Red Dead Redemption II

[ThirdDrawing]

I don't think you miss anything because of order, but there are missions you can miss because of choices you make.

[Alex79]

Cool thanks both I'm just avoiding missions from Dutch until I've done everything else possible! I wish I could give up work and be paid to play this full time. Still, at 6pm tonight I am DONE until 2nd Jan, woohoo! Longest Christmas break I've had in about 15 years!

[Combine Hunter]

On twitter and other places, I've talked "around" there being scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 that reduced me to tears. I think this is also the scene that David and Sean were talking around during TCGS.

Below in the spoiler tags, is the scene I was referencing. It really contains big fuck off spoilers, so view at your own risk.

Spoiler: show

Anyone else find this as moving as I did?

[Suits]

See, I didn’t get on with the game, even after 40 and up to Chapter 5 - so I may never finish it.

So I clicked the spoiler tag and just read the title of the video and let it sink in for a few seconds.

Wow.

[Chopper]

Spoiler: show

He probably contracted something from all the damn horse brushing he had to do

[Alex79]

TRUE FACT: The Red Dead Redemption 2 cinematic camera mode is the best thing to happen to a Rockstar open world game since the GPS turn by turn navigation of GTA 4.

Seriously. So many times I've sat back and just watched the gorgeous world as I trot to my next location.

[ratsoalbion]

The cinematic camera was in GTAV previously, although you had to hold a button down.

[Alex79]

Ah yeah, but this time you can set a waypoint and if you activate cinematic camera your horse will ride itself there on the paths, it's brilliant! You don't have to even touch the pad!

[ratsoalbion]

Right, gotcha.

This game is great because you don’t have to play it!

[Alex79]

Shut up, Leon!



Well it does come in handy when I want to eat some crisps or have a toot on my vape stick...

[ThirdDrawing]

On twitter and other places, I've talked "around" there being scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 that reduced me to tears. I think this is also the scene that David and Sean were talking around during TCGS.

Anyone else find this as moving as I did?

I thought it really humanised Arthur in a way that they didn't with John in the first game.

I also had heard telltale signs of what was going to happen before he admitted it and guessed what was going to happen.

It didn't really lessen the impact of the scene though.

[JaySevenZero]

On twitter and other places, I've talked "around" there being scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 that reduced me to tears. I think this is also the scene that David and Sean were talking around during TCGS.

Anyone else find this as moving as I did?

Three times! Three times this game made my throat tighten and my eyes water - something I wasn't expecting a Rockstar game to do whatsoever.

[KSubzero1000]

Finished the game a few hours ago. My thoughts:

Let's get the obvious negative out of the way first. The gameplay is almost as shallow and frustrating as it looks at first glance. The shooting amounts to very little more than mindlessly moving a dot across the screen, the animators don't seem to understand that flaunting their work at every turn actively comes at the cost of responsive interaction, and the game has about a dozen useless mechanics too many. The "cores" system is interesting enough in its own right, but doesn't leave any room for optimization due to the lack of a solid underlying structure and the systemic endless resources turn the entire concept into a chore. Last but not least, your deaf horse loves nothing more than to run snout-first into trees / random citizens and drop you off at the gator swamp for a quick snack afterwards.

At best, perfunctory. At worst, trash. There are two caveats to this, however.

The first is that I found the hunting system to be surprisingly engaging and well-considered. Randomly blasting away at every trembling leaf isn't going to work if you want to go for all the challenges / camp upgrades. In order to collect perfect pelts, you need to find the animal in question (which is easier said than done for a lot of rare species), study it, select the correct weapon, track it without spooking it and kill it in one shot. There is a lot that goes into it, and it can make for some genuinely tense and strategic gameplay moments! The fauna AI is superb and it's obvious how much care and thought has been put into designing the entire ecosystem. I've spent hours experimenting with this side of things and I would recommend others to try out the dedicated hunting challenges if nothing else. There are plenty of games out there with insipid hunting systems that amount to little more than glorified collectibles (Tomb Raider for example), but this one comes the closest to matching MGS3's system for me.

The second is that the game seems actively aware of how dull the shooting / chase sections actually are and doesn't over-saturate the player with them. Roughly 60% of this game is spent casually riding from point A to point B, and while it may certainly be a negative for a lot of players, it's not really one for me in practice because I'd rather have a glorified walking simulator than a bad action game. Soaking in the incredibly detailed world design is the main course here, and I think this game has a much greater understanding of its own shortcomings than most other open world games. Horizon left me with some very mixed feelings due to how often it forced its poorly conceptualized combat sections against the same tired, chip damage inducing enemy types onto me, and I certainly appreciate RDR's restraint in that regard.

I don't want to say too much about the world itself for fear of spoiling details and locations, but let's say that this is by far the most intricate, detailed and beautiful open game world I've ever visited. Everything feels lived-in and believable. Like the first one, the geography plays a little too fast and loose with the different climates and areas that are seemingly coexisting right next to one another, but the game almost makes you believe in the coherence of its world most of the time. Hats off to the dozens (if not hundreds) of developers who have put so much effort into crafting this incredible sandbox.

The music is great, but severely underused for my taste like so many other modern games of this sort. I can only remember a handful of moments where the sound mixers allowed the score to shine for a change.

I found the writing and story excellent for the most part. I do have a couple of minor issues with the basic structure, such as how the open-ended nature of this type of game often actively devalues narrative pacing, which can be very unfortunate at times. The fact that so many otherwise excellent dialogue sections play out over visually uninspired walking / riding sections is also a wasted opportunity. The story itself is fairly basic and goes pretty much where I was expecting it to go right from the start, but it is nevertheless very well written and executed. Like the first one, this game really nails both the interpersonal conflicts as well as the uneasy societal standing of hunter-gatherers in a modernized world growing increasingly hostile towards their very existence. The voice acting is great, and every actor apparently brought their A-game to the table. Dutch in particular is an absolute delight to listen to whenever he goes on another one of his tirades. Some of the supporting cast could have been a bit more fleshed out, however. Overall, I'd say that this is the good kind of prequel that serves to retroactively re-contextualize and enrich the original story.

Massive story spoilers ahead, click at your own peril! Nick you lazy bum, just go finish the game already. You're two thirds of the way through and most of the highlights are right around the corner.

Spoiler: show

The tuberculosis plot line is a bold but inspired choice that provides the game with some fantastic narrative heft, especially when the "hilarious" beatdown of an apparently random debtor turns out to be the cause of Arthur's death months later in retrospect. Talk about the chickens coming home to roost! The subplot about the Downes family is also very well handled. I was genuinely choked up during Arthur's last heartfelt conversations with Sadie and John and I thought the sun rising during his last moments was very beautiful and touching.

I really liked the Native plot line. Subtle but powerful stuff.

Sadie is a favorite of mine as well, but she sometimes suffers from being the Designated Badass without any real flaws or weaknesses, especially towards the end. A bit more nuance would have been preferable, I think.

The epilogue is indeed long, but also enjoyably bittersweet. We all know John is doomed from the very beginning, but his few months of home-owning happiness are genuinely touching to witness. I also really like how they seamlessly combined the two maps at the end.

I wasn't a fan of the player-determined narrative choices because I find them to actively work against the otherwise clearly writer-determined character arc for Arthur. It's obvious that they wanted him to undergo a traditional redemption arc from a naive and mindless thug in the beginning to a sick and remorseful man worried about his true friends' well-being and questioning his own moral values in the end, and giving the player the option to act like a random jerk at crucial narrative points seems to go against that for no reason whatsoever.

On a similar note, the honor system is also a bit pointless and goofy. A lot of western-developed games treat morality as a slider to move either up or down thanks to limitless and easily available resources, which is utterly absurd as far as I'm concerned. Murdering a bunch of dudes guarding a stagecoach doesn't just magically go away because you've caught and released a handful of fishes one afternoon.

I think these kinds of systems work best in a game that has been designed around player-centric narrative agency from the ground up like Mass Effect or Heavy Rain rather than in an otherwise traditional, linear story with established characters such as this one. But that's a general issue I have with the medium.

My distaste for this type of mechanically neutered long-winded game shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody at this point. And yet I found myself thoroughly enjoying this one when judging it based on what it is rather than on what it is not. It is an engrossing tale of believable characters inhabiting an incredibly well-realized world during one of the most fascinating periods in human history. It is one of the very few hyper-expensive AAA productions that still appear to be driven by a holistic creative vision, warts and all. I don't really see myself finishing every last bit of content or replaying it any time soon, but it has given me one of the most satisfying virtual places to be in over the last month or so. As a mostly passive, remarkably polished experience with extraordinary production values, it is brilliant. World traversal and cutscenes in particular are top-notch.

It's interesting to compare and contrast with the first RDR game, which came out before the open world craze had spread across the entire industry and my dislike for it was still in its infancy. Whereas the prequel has been released near the tail end of a console generation that had me plough through MGSV, The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, Nier Automata and Horizon: Zero Dawn, all of which I consider to be inferior to RDR2. I can safely say that I'm getting pretty damn tired of the formula at this point and that I wouldn't object to taking a break from it for a decade or two. And yet, I also can't deny the raw appeal of this particular series for me. I regret doubting it initially and I'll make sure to jump on a potential third entry without hesitation.


PS: And while we're on the subject, I'd also like to mention that I don't think the bad rap prequels tend to get in other forms of media really holds up when it comes to video games. In fact, I can think of quite a few exemplary prequels among my personal all-time favorites (MGS3, DMC3, FE7, Halo Reach, Yakuza 0, the entire Metroid Prime trilogy if that counts, and now RDR2) that I would consider to be at or near the top of their respective series. Interesting to theorize about why that is... I suspect the looser reliance on strict 1:1 plot continuation and general focus on character-driven stories might be a factor.

[Alex79]

Played for almost five hours last night from 9pm till almost 2am, after telling myself I was going to get a decent night sleep, oops. I didn't even do any missions, I was just robbing businesses, going fishing, upgrading camp, hunting animals. I've just started chapter 3, story-wise but only done the first proper mission of that part.

Slightly frustrated with the bounty/wanted system as I'm unsure how it all works properly. I commit crimes in my mask, but still get a bounty on my head, where the description on the mask in the menus explicitly states to wear it to avoid getting recognised when committing crimes, so I'm going to have to do a little research on how or if that aspect of the game really works properly.

Otherwise, still finding it incredible. Just that world... The sun rise, trotting down the track saying hello to everyone you pass. Get a snarky comment from someone, turn around, follow them to a quiet location and tie them up and drop them in the river...

I wish there was somewhere you could see your total play time. You could in GTA 4 and 5 but can't find anything here. Not even in the save information from the main PS4 settings menu.

[Alex79]

Just had an amazing few hours on this. I decided this morning I was going to go on a hunting trip this evening. I've been sat on a boring first aid course all day, just looking forward to coming home and planning out the trip!

I got up early after a good nights sleep in camp, packed a few warm clothes and saddled up. I took two extra horses along with me for more storage space, and set off.

I made my way north, right up to the top of the map, further than I'd ever been before, and arrived just as the sun was setting. I set up camp, hitched my horses and cooked myself some rabbit, which I'd picked up along the way. I got an early night, ready for the days hunting to follow.

I woke up around 6:30am, brewed myself some coffee and had a breakfast of fish and pork. I rode up along the river, and found the most magnificent waterfall. It really did look amazing. I decided to do a bit of fishing first, so got out my rod, and realised I was in legendary fish territory, so excitedly fixed the special river lure, and cast my line. Within a few minutes I got a bite - it was a big one! I wrestled it in, but every time it struggled it pulled my line out. The battle went on for ages, and then my line snapped, noooo! Undeterred, I cast again. I got a bit almost immediately, and I was sure it was the same fish. It was leaping and thrashing, but after what seemed like an eternity, I finally landed a huge legendary steelhead trout. What a catch!

I fixed it to one of my horses, and rode up the riverbank to the bottom of the waterfall. I started to follow some animal tracks, right across the river, and through the forest. It was then I spotted an incredible beast. Almost pure white, a real beauty. I got out my long scoped rifle, and there it was - the legendary moose. I hesitated, I almost didn't do it, I almost wish I hadn't, but I took the shot. Disaster, it wasn't a clean kill! The moose bucked, and ran off. I had to finish it off, I caught up with it, and almost apologetically, fired off another single shot right between its eyes. The moose dropped - a hollow victory. I picked up the skin, stowed it away on another horse, and headed back to camp. After another meal of fish and rabbit, washed down with brandy, I hit the sack.

It was a very fruitful trip, aside from the fish and moose, I managed to take a black bear skin, and countless smaller deer pelts. They fetched a pretty penny back in town, but I returned to base camp slightly sadder than I left.

I don't know if I'll take any more of the legendary animals. It seems fairer to let them be.

EDIT: Just had a revelation. There is a way to get the enjoyment of tracking and shooting the legendary animals without killing them. Arthur has a camera! I'll just maintain my own list, and tick them off when they're done. What a game!

[Alex79]

I am beyond pissed off. I was just reading an article on Cracked.com and literally with no warning whatsoever it dropped a huge spoiler on what happens at the end of the story. Now, I don't know for certain that it's true, but...

WARNING: POTENTIAL HUGE STORY SPOILER

Spoiler: show

The fact Arthur coughs during a cut scene about half way through the game around the time you move to the swamp camp, I thought oh hello what's this, nobody coughs in games. He's going to get sick and die...

...leads me to believe it probably is. What a bunch of utter cunts. And I don't use that word lightly (erm, on this forum. All the time in real life...)

What the hell is wrong with people!?

[ratsoalbion]

Boo!

So far I’ve managed to avoid all meaningful spoilers. Still on chapter 3.

Slow progress because 1) I am loving and savouring it and 2) Cane and Rinse games.

[Alex79]

I'm only a shade further than you, and loving it so much. So annoyed though!

[ThirdDrawing]

I noticed what was happening and guessed the spoiler that Alex79uk was talking about.

That's disappointing it was spoiled for you though.

I finished the game just before Christmas. I enjoyed the game for what it was even though I guessed what was going to happen.

I think it was kind of redundant as a game though. We would have been better served to have this game last gen and the other game this gen so the ending of the original Red Dead was a surprise going into this game, but that's just my opinion.

[Goodman Darkness]

Hey everyone, I'm new on here - thought I'd poke into this thread because I'm in the middle of playing this one and it's been occupying even more of my thoughts than it has my time (and it's been eating up plenty of that, too). So far (20 hours-ish in, ch. 3 I believe?) RDR2 is by turns astounding and disappointing.

I just got a PS4 Pro and so this is my first-ever HDR game, but wow, this the first time I've felt truly in awe of what a modern game can be on a visual/audio level since...probably the first time I played a PS2 game. Sure, part of it is the same old awe inherent in any Rockstar open world (my eyes still haven't totally uncrossed from playing GTA V 'round Christmas), but with RDR2 they've pushed beyond that, bringing their mimetic, recreation-of-reality thing to new heights - RDR2 is showcases demonic, sorcerous levels of exactitude just about anywhere you care to look in its world.

On the bad side:

Spoiler: show

Before RDR2, I didn't have too high an opinion of Rockstar's writing chops. The GTA games fall entirely flat for me narratively and, while I think Rockstar came close to something special in RDR1, I went back and watched the cutscenes again and it just didn't hold up. To my ear the dialogue sounded stilted, overwritten, awkward, stagey.

Now, playing RDR2 I thought they finally got it right. I think Arthur is the best Rockstar protag bar none, and the characters' stylized cowboy speech reminded me of Oakley Hall's novel Warlock, always a good touchstone. But I think the problems come from Rockstar's insistence that you don't participate in this story. For instance: they have a bunch of well-drawn supporting characters in the Van der Linde gang, but you can't interact with any of them beyond a simple "Greet" or "Antagonize" option. If this game is about (as I suspect it is) the internal dynamics of the gang, why can't I pursue those dynamics in my own way? Some kind of Persona-style Social Link system where you can unlock more conversation options and even missions with characters who like you - I feel like the game is screaming for this.

And while Arthur is an important character in the game, there's no acknowledgement of that in what you choose to do outside of the missions - who you might prefer to be around. Too, it's not even internally consistent in its rigidity. It establishes early on that Arthur doesn't like Micah - so why would he want to help Micah with anything?

Also, there's no meaningful acknowledgement of your in-game actions, despite constantly judging you on the Good/Bad Cowboy meter at the bottom of the screen. I've been playing the game trying not to kill anybody I don't have to because I read Arthur as a man who is somewhat regretful of his way of outlaw life even as he remains stubbornly proud of it in other ways. But then I sit down with Tilly for a conversation and Arthur admits to her that he's been killing lots people recently, for no reason at all, just because he's angry; and tells Mary-Beth that he's been killing animals for fun. What? When? I've been in control of Arthur the whole time, studiously roleplaying a regretful outlaw, and the game drops this kind of non sequitur into my lap and it detonates the potent, beautiful illusion the rest of the game has woven - momentarily, sure, but it happens over and over, and all these little cracks add up. Like when I give Jack the book he wants, why does he not even say anything? I just get a cha-ching noise and a candy bar pops into my inventory. There characters in this game are so well-drawn, likable, so well voice-acted and motion-captured - why can't they be more than colorful props at the campsite?

The story itself seems to be losing focus a bit. I'm in Lemoyne now, resolving the dispute between the Grays and the Braithwaites. I suspect part of the looseness here stems from the incredibly small pool of activities missions have you doing. GTA V did a good job, I thought, of mixing things up, but here the repetition is super noticeable, and the checkpointing during missions a lot worse somehow than its immediate predecessor. I really like the gun play in RDR2 but I would like more missions that don't follow the "Ten minutes of horse riding/talking - press context sensitive button - shootout starts - ride away after shootout." It's fun, it's fine, but it feels like a major waste of this unbelievably beautiful world.

Couple of misc. notes: I'm finding first person mode absolutely the way to play this game. I did the same for GTA V and it works beautifully here too. I also wish the hunger/stamina/dead eye systems were more stringent and punishing. I enjoy buying all the fancy cool cowboy clothes in the stores. My Arthur is a very vain man.