20 YEARS OF GAMING PART 10: HALFWAY POINT

Is Red Dead Redemption 2 a perfect game? Absolutely not. It's a 10/10 in the same way the Breath of the Wild duology are. If rating games was just about "things it does good vs things it does bad" then this game, nor those, would be anywhere CLOSE to a 10/10. And just to satiate that curiosity, I'll quickly run by the issues I do have with it so it doesn't look like I have Rockstar's 100 Work Week Bad Security Dick in my mouth.

Several systems are either super easy to take advantage of or not taken far enough in a way that ruins the immersion that the game otherwise dedicates a whole bunch of time to like the Wanted mechanic, NPC behaviors, weather and temperature, and more. There's a shit ton of trailing missions and some of the shooting galleries can get pretty repetitive. And Chapter V just generally kinda blows.

Now, all of that on its own would drag this game down to a 9 or even an 8/10. But what this game also has is some of the best visuals in any game, an incredibly engrossing open world with a ton of different ways to interact and have fun in it, some incredible music, excellent linear mission design, and one of the best stories in any video game. Arthur Morgan in particular is maybe the best protagonist in any video game ever and the story of him and his gang trying to make it in a dying world that's quickly outliving them is incredibly compelling. It's next level on a video, game, and narrative level so even if there are a good amount of issues I have with it when I really dissect it, the experience I had playing the game was so incredible and so engrossing, that I would feel dirty (at least right now) rating it at that 8 score I was considering. Anyway, onto the second half of this marathon!

Análise em PT-BR.
Na época em que joguei eu não sabia de informações sobre esse jogo, isso me fez amar ele mais ainda por ser uma experiência nova e incrível. Fazia bastante tempo que não via um jogo de mundo aberto me prender tanto quanto esse jogo, foi longos 15 dias voltando cansado para casa e me relaxando jogando red dead, gastei boas horas e bons dias jogando. Muitos detalhes, muitos animais e várias missões secundárias. Conteúdo para esse jogo não falta e gráficos também não. Gráficos incríveis e iluminação boa, gostei bastante da iluminação e da atmosfera do antigo velho oeste. A história é onde mais se destaca esse jogo, desenvolvimento impressionante dos personagens, você acaba criando laços com cada um do seu acampamento, missões incríveis como a do Resgade Ao Jack Marston, missão incrível que se passa dentro de uma mansão, nela eu percebi o quanto o jogo era incrível. Ao longo da história acaba acontecendo várias coisas onde eu não quero dar spoiler. Mas o Final desse jogo me quebrou de uma forma incrível, chorei bastante com o primeiro final, e depois continuamos a saga com John Marston ate o final do game. Vale a Pena jogar, meu 2° jogo favorito e com certeza um dos melhores, ou se não o melhor da história.

Sometimes I hear people say that a game is an experience, and it simply just is NOT a “game.” Despite Red Dead Redemption 2 not falling into the category of my all-time favorite game, this will forever hold the title of the one game that truly fits this narrative. From just a character perspective alone, I don’t think any franchise, outside of the modern God of War games, can really compete. Arthur Morgan and Dutch Van Der Line are, in my opinion, two of the most well-written characters ever. It doesn’t just halt at those two either, everyone in this game is of value. It’s just incredible work from Rockstar all around to take new faces and get you so attached in a matter of just a few chapters.

However, this beauty of a video game is not without its flaws. Even if chapters 1, 5, and the epilogues didn’t take away from my experience overall, it’s still a tedious chore to get through them. It’s fairly evident Rockstar got lazy for whatever reason with the epilogues, as it looks almost as bad as the original Red Dead does today. I noticed a plethora of bugs in the epilogue as well that simply never happened in my 80 hour play-through of the main story alone. Which is really unfortunate, because it’s the only serious issue I can think of. For me personally, Red Dead is the most emotional any game has ever made me. I’ve shed tears to games before, sure, but none harder than this. Arthur’s Last Ride may be the hardest I’ve ever cried in my entire life. Taking a brand new character nobody had any real attachment to and making you control him, which then alters your perspective of him and often makes you see yourself in him at times, is glorious work.

Simply put, despite my minor issues with Red Dead Redemption 2, I’d be a fool to give something that impacted me in such a way emotionally a less than perfect score.


Red Dead Redemption 2 in my eyes is a 10/10.

Okay I’ll catch you later then

A technically impressive game that's about twice as long as it should have been, made worse by its languid pace.

Every side activity is turned into a chore that makes me not want to even engage with it. Why, exactly, do I need to skin the animal, put the pelt on my horse, and then transport it to one of the Three (3) trappers hidden around the massive map? And why is there a limit to how many of them I can even put on the horse? This was the most glaring example, but everything in this game is absolutely glacial. The whole mechanic of retrieving guns from your saddle is bizarre, and maybe the worst example of Halo's wretched "two guns" influence ever to be conceived.

But I suppose that's the point, right? This is almost an Old West Tourism Simulator. You just slowly ride around and soak in the sights. To their credit, Rockstar packed the map full of stuff to do, and strange things to encounter. It's not a Breath of the Wild-style "copy-paste empty field" situation. Still, even if you solely stick to the story, you're in for a long haul, and divergence from the critical path pushes this game into PS2 JRPG territory in terms of length.

The story, meanwhile, is pretty repetitive for most of the game. You get to a new area, Dutch has some wild plan, it goes south, you move to another new area. Rinse and repeat. The main problem is that when it does take another direction, it's... Just repeating the first game. RDR2 is almost the definition of "diminishing returns". The Cuba section in the middle is not as good as the excursion to Mexico in the first game, and the whole finale/epilogue is just a retread of the first game's, but about 20x longer.

RDR1's ending and epilogue were incredible at the time. Nobody had done anything like that in an open-world game, and it was kinda mind-blowing. When I was approaching the end of RDR2, I was like "... oh. They're really doing this again, huh..."

Is it executed well? Absolutely. All of the characters' performances are fantastic. But it's also a shame that Rockstar were so bereft of new ideas that they decided to essentially take a mulligan on a game that's... A prequel. I have seen people advising to play this before RDR1, and to me, that's insane. But hey, there are also people who say to watch the Star Wars prequels first. I assume microplastics are to blame.

8/10

There won't be any spoilers in this, I promise.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a "masterpiece" and according to its Microsoft Store card it won over 170 GOTY-awards. Well, I didn't even know that many awards existed, to speak frankly.

So how was my experience with it?
First of all, I had hated this game a couple of years ago and I had already abandoned it. My brother, however, got me back to it with one simple sentence: "Yeah, it's a long game, but you just gotta see the time back then. Imagine living there."

And that I did - and boy did that help me enjoying the game.

Here are my pro and cons about the game in a nutshell:
+ the visual presentation is incredible
+ the music and sound design is astounding
+ the characters (most of them) are well written
+ the voice acting is probably among the best I've ever heard in a video game (right up there with Naughty Dog games)
+ many of the side missions were pretty creative, but still the gameplay in it was boring (the story of Edith Downes is insane for instance)

- the mission design is soooo goddamn repetitive
- the mission design is way to lengthy and boring
- the map is too big with too little to explore (there aren't so many points of interest, I stumpled upon cool stuff randomly)

So what is the typical experience of RDR2?
This is the only thing that really bothered me. This game fells like a movie and I've looked at YouTube videos where people only edited together the cutscenes and wow... that is amazing!
The dialogue, the atmosphere, the surprising twists, so much cool stuff happens in there... But then there is the massive downside...

The game is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long and it's so stretched out and repetitive. Almost EVERY mission in this game plays like this:
1. You ride 3-5 minutes to a certain spot (if you do it with the cinematic camera, you only have to press the A-button to ride)
2. You start the mission and ride to another spot for 3-5 minutes (if not longer)
3. You arrive at the mission spot, get of your horse and usually start shooting 40-80 people down
4. You ride back to the original location (3-5 minutes again)

So I've spent 15 minutes doing absolutely nothing but just going into a direction where the game starts. Now if we multiply that by 50 missions (especially the epilogue 1+2 missions are really hard on that one, there it's even longer at times), we get 750 minutes of doing nothing but pressing the A-button. That's 12.5 hours...


And here is the easiest fix for people like me who are fed up with that system:
Dear Rockstar, why don't you let me skip the boring shit in between those missions? Why do you force me to press the A-button for 3-5 minutes straight and not let me skip this "long ass loading screen" in order to start the mission. This is honestly beyond insanity to me. I simply cannot understand that.

This feels so tedious and I'm really unhappy about that, because at its core there is a great game. The level of detail is great and Rockstar gifted us with one of the most realistic open worlds ever, but this time in between prevents me from ever touching this again.

I don't want to go into detail about the story itself, as I've mentioned above there won't be any spoilers. Nevertheless, there are so many missions and chapters that you could just cut from the game and it wouldn't make any difference:
Chapter 5 especially is nonsense
Epilogue 1+2 can be cut down to 2 hours (why do I have to milk cows now and press a button for it?)
Chapter 1 is also incredibly long, but in retrospect it's honest because it prepares us for what to come

So yeah... I will definitely never touch this game again or revisit it. I am glad that I've finished it today and I am currently not looking forward to GTA 6. But let's see, I just need a break... :D

Band of outlaws constantly fuck up across the USA and never listen to voice of reason.

So anyways, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a hige step up from the first game in alot of ways. Its a story that tackles many themes of Loyalty, Family, and Morality. Arthur Morgan is a man who has only ever been an outlaw his whole life and aspires to be much like his mentor dutch. Him and everyone in the camp show a beautiful found family connection with eachother. All of them fleshed out in not just story mode and cutscenes but from various interactions in the camp. We see how Arthur cares for each and bonds with them. Even previous protagonist John Marston is back, but he is almost nothing like how he was in the first game. Goodbye cold and impatient man, and hello a desperate husband and father trying to learn how to do right by his loved ones. New comer Arthur Morgan however in my opinion far exceeds anything we got from John. Arthur is a complex man struggling to figure out how he can help those he cares about while struggling with the morality of the actions he does as an outlaw in a country that no longer wants him. Arthur is shown time and time again to be a man with a good heart but with not always the best actions. As I played, I grew very attached to his character and his struggles. Nothing was ever simple for him nor his group as things always seemed to get worse. Through blind faith though they trust their leader Dutch Van Der Linde to rescue them. Dutch was even better than he was in the first game. Still as charming and clever as always but now we get to watch his slow decent into madness of what he eventually comes. Slowly it is all drip fed to use as the cracks of his character show more and more to the group and its wonderful. Elevated even more by the amazing voice work from the VA who brings an amazing unique voice that holds steady with charm in everything he says. Meanwhile also able to keep the same charismatic voice with more angry undertones as the more crazed he gets. The map for this game is beautiful with many different depections of the old USA. Instead of making a full on new map they chose to expand upon the old map giving us many new locations across the old borderlines of the previous game. Anywhere you go you can also run into folk in need of help or looking to start trouble. Helping to flesh out this already vast world with more character and charm. Vast as this world may be though, its a bit troublesome and tedious to explore as riding on the horse can take quite some time to get across, and some areas of the map do not have a stage coach near by to easily fast travel to. If you wanna get some places just be prepared to rapidly tap the run button for about 5-8 minutes. The music is also fantastic with some extra amazingly sang calmer western songs. It gets better even in battle as we get the most western like battle themes you can hope for. I loved the story but I will say there were moments I felt as though it dragged itself out and or did not give some characters more focused as they should have. This game makes a wonderful prequel for the first game however. Eloquently helping to expand upon characters and stories that will eventually effect characters in the first game. Id be okay with giving this game a hefty 4/5

The fishing in this game was pretty cool though, so ill give it like a 4.5/5

Um prequel de Red Dead Redemption, o segundo jogo da franquia do GTA de cavalo consegue superar seu antecessor em todos os aspectos. Rockstar levou muito para tempo para polir cada aspectos da imersão desse experiência que possui, com toda certeza, um dos melhores protagonista de um jogo: Arthur Morgan.

A história é fantástica e sua progressão, apesar de lenta, é extremamente recompensadora e o elenco de personagem é cativante e cheio de vida. É fácil se sentir preso a narrativa proposta e querer saber mais desse mundo e dessas pessoas.

Claro, que o combate e as estruturas de algumas missões não são das melhores coisas, mas isso nunca impede de RDR2 ser o que ele é : Um dos jogos mais bem escritos de todos os tempos.

Единственное чего здесь не хватило - отсылки к Клинту Иствуду.

Полная рецензия: Я просто обожаю такого рода медитативные игры, когда основной медленный геймплей резко сменяется коротким, но ультрадинамичным экшеном. Великолепный открытый мир с кучей увлекательных побочных квестов и случайных событий. Только в этой игре ты, отправившись на основной квест, вдруг увидишь бандитов, которые грабят повозку. Ты берешь, убиваешь бандитов, сам грабишь эту повозку и едешь продавать ее диллеру, а потом на эти бабки идешь бухать и играть в покер, даже забыв про основной квест. И вот таких вариаций разного рода событий десятки. Даже просто изучать открытый мир, разные дома, места и тд просто ахуенно. Это я молчу про основной сюжет, который кидает нас из одной ситуации в другую, меняя обстановку и положения главных героев.

Отдельное спасибо за суперскую кастомизацию всего и вся и невероятно красивые пейзажи Дикого Запада.