study summarized:
Even with very detailed data that can only be obtained through a census, Red Dead Redemption 2 is truly an amazing reflection of American history.
