Red Dead Redemption 2 (Equestrian Boogaloo)

[beanheadmcginty]

Has anybody else ever noticed that when you look up YouTube videos for hints/tips on how to do stuff they're always playing as John and not Arthur? What's that all about?

[Ferris]

Probably completists who have gone everywhere/levelled up/bought everything, and you can basically only do that as JM (as large bits of map, storylines, weapons/outfits etc are locked until later on)[nb]As of yesterday I know 3 of the legendary fish are locked off until the epilogue, for example.[/nb].

I suppose they could load an earlier save to do some (but not all) of their youtube exploits, but ehhh is it worth it? Also you get RDR1 nostalgia fix of JM, and I'm bang into that as a fan of the first game.

[kalowski]

Has anybody else ever noticed that when you look up YouTube videos for hints/tips on how to do stuff they're always playing as John and not Arthur? What's that all about?

I have never noticed this.

[Johnny Textface]

Just bought this and am yet to play it. Any tips or things I should know? I'm very excited.

[Marner and Me]

Don't get shot.

[Ferris]

Just bought this and am yet to play it. Any tips or things I should know? I'm very excited.

Don't race through the story mission - if you see a side mission or stranger, go and have a look.

The intro is very slow and not really representative of the game. Erm. That's about it.

[Marner and Me]

Take your time, learn to hunt, use the correct weapon for the animal too

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Just bought this and am yet to play it. Any tips or things I should know? I'm very excited.

Tap button to make horsey move. It's great. You've got 80 hours of tap action to look forward to. Taptaptaptaptappy

[Gambrinus]

Buy a varmint rifle for rabbits and a Springfield rifle for deer.

You can make explosive shotgun ammo to destroy heads.

Change fishing in the settings to holding square instead of rotating the sticks.

Camp in the woods at night for some unpleasant surprises!

[Utter Shit]

Taking my time the second go around, this game is even more incredible than I realised. There are so, so many things that only a small percentage of players will notice, that are completely incidental to the plot...it's beautifully done, because they're not essential for the casual player or anyone looking to complete the story quickly, but if you do spot them by chance or simply by exploring everything, they make the world feel even more real.

The amount of time I've spent in this game and I'm still finding little bits of the map I'd never travelled to before, cabins in the woods that tell self-contained little stories (or don't - I found what I took to be a disused school, with skeletons still lying around and sat on chairs etc, with no explanation). back streets in Saint-Denis with people all living their own unique lives if you follow them around...it's astonishing really.

If anyone can recommend a game with anything like this scale of world-building I'm all ears. I've heard that Ghosts of Tsushima has a similar amount of detail for people like me who just want to wander and explore?

[Ferris]

Re: good little self contained story bits,

Spoiler alert

chapter one has a couple frozen in the snow in each other's arms

[close]

a little way off the beaten track.

Also the unexplained stuff Utter Shit mentioned is another strength of the game I reckon. Here's this atmospheric thing/place/scene you've found, no explanation because that's how the world works, whadda ya make of that then eh?!

It's a bit "cake and eat it" cos it means rockstar didn't have to put a backstory or explanation in

Spoiler alert

like the girl who watches at the window in Emerald Station, which also has the abandoned blood-soaked pub full of bullet holes, come up with your own scenarios and theories

[close]

, but it makes the game feel more lived in and real.

[Utter Shit]

I've not seen either of the things mentioned in that second spoiler, and will be searching them out tonight.

Anyone managed to get 100%? I don't know exactly what involves, but my plan is to at the very least find every animal, bird and fish.

[Gambrinus]

I got 100 percent on it. Finished it off in self isolation last year. Don't think it particularly adds anything to the game, going through the challenges is tedious and the 5 card blackjack one is just painful. It's definitely worth doing all the stranger missions though, especially the two that show up late on (old veteran up north and the widow up north).

I thought the game was just too bloody big. I couldn't be arsed to look round New Austin at all. The four original states were enough for me!

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

As far as I can remember there's nothing to do in New Austin anyway, no new quests or anything. It's only value is for people who've played the first game and can go around spotting all the differences between the two time periods. Gets used in online though.

[wooders1978]

There's a new gang to take out & a couple of interesting towns to discover but that's about it

[beanheadmcginty]

I have never worked out why everything is on fire in that one town in New Austin.

[Schrodingers Cat]

I have never worked out why everything is on fire in that one town in New Austin.

Burning diseased bodies, if I remember rightly?

[Gambrinus]

Re: good little self contained story bits,

Spoiler alert

chapter one has a couple frozen in the snow in each other's arms a little way off the beaten track.

[close]

I found them by accident while hunting elk early on. They've got a Mysterious Map.

[Ferris]

I bet they do the dirty old bollocks I bet they fuckin do

[Utter Shit]

Two years later and this game is still blowing my tiny idiot mind. Got caught in heavy rain up near some lagoon, and as it gradually cleared the sun came out. Didn't pay much attention to it as that happens all the time, but then turned around and saw a bloody rainbow sitting just over the lagoon.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

If only they hadn't half arsed the HDR implementation, then it could have looked spectacular. That's one of the problems with Rockstar's extra long development cycle. The game took, what, eight years to make? So when they started development HDR wasn't really a thing, so it wasn't implemented from the get go, hence we got the fake HDR that's in the game.

Still, rainbows mate.

[Utter Shit]

What's HDR? The idea that RDR2 could be criticised for its graphics seems mad to me, I'm not a big gamer but I thought it is considered the best game of its generation for graphics? Very exciting to think that there are advances on the horizon or even already here.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yeah, RDR2 does look spectacular, and this is from someone who spends a lot of time working with photorealistic ray traced graphics which are beyond anything in next gen gaming. It's not even just about the graphical fidelity, but the artistic flourishes, atmosphere, lighting.

[mobias]

What's HDR?

High dynamic range. Basically it means you can see details in the shadowy areas of any given scene.

Real time ray tracing is a far superior 'must have' next gen feature and is a legit game changer for graphics. It really will make a big difference to things moving forward.

[Chedney Honks]

High dynamic range. Basically it means you can see details in the shadowy areas of any given scene.

I know you know but for Utter Shit's sake, that's a fairly slight description of HDR. Long story short Shitter, light, shade and colours are both more dynamic and more nuanced.

Anyway, it doesn't really make much difference here, it wasn't conceived with HDR in mind and it looks tremendous. I would say that HDR in gaming is often poorly implemented anyway, compared to HDR in film. It'll settle down in time but for now, I've seen enough garish particle effects at 1000 nits. Lot of AAA games like a neon city inhabited by welders.

[Utter Shit]

I think I get what you're talking about, but tbh I've never noticed it as an issue at all. Maybe it's one of those things where ignorance is bliss!

[Chedney Honks]

Unless you have a telly which does good HDR, you won't even notice that the HDR implementation is off compared to games with good HDR, which are relatively few. It's literally no issue. The game looks amazing in SDR.

[Zetetic]

This probably reflects that my monitor doesn't have great actual HDR, but I've come to think that bigger range of colours that comes with "HDR" is a lot more interesting if less showy than just the increased dark/bright contrast.

Partly because it's less prone to being hideously misused in the way that TBC describes and partly because games - including RDR2 - got pretty good at showing "this object is really bright" or "you've walked from a dark room into the sunshine" in an artistic and pleasant way[nb]High-dynamic range rendering[/nb]. Quite often I'd rather that my character's eyes did the adjusting than the game and my monitor having a go at blinding me.

[Zetetic]

I guess this also relates to the practice of playing games late at night in a darkened grief-hole, where 1000 nits to the face isn't very welcome.

[Ferris]

Yeah, RDR2 does look spectacular, and this is from someone who spends a lot of time working with photorealistic ray traced graphics which are beyond anything in next gen gaming. It's not even just about the graphical fidelity, but the artistic flourishes, atmosphere, lighting.

Yeah it's lovely innit. Very hard to see the "seams" in the world if that makes sense, I think they reuse water surface tiles so if you go reeeeallly high up and look down at a lake, you will notice duplications but that's about it.

The weather/clouds etc is all mega impressive.