This game feels like you're watching a show that you just can't put down. It's that good.

This is also the BEST voice acting I've ever heard in a video game. Maybe I haven't played a lot of stuff, but it was insane how real it all felt.

Red Dead 2 builds on the open world formula by adding so many different activities to do but also takes several steps back when it comes to completing missions and freedom when doing story missions. I think this is something that Rockstar has consistently struggled with and could actually learn to fix.

However, the story and characters are so goddamn engaging and the soundtrack goes along perfectly with it, that I'm willing to give that a pass.

It starts with a janitor.

You're tasked with trailing him to his house in your car for a uniform. All you have to do is wait and, when the time is right, have a polite conversation with him.

So, anyway, I put a bomb on his door and blew him up the second he walked over to it. I punched him, tased him, shot him, poured gasoline on his brand-new car, and rammed his brand-new car with my stolen one. When I was supposed to park my car around the corner, I made the side of his car my parking lot. All of this "spooked" him, but never once did he die.

Like Classic Rock, Open World is an umbrella term. You have your Checklist Open Worlds, Zelda Open Worlds, Open Worlds that play like STALKER, Open Worlds by Bethesda, and so on. And then you have Rockstar games. The selling point is detail: in Fallout 3, technical limitations mean that every time you see a train running, what you're experiencing is an unnamed citizen with a train hat on, literally running. With Rockstar, the nails in the train tracks around the world are dynamically hammered in by unnamed NPCs that you can talk to. Cars turn realistically in Grand Theft Auto IV, and your average fast-travel system is replaced with a network of trains that you can interact with unscripted. Viewed separately from the content in them, they're masters in their field.

Ultimately, it all comes back to that janitor in the end. I've ruminated on it before, but a lot of what I find to be funny about that scene, in particular, is an imbalance between content and context. It's funny to keep failing specifically because the game asks you not to but puts in no safeguards to keep you from using its more emergent systems against itself. The issue Grand Theft Auto V has is that its caricatures only accelerate this imbalance. If the entire experience is supposed to be stupid, head empty, dumb fun, why play the rules at all?

In Red Dead Redemption II, I occasionally did the same thing. The game was linear, and I was bored, so I gave myself something to laugh at. But more of my time was spent in a modded version of the photo mode, where landmarks as simple and small as hills became vital storytelling tools for my version of Arthur Morgan. Abandoned wagons spoke to a quiet feeling of loss as fog enveloped the greenery. As nature took its course, I felt my figure shrink until it folded into the shadowy figure of the mountains behind me. It could only last for so long—but at least I was there for the trip. Farewell.

There's an inherent sense of melancholy in Red Dead Redemption II's world that I've seldom felt in the games I've played—much less from the Houser brothers and their culture of debauchery. To their credit, much of that comes from the narrative and characters. But beyond anything they had more than a minor role in, it's due to sunsets, fog, red dirt, and dry sand more than anything else. Red Dead Redemption II made me understand the cliche of riding into the sunset beyond a bus I took in high school one time, and it made me want to keep riding through the dark.

Another returning issue from other Rockstar games is as follows: movement still feels janky. I don't find it surprising at all that legendary filmmaker John Carpenter, fan of Sonic Unleashed and Halo Infinite, couldn't bring himself to finish this game. First-person mode here is a continent and two miles above what they half-assed into Grand Theft Auto V for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports, and thus it's the way I recommend playing this. But eventually, you have to get on a horse, and there's no perspective you can control that in where it always feels as intuitive as you want it to be. Crucially, while running around, it was very easy to me to tackle someone accidentally in a public space. I am grateful that the police system in this is more lenient than what's currently in Cyberpunk 2077, because I would have quit otherwise. But it's not perfect, either. You can always pay off your bounties, meaning that while the ride to a nearby post office can be tense, it occasionally feels like there are no meaningful repercussions for aberrant behavior. Combat in Red Dead Redemption II feels better than anything else Rockstar has ever done; using the revolver actually gives you a reason to hip-fire instead of aiming at everything, and it feels glorious. But it's impossible to ignore that a lot of betrays the narrative cohesion found in the cinematics. Given how much of a vibe this game can be, it's a total shame that it falls victim to the Rockstar trope of every mission being either a Shootout Mission, Chase Mission, or Inconvenient Mission that Secretly Becomes a Shootout at the Last Second. As much fun as I had using the shotguns in this game, at some point, I was just kind of over it, and while that's not a feeling that stuck for very long, it never truly went away.

I loved Arthur Morgan, and I loved having him wear a brown coat and have long hair because those are the things that make me feel effeminate and manly at the same time. I loved naming my horse after a television reference because I had one of the final knife twists spoiled for me in advance, and also because it was a cute name for my horse. I liked both Epilogue parts, and I can understand the excuses someone might make for Guarma.

Easily Rockstar's best, I can't wait to see how they fuck up their next game.

A wholly frustrating game, because with a few tweaks here and there this easily could've been my game of the year, but Rockstar had to squander the game's masterpiece status by doubling down on the huffing of its own farts. In many aspects, the game is flawless. The performances and writing are unanimously excellent, and the attention to detail and staggering amount of work gone into its world-building is awe-inspiring at times. Even someone as disenfranchised with vast open-world fields/forests/anything-with-trees-in-it as me was impressed with how alive and lush the environments were. I just wish it didn't take so damn long to do, well... just about anything! Sluggish controls I can adapt to, braindead whack-a-mole gunfights I can tolerate, but in a game as long as this, in a world as big as this, forcing me to walk in camp and denying me a means to fast travel conveniently became too much by the end. I'm a Shenmue fan, I can handle mundanity as much as the next person, but god I wish Red Dead Redemption 2 wasn't so damn content being so damn slow. To avoid getting too bogged down in negativity though, I will say that RDR2 contains my favourite and most emotionally-impactful moment of 2018 - the culmination of the money lending missions. I don't want to spoil it too much for folks who haven't played the game yet, but seeing good guy Arthur declare enough is enough and act upon the disgust of his own actions made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

(More of an 8.5 than an 8)

The best game I've ever played. RDR2 is one of the most beautiful games ever. It's gameplay is incredible for the most part. The writing is the best part of it. All the characters are amazing and though some characters do not get enough screentime, they get their job done. Arthur Morgan is one of the greatest gaming protagonists ever. His conclusion was perfect. There's no way i can imagine an Arthur who's not honorable, especially in Chapter 6. The only problem I've with it is the travel system as it becomes a slog after some time. But other than that, this game is incredible.