Red Dead Redemption 2 (Equestrian Boogaloo)

[Mister Six]

Staying at an Airbnb with a PS4 and been playing this on and off, and am rather impressed with the writing so far - just did the Train robbery so hopefully getting to the end of the tutorial bit, and thinking I'll pick this up eventually.

My question is - does the writing remain solid throughout? I remember RDR1 being really surprisngly well written for a Rockstar game at the start, when you're helping out Bonnie, her father and the marshal, but basically devolving into broad Rockstar comedy bullshit after that. Do they manage to keep the decent characterisation going throughout here, or am I going to have to deal with more shit one-note "characters" like Irish after a bit?

[Mobius]

I'd say it's pretty consistent.

I just find the main storyline and missions so linear in comparison to the rest of the game. They're well written but it's just that GTA style of mission.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, I'll probably repeat my RDR1 pattern of mostly just playing poker, exploring and doing bounties. But whenever I decide to put an end to it, I don't want to have to grit my teeth through more crap Rockstar "satire" and wacky characters like that Mexican rebel leader or the milquetoast scholar and his Native American guide.

[Chedney Honks]

The writing is vastly better than the first game and almost any other AAA game. Low bar but this is pretty much as high as it's ever been. It brought me to tears a few times, albeit the themes do particularly resonate with me and I love revisionist Westerns.

[Mister Six]

Also hope they've ditched the relentlessly glum downbeat endings to the side missions. The first couple in RDR1 were funny, especially the reveal at the end of the flower-picking mission, but once it became apparent that every side mission would end on a sour note, it got very old very quickly.

[Ferris]

The writing is vastly better than the first game and almost any other AAA game. Low bar but this is pretty much as high as it's ever been. It brought me to tears a few times, albeit the themes do particularly resonate with me and I love revisionist Westerns.

The boy Chedz on the money.

It's still Rockstar, but it is really good storytelling and the writing is solid. Considering it's a sandbox game that's kind of amazing.

[Chollis]

i think it's the best of any game I've played, but that may be because i haven't played enough games

[C_Larence]

Just started this yesterday, made it to Valentine and did a mission or two then called it a day because I was getting slightly overwhelmed. It seems like every minute there's a new tutorial in the top left telling me I need to make sure Arthur isn't too hot, or hungry or anxious. I'm hoping most of it can be ignored, I don't really understand any of the graphs and charts it's shown me so far, i'm pretty sure i can sprint more than before though.

[The Roofdog]

It seems like every minute there's a new tutorial in the top left telling me I need to make sure Arthur isn't too hot, or hungry or anxious. I'm hoping most of it can be ignored, I don't really understand any of the graphs and charts it's shown me so far

That stuff is pretty overwhelming at first, not sure I fully understood the cores vs rings thing till about halfway through the game.

[Gambrinus]

Just started this yesterday, made it to Valentine and did a mission or two then called it a day because I was getting slightly overwhelmed. It seems like every minute there's a new tutorial in the top left telling me I need to make sure Arthur isn't too hot, or hungry or anxious. I'm hoping most of it can be ignored, I don't really understand any of the graphs and charts it's shown me so far, i'm pretty sure i can sprint more than before though.

You can store a cold weather outfit on your horse for if you need to go hunting up north. The game does seem to unequip it at random though, which is frustrating.

[C_Larence]

Played a bit more. Got mauled by dogs and have a bounty on my head for seemingly no reason. Every time I leave camp I get attacked sooner or later by someone or other. I stole a guy's horse and tried to return it to him for good karma but accidentally nudged him and he fled the scene screaming. My horse is dirty. I don't understand what my "camp funds" are for and how or why i should contribute.

[Mister Six]

The number of different dials and wheels and counters and stats is bewildering, especially because they're all represented by obscure little symbols, accessed/controlled through unintuitive combinations of menus and controller buttons, and explained basically in passing during tutorials when you're being distracted by graphics, navigating your horse and/or listening to character-building dialogue.

I'm not saying I want the tutorial bit to be even fucking longer, but I wish they'd pay attention to how Nintendo teaches this stuff: introduce gameplay element, make player use it, let them play level/mission a little longer, make player use element again, let them play a little longer, then introduce element in a final, slightly modified form so they have to actively connect the dots.[nb]Worst bit of mission design so far: being given four photographs of bounty hunters and being told to look on the backs of the pics for information on where to find them, but not being able to access them in my inventory because somehow they've teleported out of my hands and into the saddlebag on my horse outside, so I have to slowly make my way out there and fuck about with radial menus, individually picking up each picture, turning it over, reading the back, then putting it back and getting the next photo out, rather than just having a handy, permanently accessible "Clues and documents" sub-menu on the map screen or something.[/nb]

What's especially frustrating is that Rockstar love context-only commands that only exist for one mission and never get introduced again, so it's hard to know how much of this stuff is actually important, and how much is something someone coded in at some point to spice up a mission, but then everyone forgot about and didn't use again.

I also question how much fun it's going to be, having to shave and wash my clothes, and worry about overheating, and having to get my rifle off my horse every time instead of just carrying it with me like a sane man, but when I play this "properly" I'll probably just do what I did with RDR1 and turn it into an extremely elaborate poker sim.

[beanheadmcginty]

You can access your satchel at any time by pressing right on the D pad. Everything is in there. No need to visit horsey.

[C_Larence]

Mister Six I echo everything you say there. The issue I think I'm having is that I don't yet understand what the rules of the game are, and I think that's the game's fault. For instance, in a story mission today I killed a bunch of O'Driscolls then looted their cabin after someone told me there was money hidden in the chimney. Also on the chimney was a shotgun (which needed cleaning, just in case the developers thought I was running out of stats to have to keep an eye on). I swapped my carbine for it and watched as my rifle dropped to the floor, which I took as a clear sign that I no longer had access to that gun. It was only later when I got back on my horse and was cycling through the weapon wheel that I found, to my surprise, that I still had the carbine. So far it feels to me like the game is trying to have its cake and eat it in terms of realism.

[Waking Life]

I do think a lot of the things mentioned are fiddly and overcooked, but it does fade very quickly into the background as you adjust to the core mechanics. It does take a bit more patience than other games to get into its world, but it's a very long game anyway.

The game isn't without its flaws - I still preferred the immediacy / desert west of the first game - but the writing is one of its biggest strengths. It doesn't quite feel like the same world that had the (very) sub-Duck You Sucker Irish rebel.

[Mister Six]

You can access your satchel at any time by pressing right on the D pad. Everything is in there. No need to visit horsey.

Ah, cheers. The prompt only comes up near the horse, and since I can access the other parts of my inventory (weapons and "items") with the radial while out and about, I thought that was it. Probably another thing I was told once amid a flurry of other info-nuggets.

It's all probably not helped by playing on a not-big-enough TV in a too-big room, with the ratio a bit fucked so the buttons poke slightly off the edge of the screen. Bloody Airbnb.

I do think having to laboriously examine each photo in my character's hands is  unnecessary and annoying, though.

[C_Larence]

Increasingly getting annoyed at little things now. Two from today:

Challenged a guy to a sharpshooting contest, first shooting some bottles (which were barely visible but whatever) and then shooting birds out of the sky, first to four wins. It was only as the birds were flying and the other dude started shooting that I realised my guns were all on my horse for some reason, so I had to run back to it and wrestle with the controls to pick up my carbine, by which point my opponent was already 2 ahead. Why would they make it so that the guns you're holding on the horse aren't the guns you're holding when you get off?

The second thing was less egregious but another example of the game's opacity. I rescued a lady whose horse had died and gave her a ride back to Emerald Ranch. She thanked me for my service and gave me something, which I watched Arthur put in his pocket. No idea what it was because the game didn't tell me!

I feel like everything is both under and over explained at the same time. I picked up a cigarette card earlier and new tutorials were still popping up in the top left of the screen 30 seconds later, but none of them actually told me what I'm looking for, just that I can collect 12 (?) and/or (?) sell them to someone.

[Utter Shit]

On the second issue, it probably did come up and you just missed it, but in any case you can bring your satchel up with, I think, the right arrow on the D-pad (PS4, not sure if you're playing on another format) and there is a section that shows your most recent items.

The cigarette cards, along with the billion other things you can collect/achieve, are on the pause menu. Go to Progress and then Compendium and you can see what you have and haven't yet collected. There are a crazy number of cigarette cards (I think it's 12 sets, each with 12 cards), but you can get some of the ones you need by opening packs of premium cigarettes rather than finding the card out in the world.

[Chollis]

Supposedly there is a way to create a weapons "loadout" where Arthur will always keep your preferred weapons equipped when he hops off the horse, I think it's an option when you visit the gunstore. However I could never get mine to work despite following all the instructions online, and looking now at comments online it does just seem to be very flaky/unreliable. I agree it is annoying, it was the only real gripe I had with the game after I'd got to grips with all the stuff it throws at you in those early days at Valentine.

I never bothered with the hot/cold thing, believe I wore the same outfit all game and would sometimes get the "Arthur is cold" prompt but ignored it, can't be that important. Also never washed my clothes either, didn't even know that was a thing. I think most of it is just flavour/optional, for players who want to get real deep into the immersion and who'd enjoy going out and hunting animals to bring back to the camp for food. Can completely ignore most of it. The only thing I can think of that's important is sleeping when necessary, cos this regenerates Arthur's cores (!) back to 100%.

[Ferris]

Don't think I slept for about 8 months or game time. Never washed clothes, had the odd bath, and after a while I kept a hot weather and cold weather outfit on my horse that you can switch to while riding in a button press or two but that's about it.

Agree with Chollis - some (a lot?) of this stuff can be very safely ignored.

Re: weapons load out - I thought that was default these days. Early on you'd put your guns away automatically and have to get them out one by one (and I still feel like it's a waste of time scrolling past guns I never use), but I think there was a patch about a year ago that defaulted to you keeping guns out at all times.

[C_Larence]

On the second issue, it probably did come up and you just missed it, but in any case you can bring your satchel up with, I think, the right arrow on the D-pad (PS4, not sure if you're playing on another format) and there is a section that shows your most recent items.

It didn't! I saved the last 30 seconds of gameplay and watched it back! You're right about the recent items though, I should have checked that.

[kalowski]

L1 just whips out your weapon. (Don't be dirty).

[Mister Six]

Unless the game has defaulted to fists, possibly because you were holding a rifle when the last mission ended and now it's all back on your horse.

(Note: This Airbnb PS4 just downloaded a massive update, so it might just be that it's running without the correct patch that fixes this stupid design decision.)

[Tokyo van Ramming]

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure that overheating/catching a nasty chill depletes your stamina and health cores.

Also cigarette cards and most other stuff can be sold to the various fences. I kept hold of everything that had a crafting option. Guess the fences will be unlocked with time if they aren't already on the map.

Such a shame the online game is a whackadoodle load of crap.

[Chedney Honks]

Honestly, if you go into this game looking for a mechanical masterpiece, you might as well headbutt some windows for half an hour. Try to approach it with a generous holism and soak up the atmosphere, characters and story. I bounced off it half a dozen times because I'm primarily interested in mechanical satisfaction, until I finally decided to mainline it and focus on the broader strokes. The strengths of the game are the characters and the world itself. Everything else is clunky. If you can't look past that, don't trouble yourself with another fifty hours.

[kalowski]

I've not played many games but I have never played a better one than this.

[Tokyo van Ramming]

Honestly, (...)

INDEED!

I've not played many games but I have never played a better one than this.

Same. I bought a PS4 on the strength of the trailer. Can't bring myself to finish a replay, it's a bit rich compared to what I've got goin on.

[kalowski]

INDEED!

Same. I bought a PS4 on the strength of the trailer. Can't bring myself to finish a replay, it's a bit rich compared to what I've got goin on.

This is just what I'm doing. Getting close to the endgame but don't want to finish so I'm trying to just travel around the landscape.

[Tokyo van Ramming]

This is just what I'm doing. Getting close to the endgame but don't want to finish so I'm trying to just travel around the landscape.

I raced through the whole thing and regret doing so. It's a real treat to scamp around in there, sometimes holding a sheep and slicing its guts out etc

[C_Larence]

My posts have been negative but it's just because I'm amazed at how much they managed to get "wrong". As you all say, there's a lot to love about the game, but very little of it is the gameplay and at this early stage that's mainly what I have to go on. I could post about the gorgeous red of the canyon rocks during sunset, or the two satisfying and hilarious thuds that occurred when the innocent bystander i was dragging behind my horse fatally hit a rock headfirst, followed seconds later by my horse ploughing into a tree stump sending me flying. It's definitely these moments that I will end up remembering rather than the momentary grievances...for the most part. As it stands, this is what I sound like every time I realise I've somehow once again left my guns on my horse.