Red Dead Redemption 2 players realise you can technically explore Mexico without mods

Ahh, this one takes me back. Mere days after Rockstar Games’ rootin’ tootin’ cowboy shootin’ sequel Red Dead Redemption 2 was released back in 2018, players realised that you could easily glitch into the otherwise inaccessible part of RDR2’s map.

Although Mexico can be seen from almost anywhere on Red Dead Redemption 2’s map, it’s not actually possible to get there by legitimate means and the location is never featured in any part of the game’s story.

Players quickly realised that, through the use of an exploit, it was actually possible to visit Mexico and walk around the area unimpeded.

To most players' surprise, it seems that Rockstar put a lot of effort into creating this area of the map - even though they never intended to let players go there.

As detailed in a recent Twitter post by user Synth Potato, Nuevo Paraiso has a lot of features that seemingly implies Rockstar Games may have scrapped some of their work on the area part way through Red Dead Redemption 2’s development.

Models for towns and buildings exist within this portion of the map, alongside audio tracks, collision detection, and even a semi-functional wanted system.

Although many have assumed that this means that work on the location was scrapped, there is an alternative theory. Considering RDR2’s impressive draw distance, Rockstar Games may have simply modelled the area so it could be viewed from certain points on the map.

Even though Rockstar did attempt to patch out the exploit that allowed you to visit Mexico at one point in time, several players realised earlier this year that one of the glitches is still functional (like these two Reddit posts that discuss how to pull it off).

Of course, if you don’t want to mess around with all of that and you own the game on PC, then you can always download the Nuevo Paraiso-Mexico mod over on Nexus instead.