Ambarino
- Grizzlies West—this could be any number of mountains in the west; given that they're covered in snow, it's a little hard to see a lot of the finer features of rock and vegetation, although they do seem to be granite based gray. I don't see any aspens, so I'm going to go with granite and/or gneiss based mountains of the greater Yellowstone region which is centered on the NW corner of Wyoming, but includes some areas across the border in Montana and Idaho here and there, specifically the Tetons, Bearthooths and the Wind Rivers.
- Grizzlies East—this is very similar terrain, except without the snow. I think in particular it reminds of the Beartooths and the Wind Rivers because of the shape of some of the formerly glaciated granite peaks, as well as the specific vegetation. Again, the no aspens is a tell; aspens are common in the Rockies a little further south, such as Utah and Colorado and New Mexico—at least if they are low enough elevation. Plus, the Cotorra Springs region is clearly a little mini Yellowstone, complete with colorful hot springs and geysers.
West Elizabeth
- Big Valley—West Elizabeth was in the first game, but was a much smaller area. With the addition of Big Valley, it got a more than 100% increase in size, although Big Valley itself is a largely depopulated frontier in valleys and meadows at high elevation. Again, it has much of the same look as Grizzlies East, and reminds me most strongly of the mountains around Yellowstone like the Tetons and the Wind Rivers and the Absarokas. Some peaks even look like they could almost be modeled after specific prototypes in the Tetons, for instance. Although it does have loons, which are a west coast animal, over on Lake Owanjilla and elsewhere. And that northwest corner of Big Valley is also next to Tall Trees, so let's move to that now...
- Tall Trees—This is clearly California; not only are there Sierra Nevada variants of the wildlife (instead of Rockies) but it just looks like the Sierra Nevada, including the very particular sequoia trees and other small details that separate the look of the Sierra Nevada vs. the Wind Rivers, or something like that. Granted, even in real life, it's hard sometimes to tell the difference when looking at pictures; the rock itself looks almost identical in both color and shape and formation, and most of the flora is common to both regions. But the sequoias in particular give this a California rather than Rockies aspect.
- Great Plains—This is a more generalized praire environment that could be anywhere from West Texas to Oklahoma to Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, etc. Most of the real life Great Plains is very similar to other aspects of it with the exception of how much snowfall and cold weather it gets, but given the lack of very many trees and the fact that grass mostly looks like grass no matter the latitude, unless you get all the way up to the near polar regions, there's no telling where this could be.
New Hanover
- Heartlands—Although separated in game by two rivers and a small, forested line of hills, the Great Plains region and the Heartlands region are both based on the prairie ecosystem of the American Great Plains. However, there's a noticeable difference between the two; you make your river crossing and suddenly the grass is a bit greener and shorter in Heartlands. This represents the classic short-grass prairie of the more westerly prairie, such as you'd find near Scott's Bluff or Pawnee Buttes in Colorado and right across the border in Nebraska. The chalky limestone bluffs even look so similar that they are almost exact replicas. The Red Dead wiki calls out the Pawnee bluffs specifically, but I think the Twin Stack Pass is a dead ringer for Mitchell Pass, which runs right through the Scott's Bluff National Monument. Given the pioneer trail history that used it as a major landmark, I find this a more likely prototype for the game model, but realistically, the two look very similar, and if you were to go to either of them in real life, you'd certainly get that "just south of Valentine" feeling.
- Cumberland Forest—while providing a transition zone between the Grizzlies and the Heartlands bluffs and prairies, the Cumberland Forest doesn't really have to represent any real place. That said, many have noted the resemblance it has to the Black Hills of North Dakota, a small, relatively low, granite mountain range that's a little bit disconnected from the main thrust of the various Rockies ranges. Fort Wallace and the Wapiti Reservation located in this area are a subtle nod to the whole Little Big Horn fiasco which took place in and around the Black Hills too.
- Roanoke Ridge—This is very traditional "hillbilly" eastern mountains, and many real life places can stand in for them. The Appalachian Scots-Irish, the coal mining, the heavy foresting, the frequent fogs—I think of them as the Smokey Mountains and nearby areas like the Blue Ridge Mountains, but further north in the Appalachian Range would be essentially indistinguishable, like most of West Virginia, for example. For that matter, the Ozarks, which are completely disconnected from the Appalachians per se, would look exactly the same too. Some Red Dead fans think that because of the proximity of Roanoke Ridge to Lemoyne that the Ozarks are more likely, but c'mon; the Roanoke Ridge area blends seamlessly into the Grizzles, which makes no sense from a real world geography standpoint. But, if you go to either Gatlinburg Tennessee in the Smokies and tool around in the woods, or go to Branson Missouri in the Ozarks, either one, and you'll feel that Roanoke Ridge vibe very strongly.
Lemoyne
- Scarlett Meadows—While all of Lemoyne is clearly based on Louisiana, Scarlett Meadows is the part that would fit just about anywhere in immediately post-bellum Dixie. Up by the Red River in Louisiana just north of the marshes and bayous would probably be the best direct analog, but honestly, part of East Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and even Florida and Georgia and South Carolina could all have looked pretty much just like Scarlett Meadows, and to some degree, still do.
- Bayou Nwa—where Saint Denis is located, is clearly the marshy flats all around New Orleans. While Saint Denis is multicultural to a fault, although there does seem to be a strong urbanized French element there, the backwoods bayou folks, from places like Lagras and Lakay seem specifically Creole or backwoods Cajun in nature. I don't know what kind of word Nwa is supposed to be, but I actually suspect it may be an in-joke reference to N.W.A. Saint Denis is so obviously New Orleans that it literally copies a handful of buildings and recreates them.
- Bluewater Marsh—Although not located on an actual coast (and Flat Iron Lake is no Gulf of Mexico), but rather beside a very large proxy for the Mississippi River, Bluewater Marsh has a southern tidal flats feel to it that is unmistakable. There are areas near New Orleans that would be a perfect stand-in for this environment.
New Austin
- Hennigan's Stead—New Austin seems to have the most extreme compression when it comes to representing real life regions. Hennigan's Stead, only one of four regions within New Austin itself represents three or four different parts of Texas just by itself; the central area is very much like the Hill Country of south/central Texas. You can see towns like New Braunfels or Fredericksburg appearing smack dab here, or rather, if you were to go camping nearby to those, it would look very much like this. However, as you come off of the higher ground and head into the open desert further west, you have territory that is a dead ringer for the areas further west. The northern part, the canyons that you wind through to get from MacFarlane Ranch to Armadillo, are extremely similar state parks in the panhandle like Caprock State Park and Palo Duro State Park, whereas the more southern part starts to get into trans-Pecos Big Bend country style desert. The coastal areas of Hennigan's Stead, such as Thieves Landing, Stillwater Creek and Quaker's Cove have more of a Gulf Coastal Texas feel to them.
- Rio Bravo—As Hennigan's Stead's southernmost area starts to transition into Rio Bravo, it greatly starts to resemble the Chihuahuan Desert of west Texas and New Mexico. Fort Mercer has a look to it reminiscent of old border town Columbus New Mexico, where a battle was fought between Pancho Villa and Colonel Slocum. And it's probably no coincidence that there is a west Texas town literally called Plainview; although it's more up in the Panhandle rather than the Big Bend region.
- Cholla Springs—On the other hand, Cholla Springs has a very distinctive type of vegetation, the saguaro cactus (contrary to what you may hear, in English of course you do pronounce the G. For that matter, in most accents and dialects of Spanish you'd say it too, although not as strongly as in English) which is really only located in the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona, a small corner of southeastern California, and the Sinaloa region of Mexico itself. The town of Armadillo makes a good stand-in for places in Arizona like Jerome, or even more famously, Tombstone itself. It's... your huckleberry, yeah.
- Gaptooth Ridge—This could still be in Arizona, but it's obviously getting closer to the California and Nevada borders if so, because you start to see much more of the iconic Joshua trees, another iconic and regionally constrained bit of vegetation. It's the Mojave desert, or at least the transition to the Mojave desert, and while I tend to think of that as a southern California thing, the fact that there are still saguaros in Gaptooth Ridge would suggest that it's actually still on the Arizona side; the range of the saguaro is curiously almost exactly along the state line.
Hopefully we get Nuevo Parasio added to the game at some point, but with a rumored PS5 announcement imminent, maybe they won't put quite as much effort into RDR2 anymore. Curiously, much of the terrain of this fake Mexican state actually closely resemble further north geography from southern Utah and the Four Corners area. But my experience with that isn't direct, because although I've played the crap out of RDR2, I've never played RDR.
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