Box art - Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 How Long to Beat for 100% Completion

Open-world video games are all the rage these days, and it’s not hard to see why. Players want to get the biggest bang for their buck, and games like Red Dead Redemption 2 tease content and mechanics that should feel fresh for months, potentially even years. Still, there are many who want to know just what sort of experience to expect, specifically with regard to gameplay time. The questions are obvious: how long does it take to beat Red Dead 2, and how long for 100% completion?

How Long to Beat Red Dead Redemption 2

The best way to approach the potential gameplay time in Red Dead Redemption 2 is to look at the game’s overall structure. However, an examination of its layout with regard to chapters and missions involves walking into mild spoiler territory. Consider this your warning: the following content may spoil certain elements of the main Red Dead Redemption 2 campaign.

There are eight total chapters in Red Dead Redemption 2. The first six comprise the game’s main campaign, and the final two together represent the game’s epilogue. Each of these chapters includes set number of individual missions, with some chapters having as few as six and others as many as 19.

Altogether, these eight separate chapters amount to 104 separate missions. Each mission might take players anywhere from 20 minutes potentially up to 60 minutes to complete. Doing the math, this puts the core game itself, without any consideration to side activities, around 35 hours minimum to complete. Obviously, if it takes players an hour to complete each individual mission, it would take about 104 hours to complete the game.

However, there’s no way that players will be able to work through the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 without jumping into side activities. Hunting, fishing, gambling, or even robbing stores — these activities can all be picked up at about any time, and some of them are so compelling that players wind up ignoring the main campaign, instead of occupying their time by robbing banks or hunting down beavers.

With consideration to these activities, players intent on completing the game while engaging in a reasonable amount of side quests can likely expect somewhere from 40 to 50 hours of gameplay. If they take their sweet time in missions; if they dive into side activities like hunting or fishing; or if they simply enjoy exploring the world without any real direction, players might get up to 100 hours or more out of Red Dead Redemption 2.

Red Dead Redemption 2 100% Completion Time

Now that we’ve walked through the amount of time it might take to complete the game, a new question arises: how long does it take to 100% complete Red Dead Redemption 2? Unfortunately, this question is much more involved.

Getting a 100% completion in any Rockstar Games release is a tremendous task. Not only will players have to play and beat the main campaign, but they’ll also have to track down every collectible, explore the whole map, so on and so forth. In Red Dead Redemption 2, players will also have to hunt every different animal, catch every type of fish fish, complete all Strangers missions, all Bounties, and even completely fill out the in-game Compendium. In short, it’s no small task.


With that in mind, it’s safe to say that players could easily spend from around 100 hours up to 200 or more hours to earn a 100% completion rating. Luckily, with so much content available, it should never feel like a chore. Almost all of the collectibles have their own unique draws outside of 100% completion, and each animal and fish presents its own special challenge for tracking down, particularly with regard to earning Perfect pelts.

There’s really no saying exactly how long players will need to earn a 100% completion in Rockstar’s latest title, but as a safe guideline, 150 hours as a minimum isn’t exactly out of the question. Fortunately, it shouldn’t take players more than about 40 hours to beat Red Dead Redemption 2‘s solo campaign. As bang-for-buck goes, 40 hours up to 200 or more certainly isn’t a bad value. And, of course, the upcoming release of Red Dead Online will only help push that value upward.