If you enjoyed Red Dead Redemption 2's singleplayer but found Arthur Morgan’s dusty leather jacket a little too restrictive, here’s a mod for you: 'Life of Crime' is an ambitious project that aims to deliver a completely new singleplayer experience within Rockstar's meticulous envisioning of the Old West, specifically one that lets you play as a new character of your own devising.
Life of Crime isn't just a simple mission pack either. It kicks off with own bespoke introductory sequence where your character (who can be male or female) busts out of Siska Penitentiary, before meeting up with a contact who helps them get started in their new criminal career. Once out in the open world, you can access a bespoke skill tree for upgrading your character, and embark upon two new missions, a manor heist, and a train heist, as well as earning money in all the usual ways, both legal and illegal.
"The whole point of the mod is to play as a completely NEW character," wrote its creator CruelMasterMC in a recent update. "While you play on in the game you can earn all of the weapons by buying them from a gunsmith or finding them anywhere on the map, and earn more money from doing missions and such."
An earlier version of Life of Crime has been available for a while. But it was very simplistic, including just the Manor heist which you undertook as Arthur. This version languished without updates due to CruelMasterMC taking "a long break" from modding. But the creator is back with a renewed verve for RDR2 scripting, and plans for this substantial expansion of Life of Crime to be one of many, with future planned updates including further heists and bounty hunting.
The surprise arrival of extra single-player content for RDR2 is timely, considering how Rockstar has officially ceased updates for Red Dead Online as it prioritises development of GTA 6. In any case, you can download Life of Crime via nexusmods. You'll also need to download Script Hook RDR2, and ASI Loader-version.dll to get it up and running.
