Erkki

Another Red Redemption, Dead

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I feel like the only person in the world who is not remotely interested in RDR.  I tried playing the first one but it did nothing for me.  I didn't hate it but at the same time I never felt a motivation to keep playing.  It doesn't help that westerns are maybe my least favorite genre or that Rockstar gameplay in general seems really janky to me.  I'm not going to suggest it's a bad game.  It seems very well made with lots of thought put into it and attention to detail (maybe too much from what I hear).  But it's another AAA game that I don't care about in the least. 

 

I probably didn't need to intrude into this thread just to say that.  I guess I'm just a grumpy old man who likes to complain.

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I feel it's warranted, in this case, to butt in. RDR2 is that rare game that you almost can't avoid in daily life - it's even on TV in mainstream talkshows here in the Netherlands. The big gaming sites have been holding RDR-weeks and other bullshit. Feels like you HAVE to have an opinion on it, somehow.

 

(Note: I'm relatively interested in the game, but certainly not gonna buy it in the near future. I have enough to play and from what I see and hear it's hardly a must-play. Even if it's, like, arbitrarily, 20% better than RDR, it's still 'just another RDR, but better'.)

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Anytime a new AAA game from a big studio comes out I expect to see almost nothing except that game covered for at least 3 days, but yeah it feels like RDR2 has way more exposure then normal.  Maybe it was the long lead-up time, maybe the reception of the first game or the evolution of the hype cycle but it feel very unavoidable in a way that other games this year haven't been.

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4 hours ago, Roderick said:

Even if it's, like, arbitrarily, 20% better than RDR, it's still 'just another RDR, but better'.

 

Yeah I think there's something in this. There are moments when RDR2 feels like something entirely new - and it certainly *looks* like nothing else. But there's times when those old GTA bones start showing through the flesh.

 

I've seen a lot of people write about how many more opportunities there are here for peaceful interactions, compared to previous open-world Rockstar games. And it's true that you can spend a lot of time riding, foraging, hunting for treasure, skinning rabbits, fishing, greeting strangers, gambling, playing with dogs, cleaning your guns, shaving, brushing your horse, and taking baths (complete with button prompts to wash each individual limb).

 

At the end of the day it's still a game about pulling up a map, going to a marked point, watching a cinematic cutscene, and then going somewhere else to engage in a bit of the old ultraviolence. But if everything else is just set dressing, it's the most obsessively detailed set ever designed.

 

Still, I'm curious as to whether Nick will get anywhere with his lasso-only playthrough. I suspect it'll be almost impossible. You can die pretty quickly in this game.

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I resented the first game for having around 300% more snake oil salesmanship than I wanted and about 100% less train robbery and saloon fights. I pushed through it because I was promised a good story, but the writing was awful, too.

 

Does RDR2 have wild west stuff, or am I going to spend my time riding a carriage with a sleazy oil salesman and chasing a random man who :devil:MaY oR maY noT be GoD?:devil: I can endure a smidge more "Go to Point A, to be told to go to Point B, shoot someone" if there's a mission where you, I dunno, strategically stick-up a bank or something.

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Somewhat unrelated (because I'm sure RDR2 is a super swell game in its own right), but after experiencing Breath of the Wild, I don't know if old school open world games will still do it for me. BotW has a refined elegance of gameplay systems that I've yet to see elsewhere. Without being able to put into words exactly what it did that was so next level, you kind of just feel it was.

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13 hours ago, Thyroid said:

Does RDR2 have wild west stuff, or am I going to spend my time riding a carriage with a sleazy oil salesman and chasing a random man who :devil:MaY oR maY noT be GoD?:devil: I can endure a smidge more "Go to Point A, to be told to go to Point B, shoot someone" if there's a mission where you, I dunno, strategically stick-up a bank or something.

 

There's certainly wild west stuff. If anything the atmosphere of the old west is stronger because of the ridiculous abundance of detail. You can rob pretty much anyone at anytime, and at times it becomes imperative that you do so (if only to pay off a bounty elsewhere). Quick Draw is still a thing, and seems to work a bit better than it did in RDR.

 

But the other stuff is there too: the dubious writing, the quirky stranger encounters. There's a lot of that. But the tone of those has changed a bit. Whereas in the first game you were a rootless free agent for almost the whole game, the concept in RDR2 is that you're part of a gang from the first moment. And the gang is more like a family of settlers -- they happen to be heavily armed and occasionally murderous, but they are a family, complete with women and children, and so you're given to feel like you have responsibility for them as well as for yourself. You're encouraged to bring back hunted animals for food, and to donate a cut of your cash every so often, for the good of the group. And so if you do something really nasty in one of those stranger encounters, there's a possibility that could come back not just on you, but on your 'family' as well.

 

It's a vaguely post-apocalyptic vibe that owes a good deal to Mass Effect and The Walking Dead. But this being a Rockstar game, I feel like there are never going to be any serious consequences to opting not to support the family. To put it another way, nobody in the camp is going to starve if I choose not to bring back a deer for dinner tonight, because the game has to support the infinite variety of other choices I might make. I may of course be wrong about this but at the moment, supporting the camp seems less like a thing I'm going to do because it's good and right and because it enables nice interactions between the characters, and more like a thing I'm going to do because if I bring in enough Perfect Badger Carcasses I can upgrade my satchel to carry more Wild Oregano.

 

Or maybe it's both? I don't know. Coming back to the camp and checking in with everyone is really nice, in the same way that coming back to the Normandy in Mass Effect was nice. I might even say it is nicer than any version of the Normandy that Bioware have made (including, for example, the keep in Dragon Age Inquisition). It is also largely optional: I suppose you could just smash through the story missions, as in any GTA game. But there's a lot more to see outside the story missions than in anything Rockstar have made before. (I stumbled on some crazy stuff last night which I won't dare to mention, even with the spoiler tag. There's weirdness in this game that rewards exploration.)

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Sounds like I might want to check it out eventually despite the samey writing and cutscenes/gameplay separation. I will probably get the game after Sony releases a PlayStation with support for 4K Blu-Rays, although I still don't have a 4K display.

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Whenever a new R* game comes out I tend to loose myself in it for a good long while, so I actually took this past week off from work so I could really immerse myself in this. It's, uh, pretty fucking great. I'd been staying away from previews because I knew I'd be playing it regardless and I've been impressed by how much deeper they've made all the systems. From GTA 4 to 5 I felt like they made a lot of stuff more arcadey and less simulation-y(mainly driving), but I'm glad to see they've gone the opposite route here. I'm currently at 31% Total Completion and 21% Story completion. Mostly I'm having too much fun with the open world to bother with the story missions.

 

If there's one part of the game I'm not crazy about it's actually the story missions. I'm kinda split on them. Early on in the game when I noticed how deep a lot of the systems were and how viable it was to play in first person I started thinking "oh my god is this a proper COWBOY IMM SIM now?", but that illusion vanishes when you start a story mission. If it were an immersive sim I feel like the game would just give you an objective and then leave it up to you to use the systems of the game to complete it any way you wish, but nope, rather missions play out in a rigidly scripted fashion. It's all "go here, do this thing. go to this second place, do another thing. go to a third place, do a third thing. ok, mission done." But on the other hand, these set-piece heavy affairs aren't bad. In fact they're varied and often very entertaining, but I still kinda mourn for the cowboy imm sim this could've been. Even worse the game often strips out systems during story missions. I've found myself unable to whistle for my horse, lead my horse, or even holster my gun at certain points because that's not what the game wanted me to do at that specific moment.

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So I finished the game and am currently

half way through Epilogue part two

 

I am kinda mixed on the game. I obviously liked it enough to finish it.

 

As a technical achievement, graphically, animation, lighting is incredible. It's got a good story, which fits in well with RDR1, I grew to quite like Arthur as a character. I enjoyed alot of the characters, their interactions with each other.

 

But there are problems... bad controls (movement and aiming) I find this with pretty much all Rockstar games. I just could never get to it feel good for me no matter what I tried. Dated game mechanics .. it does feel like a game from 5-10 years ago in many aspects. Mark Brown from Game Makers Toolkit wrote a good piece about this:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/thoughts-on-red-22570692

 

The game is going for this "realistic" open world feeling but the amount of time things take gets really annoying. Long animations, long travel time etc. It's a video game, and sometimes I would like it to respect my time. There's been a few times were i've thought "one more mission before work" and its taking my over 45 minutes to finish one mission! Not saying I want fast travel everywhere to spoil the exploration but there should be a balance. Having to search a room and going to 5-10 crates and slowly searching each one is silly.

 

The camp made no difference, I stopped donating money and resources after a while and nothing happened. No one else bothers in your camp anyway. Most missions ended up being, slowly going to a place, things kicking off then by magic hordes of enemies appearing out from the trees while you try and ride away. It feels dated like games from years ago.

 

There were plenty of annoyances like spawning after a mission miles away from any town or my horse, the game constantly ignoring my ammo type choice and reverting back to standard ammo, exiting cut scenes into a gun fight where the game un-equips my gun, failing missions because a team mate died, or i went off back to my horse to get a new weapon so I failed for not sticking with people. 

 

There is just alot of small details that really add up to retract from the overall experience. It's good, but not the 98% game of the generation for me at all. Looking forward to when multiplayer comes out soon so I can play with my friends. And will polish up some of the side missions and stranger missions in my own time after finishing the main story.

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On 10/31/2018 at 12:28 PM, marginalgloss said:

(I stumbled on some crazy stuff last night which I won't dare to mention, even with the spoiler tag. There's weirdness in this game that rewards exploration.)

Ugh, the temptation. I know I shouldn't, but I'm so curious.

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On 01.11.2018 at 12:16 PM, Erkki said:

Sounds like I might want to check it out eventually despite the samey writing and cutscenes/gameplay separation. I will probably get the game after Sony releases a PlayStation with hungarian gp for 4K Blu-Rays, although I still don't have a 4K display.

Great idea!

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Finished the main story last Thursday and the epilogue a few days later. Initially a bit disappointed that the epilogue (or the epilogue to the epilogue, for that matter) didn't feature

Spoiler

Sadie as the main character. The main story seemed to be setting her up as Arthur's protege, so I figued it'd be a natural fit.

Anyway, after that disappointment wore off I really enjoyed the epilogue, perhaps even more than the main story. It's much more focused and straightforward. Anyway, after the end credits rolled I wanted to let our hero settle down and take it easy, but I wasn't prepared to give up on my ramblin' ways, so I booted up the Red Dead Online, and thus begun...

 

The Adventures of Loretta (and Lil' Horsey)

 

RDR2_Loretta.jpg?raw=1

 

So far I'm really enjoying Online, tho I don't interact with other players much, I'm mostly just treating it as an extension of the SP, doing missions on my own. The story isn't overlapping with the RDR2 story in any way I've noticed, but I was glad to see some familiar faces from RDR1 that don't show up in the main story. :)

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I've been away from mainstream gaming for a few years now, I think. Basically since The Witcher 3. But I'll plunge back in at least briefly for hope of some more red redemption, even if dead. The Eurogamer review says that it has (familiar to me) flaws in storytelling, mission design and game design in general, but has some technical and artistic excellence nontheless. So I'll try to enjoy it, shouldn't be too hard given that RDR was one of my favourite games of all time.

 

I'm not sure my PC can cope with it, but if not, maybe an upgrade is in store anyway...

image.png.4f3c1b61735548188ce5b17a19765df0.png

[edit] So far it looks very good. With the tutorial, subtitles on and everything, there was a bit too much going on at once during the first mission. I am missing a bigger screen for playing this. It looks like it's not meant for a 21" monitor :|
I might try it on my big screen assuming Steam link can handle it.

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So far I'm enjoying it, but I've noticed some of the negative sides thenexus6 mentioned a few posts above. Especially riding + shooting combined is fucked. I've been playing both with keyboard + mouse and Steam controller... with mouse the aiming is more manual and takes longer sometimes... but with the controller keeping yourself orientated is such a pain... as with many other games. Indeed it feels like a game from years ago, as already did the previous GTA and RDR games.

 

On the other hand the scope of everything is impressive and in some ways the slowness of everything adds to immersion, but I feel like a fool after a longer session of playing, like I'm wasting my life on mundane things in a virtual world... I got this feeling especially after accidentally riding into Saint Denis after a gunslinger encounter. Before that the world seemed of a manageable scope, with Valentine being "the town". Now suddenly I realized that if the previous area had seemed full of things to interact with (or waste time on), now everything seemed suddenly ten times bigger. And I don't even know if St. Denis is the biggest city in the game. Probably not?

 

I'm now thinking whether to give up at this point to avoid feeling like I'm wasting time completing this game... or I could try to ignore the completionist in me and take the opening up of the world as a chance to pick and choose more of what I interact with...

 

In any case, I don't want to go the route of playing this for an entire year or alternatively screwing up my sleep patterns playing this into late nights...

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Well, I ended up pushing through the story as fast as I could and am watching the credits now. I got to agree with a lot of criticism of the game. The missions are downright ridiculous and the point where the game really falls apart and even throws away the immersion it seems to be seeking in other areas. The overall story I actually liked, although not all parts of it. The growing rift between Arthur and Dutch was well done. But then again it could have been done even much better.

 

One thing that was pretty weak is the landscapes. They were lit like never before, but the first game had the landscapes almost be characters in the story, or at least important to the story. Here it was just forest, some mountains and the one plain and a swap. Disappointing.

 

I mean, there are beautiful and even different-looking places here, but they don’t feel as different places as the areas in RDR. In RDR you would often travel the ridge between Armadillo and the Macfarlane ranch. And this would give you a wide ass view of the desert/prairie (or what is that type of landscape called?) every time you went down. And then up the ridge you really feel in a different place and then same later in the plains around Blackwater and the snowy forests. And then Mexico again added 2 or 3 different areas on top of that.

 

In RDR2 you have the intro mountains and the epilogue meadows and plains, but the meat of the game takes place in a chunk of land that feels quite similar throughout except that vegetation is occasionally different. Ok, the bayou is something of its own with the crocodiles and then there is the plain with the bison, but the latter doesn’t get much use. And the main piece of beauty near the first camp out of the mountains - the horseshoe  - is nice but it’s all somehow shaped so that you never really get a good sense of your beatings around there. And then there’s the fact that all the rocks in the game are kind of similar. I was always keeping an eye out for the face rock as it was on a treasure map and a rail station poster, but never found it. It could have been anywhere on the map because there were rocks like that everywhere.

 

And so maybe my complaint isn’t that there weren’t distinct landscapes, just that they weren’t well organized as in the first game and the way I traversed the game mostly following the story meant that I was mostly seeing same looking places.

 

And now after the credits I see I can go back to the original games areas eg Armadillo, but I imagine there won’t be much to do. Maybe I could have always gone there, but again the story and other content kept me in certain areas. Maybe you can even go to Mexico? The size of the map seems to extend there, but I tried to swim there and died on the shore weirdly. In any case I will try to do the side content like hunting and treasure hunting now and see if that changes what I think of the landscapes in this game.

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I just powered through the main game and part of the epilogue....and uh. jesus this game is way too long.  I enjoyed my time, but I wish they approached some of the design differently.  Combat in particular feels like it could be much more exciting with just a few tweaks? I mean it was like 30 hours in before I realized that enemies could run up to you and knock your gun out of your hand and vice versa, that was thrilling! But the game rarely ever allows that event to occur.  I feel like even just tweaking the ammo count to like, semi-realistic numbers would be a huge deal and vary up the combat a lot, encourage more close combat and movement rather than mostly hunkering down in one spot and hope you don't run of your 2000 rounds of ammo. You'd also likely have to reduce enemy count which, also would be nice? I'm pretty sure I've murdered the population of several towns just doing story missions and paying 50 bucks makes everyone cool with that I guess.  The economy is also extremely fucked and does not gel with the story at all.  There's constant talk about lack of money by characters and two of story based robberies had me set up for life basically. Arthur talking about not being able to afford something monetarily  that is not expensive while holding 3000 dollars is wild(I did not do any side hustles either, money mainly came from story.)

 

It's a very pretty game that is just filled with moments of design and story butting heads hard. I'm saying lot of negative stuff, but I enjoyed it! it's just frustrating at times especially since there's a lot of well crafted bits along with weird and sometimes bad choices in design.

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