Red Dead Redemption 2 (Equestrian Boogaloo)

[Neomod]

Shooting a turkey

*Witness Animal Cruelty*

Sheesh.

[Ferris]

If you do a minor rampage on a road, every time some prick walks along minutes after the unpleasantness they count as a witness but they ain't witnessed shit.

The kicker - one of these clowns was a 'witnesses' for "animal cruelty" (?!)

Murderer the lot obviously, but had to ride back every few minutes to clean up snitches. Very annoying.

[Ferris]

Shooting a turkey

*Witness Animal Cruelty*

Sheesh.

Yeah it's some fucking bullshit.

[Barry Admin]

I never got this finished, but started a new playthrough to calm myself down over the past few weeks.

It is still glorious, isn't it?  Amazing attention to detail - I smacked some guy last night, and the look of fury and force on Arthur's face when he delivered the final punch was amazing.

Tried the drug store robbery, but didn't have the lock cutters yet. "No lock to shoot; wonder if I can just bust the safe open with a fire bottle?" - yes, the door fell off, but sadly all the fucking money got burnt 😅

Fucking shithouse interface tho. Just wanted to give a few tips for the new players in this thread:

Holding the start button will take you straight to the map, bypassing the menus. Holding B (or square or whatever) will take you all the way out of the menus. So when you save, for instance, hold that fucking goddamn back button down, or you'll have to manually exit all the menus by tapping it a bunch of times instead.

That's all I can rember at the minute. You can vary the length of your whistle by holding the associated dpad button too; it's not much use, but it's a fun low-key irritation.

[kalowski]

Just finished it for a second time. I love the music and atmosphere of the final mission.
But boy the credits are long!!!

[Noodle Lizard]

It's really great, one of the only games that I haven't uninstalled once because I know I'll always pop back in.

Never really got on with the Online stuff, though.

[kalowski]

Never really got on with the Online stuff, though.

Same here. Some weird mute cowboy strolling around the set of Deliverance it felt like.

[Mister Six]

What's especially frustrating is that Rockstar love context-only commands that only exist for one mission and never get introduced again

Ended up dropping the game after the first of the "find these gunslinger" missions in which this appeared to raise its ugly head. Press X to pick up fork. Press square to use fork to pick up pig poo. Select dynamite and press square to put in poo wheelbarrow... I can believe that this is to teach you how to place dynamite, but it's that horrible Rockstar design all the same - feels like you're playing the world's slowest QTE.

[Paul Calf]

I agree. I don't have any problems with the game. Makes me think it's people who are the problem, not the game.

No, it's the designers who are the problem. This attitude fucking sucks.

[kalowski]

*Daryl Strawberry gif*
Well, I found it very easy to control so I don't know what's so weird about me. I'm going to move back onto Tsushima, although that was harder to control first time round. I blame the designers.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Same here. Some weird mute cowboy strolling around the set of Deliverance it felt like.

It didn't help that the character body animations seemed to be exactly the same as GTA Online, so in cutscenes you were swaggering around like a wannabe gangster instead of a cowperson. I half expected my online chap to fistbump somebody or do a crip walk out of the scene.

[The Roofdog]

Ended up dropping the game after the first of the "find these gunslinger" missions in which this appeared to raise its ugly head. Press X to pick up fork. Press square to use fork to pick up pig poo. Select dynamite and press square to put in poo wheelbarrow... I can believe that this is to teach you how to place dynamite, but it's that horrible Rockstar design all the same - feels like you're playing the world's slowest QTE.

Worst things this game does at the beginning IMO is (a) start you off in those shitty mountains which you will want to spend as little of the subsequent game in as possible, and (b) try to pretend that those riding-in-a-posse commands will be important, or actually work at all. They don't work at all.

[Paul Calf]

You know that bloke who's looking for Gavin?

Well, after years of playing RDR2 I found him the other day. As I hit a cue to continue the conversation, I forgot I had my gun drawn and pointed it at him. He ran away and wouldn't be placated.

Disheartened, I haven't played it since.

[Ferris]

Unless you trigger an interaction with side characters, they run away but show up later as normal. Your Gavin bloke will be fine unless you actually shot him.

For some characters, even if you kill them they respawn (I think?) until they've delivered their bit of "story content" which is very rockstar. Must make the most of every bit of dialogue we recorded.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Should I even bother enabling HDR for this? They're meant to have fixed it, but it still looks like a grey murky mess in the opening snowy area. I suppose an unfortunate consequence of taking 8 years to make a game is that something like HDR, which didn't really exist on a consumer level back in 2010, isn't baked in from the very beginning, so they have to add in a fake HDR implementation later on.

It's driving me mad though, because I keep going into settings and turning it on and off. There's certain things that look better with it on, like the sky and light sources, but it also gives everything this drab, washed out look. If it isn't working properly they shouldn't have given us an HDR option in the first place, it just feeds into my slightly OCD like nature of having to have every setting absolutely perfect before I can sit down and really get into a game. Has anyone played it all the way through with HDR on?

Playing on PS4 Pro btw.

[Crenners]

I tried both, flicked back and forth in later areas and found the original setting far superior. I concluded that it was the intentional look, slightly heightened verisimilitude. The HDR detracted from this, washed out, as you say.

It's a shame that it wasn't a feature when the game was originally conceived because more sophisticated and dynamic lighting would be amazing, but I can't criticise them for not being able to retrofit something like that. Still, people want it and expect it to be good. I understand.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

That's the problem with Rockstar games, they take so long to make, they're dated before they even come out. I remember in a review somebody said RDR2 felt like a PS3 game, but looked like a PS4 game, meaning that the game mechanics and general Rockstar clunkiness felt last gen, but the graphics were current. You also got it in GTAV, where there was a lot of riffing on the 2008 financial crisis like it had just happened, despite being 5 years ago when the game released.

Anyway, you're right. I'll just leave the shitty HDR off. Maybe they'll fix it in the PS5/Series X version, which they'll definitely charge extra for if they can be arsed making one, instead of releasing a free patch like everyone else.

[Paul Calf]

https://www.gta5-mods.com/all/tags/graphics/most-downloaded

https://www.nexusmods.com/reddeadredemption2/mods/4

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

It's cool how they throw in references that only Brits will get. I've just had the party at Horseshoe Overlook after you rescue Sean, and he and Karen retire to a tent later on for a bonk, where he starts yelling "Oh Miss Jones, oh Miss Jones" at the moment of climax.

There's loads of comedy references in the earlier GTA games to stuff like The Fast Show, Father Ted and League Of Gentlemen. I suspect that will sadly end now with the Housers gone.

[Retinend]

This is an interesting very long-form post-morterm on RDR2

https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/22/18298277/red-dead-redemption-2-review-rdr2-story-design-criticism

It's by film crit hulk, who I do tend to find irritating, not a big fan of his writing, but the larger points he's getting at here are interesting (sort of like his assessment of RDR2)

A very rambling and pretentious article. For example:

I) Games Have Grown Past Realism

The pursuit of realism in video games, even when it doesn't make the game more enjoyable, was largely built on the fever dream of young minds who wanted to completely "disappear" into a gaming world. They believed the virtual world should be just as complicated and filled with possibilities as the real world.

This approach doesn't work in practice.

This is just dogma: the game was a huge hit exactly because the opinionated writer is wrong on all counts: people DO want hyperealism, people DO want to "disappear into a gaming world" like RDR2's, and the approach did in fact "work in practice" - otherwise the game wouldn't still be as celebrated as it is.

The writer then condescendingly tries to debunk "confusions" between "complexity" and "realism":

Game designers tend to confuse "complicated" with "realistic," and our minds aren't wired to think something is real just because it takes a long time to happen and requires many small actions on our part.

when, really, who is to say that it is wrong in principle to "confuse" complexity and realism? A peak "realistic" videogame experience would incorporate all the complexity of the real world - hence more complexity ought to result in more realism, and with RDR2 there are millions of people (myself included) who would say it pulled this off with its choice to slow the player down and make them do repetitive, but realistic, tasks.

Instead of embracing the controversial, in offering an unpopular opinion on a popular game, the writer comes up with authoritative-sounding weasel words such as "your brain isn't wired that way" or "this doesn't work in practice", or "it violates the textbook on product design" in order to claim authority for his subjective disappointment with the game.


Games journalism in the new millennium is looking like pretentious indie music journalism from the 90s.

[Ferris]

I agree with the snippets of that article you posted tbh.

[Thursday]

2022 me thinks film critic hulk sucks even more than 2019 me. I can't remember why, but I'm quite surprised to see myself posting him in a positive light.

[Paul Calf]

Shooting a turkey

*Witness Animal Cruelty*

Sheesh.

PETA had massive lobbying power in the Western US in the late 19th Century.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Arthur Morgan = Sling Blade
Sadie Adler = Bobby Hill

[Utter Shit]

Just been reading back through 40 odd pages of this, from the point it was released. What a fantastic bloody game. So much fun just reading everyone's experiences.

[Inspector Norse]

Yeah, I just yesterday fired it up again for the first time in ages, about halfway into a second playthrough that I return to now and again, and three years on there are still new things to be found or weird little events.
Explored an abandoned building outside St Denis that I'd never paid attention to before, and found a pile of dead, rotting sheep in the yard.
Decided to do the Valentine-Rhodes in 5 minutes horseman challenge and was briefly held up by crashing into two guys somewhere near the state border, who both pulled guns on me as we climbed from the ground (big mistake); I still made it to Rhodes in under the time but didn't get the challenge and was a bit pissed off. Took me a day or so ingame before I realised I had accidentally taken one of the two guys' horses after the crash. My faithful Bojack was waiting around for me where it had happened.
Went back to Valentine and found Uncle there getting kicked out of a bar.

[The Crumb]

I didn't finish this on my housemate's ps4 at the time, so I decided to get it for Series X. Slightly disappointed to realise there wasn't a new gen upgrade, but it still looks fantastic for the most part.

Had a few weird bugs from the weird getting into place for an animation bits, still a great immersive experience overall though. As ever, it's a bit of a shame that this hugely detailed world which allows a massive breadth of interaction is so restricted for all the actual missions. Sneaking up for a raid on a bandit camp in the open world never gets old though.