Goddamn I've been looking forward to a release for years now but goddamn this is sad.
THE MAJORITY OF THE MAP IS ALREADY DONE IN RDR2. JUST REBUILD THE GAME AS DLC FOR THAT. Ffs we're all willing to shill out major dollars for Rdr1 to be remade in rdr2s engine and with West Elizabeth already existing in RDR2s map you could easily just continue on from the end of 2 into 1!
Hell most of the characters are in 2 as well! Port the quests and voice acting over, not saying it's not massive but ffs that's the 60 dollar DLC we'd ALL gladly pay for!
Goddamn studio execs are morons.
Edit I see that there are rumors and speculation that a full PS5/XSX/PC remaster is also possible, but at this point I'll believe it when I see it. I really hope so, but I'm just so annoyed with how game studios handle this now. If they need cashflow in between major releases then do what Witcher did with Blood & Wine. We don't need a new engine for every small release, release a decent DLC and honestly I'd pay $50-60 bucks for it. Blood and Wine deserved the $40 and honestly maybe a bit more. If they redid RDR1 as DLC to RDR2 I think it'd be very fair to pay $60 for it and it wouldn't require a whole new engine.
Xenia Canary runs RDR really well if you haven't tried it yet. I was surprised I was able to get through the entire game without problems on my ~5yr old gaming laptop.