Pack it up, Game Freak: Modder turns RDR2 into the best Pokémon game since Ruby, complete with catching wild beasts and trainer battles

Before we continue, I'm gonna need you to promise you are not, and have never been, a representative of the Nintendo Co Ltd, also referred to as Nintendō Kabushiki gaisha, and formerly known as the Nintendo Playing Card Company.

And while we're here, you should probably affirm that you're not part of Rockstar, the GTA guys. All good? Great. A modder has turned Red Dead Redemption 2 into Pokémon. No, really. Look at this nonsense.

Blurbs is his name and, yep, he's graced our pages before. There was that time he let his viewers add custom voice lines to Skyrim NPCs (it was a mistake), the time he turned RDR2 into Super Monkey Ball, the time he turned GTA 5 NPCs into insurance fraudsters, and plenty else besides. This time, I find myself genuinely quite stunned by how convincingly he managed to turn Rockstar's cowboy game into a creature-collecting sim.

In place of Pokéballs, Arthur totes, well, regular… tennis balls? Old-timey balls of some description, certainly. He can chuck them at pretty much anything—from animals to humans to a disembodied torso—and attempt to add them to his coterie of warbeasts.

It all looks quite impressive. Nailing a creature with an Arthurball prompts a very non-copyright-infringing animation as they shrink down into it. The camera zeroes in on the ball as it twitches and—if you've damaged the beast enough and have luck on your side—it will eventually come to a halt, giving you the opportunity to nickname your new companion.

All rather splendid, but it doesn't end there. Blurbs even coded in a full-on battle system. Simply aim your gun at a fellow trainer and hit go (this is how it also works for Ash Ketchum, probably), and the mod will drop you into a full-on Poké-battle. Fail, and Arthur will keel over dead (this is how it also works for Ash Ketchum, probably).

It's genuinely quite astounding to look at, even if it is profoundly janky (cut Blurbs some slack, he made it in just over two weeks). Even better: unlike a lot of previous Blurbs projects, he says he'll be putting this one out for others to use somewhere down the line. Finally, Arthur Morgan will be the very best, like no one ever was.