Rockstar announced over on their official blog that Red Dead Redemption 2 has been delayed from out of its fall window and pushed all the back into early spring, 2018 for the Xbox One and PS4.

The news was accompanied by a collection of new screenshots, showcasing the fidelity and detail that Rockstar is gunning for with their upcoming Wild West sequel to the 2010 outing for the Xbox 360 and PS3. They mentioned that they had to build the game from the ground up for the latest home consoles, which is why they had to delay the game…

“[…] the first Rockstar game created from the ground up for the latest generation of console hardware, and some extra time is necessary to ensure that we can deliver the best experience possible for our fans.”

Some sites like Windows Central reported that Microsoft would have games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and other high profile AAA titles designed to take advantage of the Xbox Scorpio’s native 4K capabilities.

Whether or not this is the actual reason for the delay is anyone’s guess, but they did release some 1080p unfiltered screenshots. The assets definitely don’t look like they’re scaled for 4K resolutions, but maybe that’s part of the reason why the game was delayed?

While the twin, custom engraved revolvers look fantastic in that screenshot – and obvious effects like sub-surface scattering and directional physical based rendering are on display – you can begin to see the degradation of texture fidelity the more you zoom in on the picture. It’s not enough to count the pixel steps, but it is enough to tell that the native texture layer being rendered in the frame isn’t UHD.

Even still, the outdoor environments and light models look superb. With the right kind of filters some of the scenes could pass for real life.

Seeing the smoke effects in the freeze frame looks good, giving the impression as if they’re using particle-based light effects, as you can see things like the shadows of the track through the lower end of the smoke. It’s highly unlikely we’ll see this level of fidelity in the smoke effects in the actual playable build, but at least we know what the RAGE is capable of.

Sadly there’s no PC release in tow, but at least we have Wild West Online for that… hopefully.