You'll never guess what the 'Random Heart Attacks' mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 does

Yeehaw varmints, have I got the most rootinest-tootinest shiny new mod for y-

That was the final sentence written by Rich Stanton before a 1 in 500 chance of a heart attack triggered and killed him. RIP.

That's it, so I guess we have to fill in the blanks ourselves. Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in 1899, and main protagonist Arthur Morgan is roughly 36 years old. The University of Oregon's Mapping History project has a handy life expectancy graph that suggests the average male in the United States of this period would make it to their early to mid forties before biting the big one, so it's not inconceivable that Arthur in his late thirties could have a small chance of a cardiac event. In case you're wondering, the game is surprisingly historically accurate.

A vista in Red Dead Redemption 2 with the sun setting — (Image credit: Rockstar Games)

Spoiler alert: I mean, he's gonna die at this age anyway, so from that perspective maybe this mod is just getting us from A to B a lot faster. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a fairly enormous game after all. Perhaps the real question is whether it also applies to John Marston in the game's epilogue, because an early heart attack there would present some issues for Red Dead Redemption.

There's clearly something going on with Red Dead modders at the moment, because only a few days ago we reported on one that essentially turns the game into Katamari Damacy, with the excellent reasoning: 'Because why not.' Last month? Another mad wizard modder turned Red Dead Redemption 2 into Super Monkey Ball, complete with gyro controls.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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