Red Dead Redemption 2 lands GTA expansion on PC as Arthur heads to San Andreas

A Red Dead Redemption 2 player who longs to leave the Old West behind has demonstrated an expansion which ports over the entirety of San Andreas as an explorable map in the game.

The various regions that make up Red Dead Redemption 2’s world are already pretty sizable, but considering we’ve been playing this game for nearly eight years now, sometimes a change is needed.

That’s where MrVicho13’s San Andreas mod comes in, which ports over the entirety of the GTA state into Red Dead Redemption 2 as an explorable location via RedM.

Although it’s not available to the public, MrVicho13 showed off the mod in a video a few years ago. The 14-minute video shows various locations explored by Arthur Morgan on his horse, including Los Santos, Grove Street, San Fierro, Las Venturas, and Mount Chiliad.

As you can see from the video, which I’ve linked below, the map is unfinished, with very basic textures and collision added. There are also no NPCs or traffic available in-game, but considering the work that must have gone into this, we’ll give MrVicho13 a round of applause.

It also serves as an excellent demonstration of Red Dead Redemption 2’s weather system, which is better seen with a low-poly map such as this. However, it does also cause some areas to look oddly shiny.

“This video is just a proof-of-concept and has no relation to the current GTA5 port, which is still being worked on,” MrVicho13 writes in the video description, referring to the GTA V port of San Andreas’ map, which came out as a mod.

The modder adds that “this won't be released, so don't ask for it, is unstable and is a direct port of my SA map from 2022, so it has all the issues from that version.”

San Andreas in Red Dead Redemption 2 is a small taste of what Rockstar Games mods are capable of

Although the video was uploaded three years ago, the mod has gone viral again thanks to X user Synth Potato sharing it, highlighting the fact that it looks great to see the classic map on a modern Rockstar Games engine.

“Riding a horse down Grove Street with the San Andreas skybox is the crossover I didn't know I needed. Modders really said what's a genre boundary,” reads one comment underneath Synth Potato’s post.

“Normally we would mod CJ into new games; now it’s the reverse,” reads another comment underneath the post.

“Modders gotta be some of the coolest ppl on earth,” reads a third reply.

While it’s cool to see this in practice, new modding restrictions from Rockstar Games may put projects like this in jeopardy in the future.

A recent change to the way Rockstar polices custom content made by players has introduced several restrictions. Namely, players are forbidden from combining in-game assets from one Rockstar Games title into another title. They also can’t modify official story content present in any of these games.

It’s a move that players have called “no fun”, with some claiming it may affect the longevity of these games on platforms like PC if these heavy modding restrictions remain in place.