Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer #3 happening this Wednesday

Set a countdown clock for this Wednesday, May 2, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, folks. Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer #3 is finally landing.

It's been a good seven months since the last trailer, and as of last week I was still wondering when Rockstar would finally (finally!) ramp up the marketing spend. That last trailer introduced the deep southern drawl and racketeering antics of the series' new protagonist. Go light on the "pro-" there, by the way. He's coming off more as an antagonist. Which is fine. Redemption is right there in the title. Perfect angels don't need redemption. The rest of us do.

Remember, we're starting things off in prequel territory as somebody rolling with the infamous Dutch van der Linde gang. Dutch's gang ain't nothin' nice. And in a Wild West world of predators and prey, them Dutch boys are going to run in a pack and pick off people that stray from the herd.

This new key art isn't exactly the spitting image of our guy in that last trailer, but stylized art can do that. Not to mention a scruffier beard. This doesn't appear to be the introduction of a second protagonist, though, even when considering Grand Theft Auto V's inclusion of three main leads. But the possibility of Redemption 2 coming out with multiple protagonists is still on the table for now.

Again, looking at the key art, there's a silhouette of seven gang members, but they've gone from on-foot to on-the-hoof. Plus the sunset is partially occluded by a forest rather than the mountains this time. When Francis Scott Key was writing "The Star Spangled Banner," he never mentioned the lush forests dotting the landscape. That's because bad things can lurk in forests, despite their beauty. Also, there's a whole lotta Stars n' Stripes—well, Stars anyway—making up the plains landscape. Does that mean this gang is treading on the principles of America, or that America's foundation is fertile soil for criminals like Dutch's gang? I tend to think about these things.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is riding into town on PS4 and Xbox One on October 26.