These mods turn Red Dead Redemption 2 into the mundane job sim it was always supposed to be

Red Dead Redemption 2’s modding scene had already flipped the wild west on its head with mods that turned Arthur Morgan into a firebender or a plain old sheep. That’s all well and good, but Read Dead 2 is a game about some gruff dude simply trying to get on with his life. That’s why I’m intrigued by the recent Jobs mods that turn the game into a mundane work search, just as Rockstar intended.

Modders Bolmin and Shtivi put out the Jobs - Expanded and Enhanced mod last week on Nexus Mods, which adds six jobs to Rockstar’s cowboy epic. All you have to do is find the jobs board in any major town and select one of the available gigs to begin.

The chauffeur job is simply the Western equivalent of taxi jobs seen in Rockstar’s other open worlds, asking you to drive passengers from point A to B via wagon. Meanwhile, the wagon protection job puts you in the passenger's seat with a shotgun, presumably while bandits and other killers chase you. Although Rockstar’s emergent threats might creep up on you regardless of your occupation.

The other jobs in the mod include delivering mail, ranch work inspired by the base game’s chores, protecting those ranches with a shotgun, and cleaning the docks in Saint Dennis and Annesburg. I was quite fond of indie open world Lake which cast you as a mail delivery driver who obeyed road rules. Legitimately thrilling stuff. So I’m genuinely excited to turn Red Dead 2 into that same door-to-door delivery sim.

Co-modder Bolmin had previously released a separate jobs mod which let you work as a miner, hunter, bartender, deliverer, lumberjack, and also dock worker. Oh, and there was a train conductor job but that just boiled down to sitting and blowing the horn to choo-choo every couple of minutes. Still an honest day’s work, I guess.

For me, Red Dead Redemption 2 was at its best when I abandoned my chosen family of criminals, instead choosing to role-play as an ordinary civilian, courteously nodding at passersbys and picking flowers from the earth (there may or may not have been a few murdereous episodes in between). These mods happily dial up that ordinariness that can be so fun.

All of these jobs are separate from Red Dead Online’s official specialist jobs that let you play as a Moonshiner, for instance.