Red Dead Redemption 2 lets you explore Guarma without mods

It turns out that you can explore Red Dead Redemption 2’s Guarma island without using any mods whatsoever.

Guarma is the fictional Caribbean island that appears during Red Dead Redemption 2's fifth chapter, where you are trapped for a series of missions.

For most of your time on Guarma, you’re stuck with exploring only a limited portion of it. Attempting to venture outside of the map bounds results in Arthur getting killed.

What’s more is you also can’t return to Guarma after leaving it in the story, meaning it’s only available to explore for a small amount of time.

There are mods on PC which can get around these restrictions though, but obviously these are unavailable to console players.

A player on Reddit has discovered a way to explore Guarma without using mods, however. This means you’ll be able to venture out of bounds even if playing on console.

Posting on the Red Dead Redemption 2 Reddit page, user 22ARuncornAvenue shared their findings while playing the mission ‘A Kind and Benevolent Despot’, where the gang needs to rescue Javier.

During the mission, Dutch will ask Arthur to sabotage the refinery’s sugar production, and then ask him to wait outside.

After leaving the building, the player can simply jump over a nearby rock wall and leave the mission area.

For whatever reason, the game doesn’t autofail at this point despite Arthur abandoning Javier to his fate. From here, you can explore all of Guarma without any risk of being shot by the invisible sniper.

There are a few oddities that occur in the game world as a result of this. For one, there’ll be no NPCs spawning in any of the populated areas. Animals do spawn, but you won’t be able to find a mount to ride.

You can also get back to the mainland from here if you’re patient. The Reddit post mentions being able to head back to Blackwater, which has a limited number of NPCs.

The only other thing to bear in mind is you can’t shoot a weapon during this time, even if you make it to the mainland, as it’ll alert the guards holding Javier and they’ll execute him.

I guess Rockstar Games never intended for players to leave the mission zone in this way, hence there’s no failsafe in place.

Still, it’s interesting to see just how much of Guarma is modelled and textured, considering there’s never a point in the story where you can explore it without restraints.