a floor-to-ceiling tapestry that’s beautiful when viewed from a reasonable distance, yet one that reveals itself as comprised of overwhelmingly many uninteresting elements when viewed a bit closer, and yet whose imperfect-but-trying-to-be-flawless individual brushstrokes create a sense of discontent when viewed even closer.

after taking a long hiatus from video games and engaging with creative projects in general, I was feeling mentally ready to approach one as huge as this. RDR2 has sat within my mind for a long time as having exquisite detail and a gripping narrative. and the first of those is undoubtedly true. picking up on every little flourish that was otherwise so natural it had escaped my notice was always a great experience.

but at some point, I had to begin to wonder: is this what games really are for me? so much of the experience here boils down to “talk to this person, hold W for a few minutes while they exchange dialogue, walk a little bit, shoot 50 cowboys, get rewarded.” every mission is an errand. RDR2 is Getting Groceries Simulator but You Also Have to Shoot a Bunch of Guys Sometimes. (good lord, there’s a ridiculously video-game-ified sense here that made me feel like I was playing an NES game where enemies just infinitely respawn when you bring them back on screen) this doesn’t feel like a video game except for the parts where it feels too much like a video game. I think I play video games mostly to have fun in the act of playing them; good story or other elements that tag along is a nice bonus to my experience. I just don’t find the systems in this game fun. walk here, ride there, alright, I get it.

trying to reorient my mindset to treat this game differently led to more missteps. once I was introduced to the cinematic camera, I wanted to use it all the time given it would make the experience feel more like I was watching a movie or TV show. but it doesn't feel the game was made for this. camera angles look randomly generated, getting stuck behind trees, or shoving Arthur to one side of the screen leaving a lot of empty space. and good luck trying to control Arthur, especially when camera angles switch. removing the HUD and letterboxing the frame doesn’t help much for immersion when I run into someone I couldn’t have seen or my horse immediately switches direction because the camera angle suddenly faces the complete opposite direction. not a great sign when the only way to progress the game forward becomes a complete slog.

and outside of the missions, I simply felt no desire to further inspect anything in the world. there’s plants, hunting, fishing, running into random NPCs, gambling, fashion choices, horse choices, and, god, so much choice overload that I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of it. I never once went into a store or other location outside of mission relevance because I never felt the need to. I hardly ever used any consumables yet still felt the need to loot every Bad Guy I shot down. maybe if I had gotten involved in each extra activity as it was added, or maybe if there was more purpose to engaging with them, I would have felt more inclined to check them out, I don’t know for sure.

what I do know is that I just stopped playing this one day about two weeks ago and haven’t thought about it until this morning with absolutely zero desire to pick it up again. I was never engrossed in the story enough to have any care of what happens to these characters, I was never in the mood to just ride around the world, I was never feeling like I was doing more than merely checking off a list of tasks to make some fictional entity give me 2 fictional dollars that I would never use on some fictional bottle of alcohol. and I think that’s simply not what I want out of video games.