Red Dead Redemption 2 - now available on PC

[TheHeroOfTime]

 

[deama]

I really wish there was a subforum for "consoletards".

 

[sullynathan]

https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/29/red-dead-redemption-2-is-a-disappointment/

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a disappointment
JEFF GRUBB@JEFFGRUBB OCTOBER 29, 2018 3:31 PM

Above: This is basically like where I live.






Red Dead Redemption 2 is the biggest example of the old way of building video games. It builds on top Rockstar’s foundation, but it does nothing to shake up or question those underlying elements. I think it is the best game the developer has ever made, but it accomplishes that because it is also the “most game” Rockstar has ever made.

I’m enjoying Red Dead Redemption 2 (so is Dean, who wrote our review), but it’s also frequently disappointing. I was expecting something different. And I’m not talking about better controls — although I’d love that. What I mean is that I thought Rockstar would build a world that would react to players. But instead, the studio built an astronomical number of static, scripted events. And while that is impressive, I can’t help but feel like Red Dead Redemption 2 is stuck in the past.






Rockstar is also pointlessly chasing down realism and is trying to give players choice without building the systems that would truly make that work.

The uncanny valley of ‘realism’
Early in Red Dead Redemption 2, you and your gang defeat a rival band of outlaws. After the shooting ends, Dutch — your leader — orders you to ransack a nearby home. So you guide Arthur Morgan, the game’s hero, over to some drawers that look promising … and the game comes to a halt so Morgan can slowly open each drawer one by one. When you find an item you can take, you pick it up slowly and delicately. And then you do the same thing with anything else you find in the same drawer.

It is a painfully laborious process, but worse — it’s not how I look through drawers.

I get what Rockstar is going for with this. The searching animation looks lifelike. Morgan does not seem like some stiff robot like in a lot of other games. But as the person controlling Morgan, none of this feels lifelike to me.

When I search for my keys or something, it’s a messy process where I move things around haphazardly with two hands. And that’s in my own home. If I were looting some shack in the middle of the mountains after killing a bunch of rival gang members, I’m not going to slowly hold up a pack of cigarettes like it’s some precious possession. I’m going to tear the drawers out and mess them up looking for anything valuable.

The problem is that the more animations you add to a character, the more I’m going to notice when it doesn’t match up with my experience. I think that’s why something like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey doesn’t even try to animate a lot of those kinds of actions.

To be clear, my problem here isn’t that searching through things is boring. It is. But the issue is that it doesn’t even accomplish the thing that Rockstar thinks it accomplishes. This isn’t realistic.

The paradox of choice
And you see the realism breakdown constantly. This is especially noticeable when it comes to player choice. Red Dead gives you more options than ever, and yet it is also constantly stifling me.

Interactions with animals and people are a major source of player choice in Red Dead Redemption 2. One of its most impressive features is that you can lock onto living things without pulling your gun out on them. You can then either choose to greet a person, antagonize them, or shoot them. I like this system in theory, but it doesn’t really give you that many more options for how to approach the world. And it makes me realize all the things I can’t do.

Sure, I can antagonize someone until they want to fight me, but I can’t greet them until they want to join me. At least I can’t through the first 20 hours. I can rob them, but I can’t bribe them, fool them into doing tasks for me, or get them to cause a distraction by lying to them.

Interacting with objects and buildings
A lot of the things that Rockstar has added to the game are very cool. It’s awesome that I have the option to hijack a train, kill all the guards, and then rob the passengers one by one. But then why can’t I also set the engine to top speed before jumping onto my horse so that the authorities have to try to stop a runaway train?

The paradox of choice is that the more options you give a player, the more they will notice that they can’t do certain things. And it’s not just big things. For example, Red Dead Redemption 2 has locked doors that you can’t open no matter what. You have all this choice, but Rockstar is going to decide for you about which doors work and which don’t. And many windows in the game are indestructible. So if you rob a place and want to break out the back window, chances are you can’t.

Now, to be clear, I’m not necessarily saying, “Rockstar should have added this or that.” But it’s impossible to ignore the things you can’t do in a game where you can do so many things.

The paradox is at its worst when you get to the main story missions. Rockstar has built these events to play out in very specific ways, and your job is to go through those motions.

This is especially frustrating when you get to a scene where one of your fellow gang members is rotting in a jail waiting for his execution. I was expecting to have the freedom to approach this problem however I wanted, but that was not permitted.

Nothing emerges from Red Dead Redemption 2
The reason that Red Dead Redemption 2 is disappointing and has all of these problems with intuitive design and choice is because it is not a systems-driven game. It has some systems, but the thing that drives this world is the authorial design of Rockstar.

I’ve seen a lot of people compare Red Dead Redemption 2 to the HBO sci-fi drama West World. And while I know it’s passe to even bring up that show in relationship to Red Dead Redemption 2, I think it’s important to note that this game is nothing like West World.

Both are intricate cuckoo clocks with authored stories, but that’s not why people go to the West World theme park. They go to it because they can affect it. The robot characters that make up the attraction have deep systems that respond and react to the decisions of the player characters. That enables unique experiences to emerge out of the authored stories.

Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t have that.

The most elaborate cuckoo clock ever made
Red Dead is an animatronics show. The characters get up on stage to dance and sing at specific times for your entertainment, but Rockstar limits your participation to pressing a few buttons that lead to specific outcomes.

You are the audience. You are not really a participant. And Rockstar constantly reminds you that you exist to witness the things it has created. Morgan can’t run through camp because you might miss something. Also in camp, other characters will have plenty of lines, and they’ll acknowledges your existence, but you can’t really say much back to them. They are going to do their thing, and you can’t do anything to upset that.

The good news here is that the show these characters are putting on is excellent. By far the best part of this game is the acting and writing. And it’s one of the reasons I’m still enjoying what I’m playing. On top of that, Rockstar has built so much game, that even if you are just a content tourist, you’re going to get your money’s worth.

An enjoyable let down
My disappointment with Red Dead Redemption 2 has everything to do with my expectations. I thought Rockstar was going to define the future of games with this, and I don’t think it did. This is still the same game it’s always made. And it’s not all that different than something like a Watch Dogs 2 or The Witcher III.

I’ve done well not to bring up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to this point, so I’m gonna reward myself by doing so now.

In Breath of the Wild, Nintendo built systems and a world that act as the foundation of everything else in that game. It is always consistent and fair. If you are standing out in a lighting storm with metal on, you could get electrocuted. But if you throw a metal weapon by an enemy, they could get electrocuted instead.

And everything in Breath of the Wild serves to empower your experimentation with those systems. When the world pushes back — like it does with rain or super difficult enemies — the game is inviting you to retreat or get creative.

Red Dead is devoid of those systems. Everything in that game exists to serve you more authored content. And when the game is pushing back on the player, it is doing so to get you to stop and look at more of that content.

For me, I think that Zelda is closer to the way developers will make games in the future. That said, I’m sure Red Dead is going to sell just fine. And people seem to love it. So maybe I’m wrong. But I hope not.

 

[Ezekiel]

Gonna try to return it with my receipt tomorrow. The devs clearly didn't give a fuck about Free Aim and assumed everyone would accept Soft Lock (auto aim). The gunplay is awful. I was disappointed today when I finally gave up and turned on Soft Lock and found the game was playable.

 

[sullynathan]

Gonna try to return it with my receipt tomorrow. The devs clearly didn't give a fuck about Free Aim and assumed everyone would accept Soft Lock (auto aim). The gunplay is awful. I was disappointed today when I finally gave up and turned on Soft Lock and found the game was playable.

give it to me

 

[Ezekiel]

Get a job.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I'd say that swapping a barrel to improve accuracy would make a lot more sense.

Just a tangent, not contradicting your point. Also, I need to make some research before I claim this with full certainty, but I don't think the accuracy of revolvers and pistols was a big concern when choosing how to enhance your weapon.

I agree but since accuracy is one of the weapon stats (that changes from pistol to pistol), allowing you to improve accuracy by upgrading the barrel would have been nice and easily fit the existing system.

This reminds me - do we have any info if the game features weapons jamming when not maintained? Enemies' weapons jamming would have also been cool, though I suppose this was not implemented, to save on AI programming resources.

Haven't seen it yet.

How's the first RDR game, btw? Any good?

It sucks. Its a fairly crappy cover based third person shooter (which I'm sure to some is an oxymoron) with a pretty bad gameplay loop since you should be able to get basically everything fairly quickly. It's basically a series of minigames scattered around an open world, and none of them are good. Lots of utterly banal shit too, like picking flowers. The zombie one is better, then again either of the first two Dead Rising games are better if zombies acton in a open environment is what you're looking for.

I liked Red Dead Revolver a lot more. Better combat, more colorful and interesting characters, better combat, the canned death animations were better than anything I remember getting out of Redemption's physics based deaths. It's by no means great, but I had more fun with it than Redemption. It'd be interesting to see Capcom return to what they were trying to do with Revolver, under them it looks more like a shooting gallery game with free movement as opposed to being on-rails or in a single location.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Sooooo... general consensus is that it's vastly inferior to BotW, far as sandbox games go?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I really wish there was a subforum for "consoletards".

You are posting in it.

I mostly agree with the points in that article, though I think it's early yet to expect both branching narratives and superb production values at the same time. Maybe a decade or two in the future.

Before I found out how unimaginative it was, I was really interested in Quantum Break's idea. I thought that idea was that they would release missions episodically, and then base the plot of the next episode in the series on telemetry data about how people solved the last episode of the mission, and somehow make it possible for the series to make sense to people not playing the game in addition to those who play it. Of course it turned out to actually be just a shitty cover shooter based on an obscure series...

 

[ArchAngel]

That article explains the problems of the game perfectly. It is exactly how the game seemed to play when I watched multiple streamers playing it.
In this day and age, for games like these there is zero reason to waste money and time when you have it on twitch on second monitor or wait for youtube compilations where someone just puts together story parts and cuts out all the fake player options.

 

[†††]

Decline is the new incline.

I'm just waiting for the "RDR2 is disappointing, and that's a good thing" articles

 

[AwesomeButton]

I prefer to wait for the "RDR2 Announced for PC" ones

 

[Doktor Best]

Ill never get how someone can watch someone else play a 60 hours videogame.

First of all, its no the fucking same. Playing a game is not the same as watching some fucking jerk on youtube playing the game while trying to be funny.

Just go watch Dead Wood instead, it has better pacing for someone passively standing by.


And the article is pretty stupid if you ask me. Zelda BOTW has a great open-world, but also has a completely different design concept. BOTW's world structure is crafted around enviromental manipulation, combat and puzzles. In RDR2, you have survival, social structures, far more quest/storybased gameplay.

If there was a game i would compare this one to, it would be Kingdom Come Deliverance.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"Survival", give me a break. The best thing I find in this game for me so far - it stimulates my interest to read some American history on the period.

KCD is immeasurably more complex. I would compare it to Witcher 3 when you get severely overleveled for the quests and combat. And even Witcher 3 has much more reactivity than RDR2.

 

[AwesomeButton]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikka...2-is-wonderful-and-disappointing-all-at-once/

Spoiler

'Red Dead Redemption 2' Is Wonderful And Disappointing All At Once

Erik Kain
Senior Contributor

What a strange game Red Dead Redemption 2 is, and I mean that as both a good and a bad thing. I'm having a love/hate affair with Rockstar's latest masterpiece, and I'm okay with that. Mostly.

On the one hand, I find my jaw dropping constantly at the beauty of the game's vast, sweeping frontier. On the other hand, I feel oddly confined by its missions and structure.

I find myself alternating between a sense of awe at the scope of it all---the gorgeous music, the snow-swept peaks and sprawling forest---and a sense of dread at having to search another cabin or loot another field of corpses.

I'm puzzled by the weird systems, the lack of fast travel back to camp (though there's a workaround, sort of) the ungainliness of the controls, the slow pace and tedium.

Then I find myself cackling in delight at its humor. The drinking scene with Lenny was brilliant and hilarious. The dialogue and acting are so good at times I find myself completely sucked in. It's not only one of the best video games ever made, it's one of the best Westerns ever made, and I don't mean just video game Westerns. It's an epic masterpiece and a frustrating slog all at the same time.


Red Dead Redemption 2CREDIT: ROCKSTAR GAMES

What a strange, wonderful game.

I like that Rockstar isn't pulling punches here. I like that they do have a strong authorial voice. I'm happy that this isn't just a generic open world game like so many others, and that it's filled with so many decidedly different mechanics than we've seen in past Rockstar titles.

But I hate that I have to walk across the camp so slowly. I hate that so many times this game railroads us into doing exactly what it wants rather than letting us explore freely. I want more of that Deus Ex freedom to approach everything on my own terms. I want more of that glorious Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild system-based gameplay that rewards experimentation and freedom. BotW gives you a set of tools and a sandbox to play in, then sets you free. Trial and error is that game's most fundamental mechanic.

Of course, in that game I wanted perhaps just a little more narrative. Maybe what I really want is something in-between both of these extremes. Something with a strong story and great characters that still gives me the freedom to really explore and experiment with game systems.


Westworld's Man in BlackCREDIT: HBO

I think Jeff Grubb does a great job summing up the problem with the game's confining structure when he compares it to Westworld:

I’ve seen a lot of people compare Red Dead Redemption 2 to the HBO sci-fi drama West World. And while I know it’s passe to even bring up that show in relationship to Red Dead Redemption 2, I think it’s important to note that this game is nothing like West World.

Both are intricate cuckoo clocks with authored stories, but that’s not why people go to the West World theme park. They go to it because they can affect it. The robot characters that make up the attraction have deep systems that respond and react to the decisions of the player characters. That enables unique experiences to emerge out of the authored stories.

Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t have that.

This is a great point. Obviously we're nowhere near the technological advancement of Westworld's fiction, but we can still strive for that kind of narrative-systems storytelling that only video games can really achieve. Rockstar hews too closely to a more rigid storytelling approach here. I want a longer leash. Perhaps that will be what Red Dead Online is all about.


Red Dead Redemption 2CREDIT: ROCKSTAR GAMES

Grubb also points out that mechanics like searching drawers and cabinets aren't just tedious, they're immersion-breaking. The realism of the action is belied by how unrealistic it actually is when you really think about it.

He discusses one of the opening moments in the game after your first shootout with an enemy gang when Dutch tells Morgan to go search the house:

[T]he game comes to a halt so Morgan can slowly open each drawer one by one. When you find an item you can take, you pick it up slowly and delicately. And then you do the same thing with anything else you find in the same drawer.

It is a painfully laborious process, but worse — it’s not how I look through drawers [...]

When I search for my keys or something, it’s a messy process where I move things around haphazardly with two hands. And that’s in my own home. If I were looting some shack in the middle of the mountains after killing a bunch of rival gang members, I’m not going to slowly hold up a pack of cigarettes like it’s some precious possession. I’m going to tear the drawers out and mess them up looking for anything valuable.


Red Dead Redemption 2CREDIT: ROCKSTAR GAMES

Immersion is a funny word when it comes to video games. Certainly the lovely mountains, the footprints in snow, the mud on your coat---all these things create a sense of being in that world. But it's still a game and there's always going to be a fine line between what matters for the game and what matters for our sense of immersion.

For instance, Rockstar uses your horse's saddlebag to store weapons, limiting the number you can carry on your person at any given time and requiring you to swap them out at your horse instead. That's immersive, sure, but as my colleague Paul Tassi pointed out recently, you can still carry tons of bottles and canned goods around---far more than realism dictates:




Where to strike the balance is up for debate. I will say, I prefer quick-looting to realistic looting. I'd rather be able to just click a button and move on when I skin an animal than see the animation play out. I'd rather be immersed in the game's vistas and story than in its every minutia. But where to draw the line(s)?

Red Dead Redemption 2 is such a cool, funky, avant garde game, at once a massive AAA blockbuster and bucking so much of what makes AAA games popular. I kind of love that about it. It feels like an indie game in some respects, but with a massive budget and sales to match.


Red Dead Redemption 2CREDIT: ROCKSTAR GAMES

I have a long ways yet to travel in Red Dead Redemption 2. I'm excited for the journey and dreading it all at once. Like travelling a very long distance. It's exciting, but sitting in airports and long flights is draining. There is much of that in Red Dead Redemption 2, though it's riding on horseback and slogging through camp rather than airports and flights.

I've yet to really make up my mind about this game, obviously enough, not entirely anyways. I love it and it frustrates me to no end. And that's okay. I used to watch old Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movies as a kid a lot, and even if Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't the groundbreaking release we hoped for, it's still the best possible cowboy game I've ever played.

That has to count for something.

it's one of the best Westerns ever made, and I don't mean just video game Westerns

Hold on there, partner.

 

[Gerrard]

This is what 1 billion USD and 10 hour weeks gets you.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I prefer to wait for the "RDR2 Announced for PC" ones

I'm still waiting for the first one to be announced for PC. It was a much better game.

Not this bullshit about a hardcore ruthless killer outlaw gang leader that is not afraid to have a millennial cry and respects wahmen. Wtf is that shit?

 

[ArchAngel]

Ill never get how someone can watch someone else play a 60 hours videogame.

First of all, its no the fucking same. Playing a game is not the same as watching some fucking jerk on youtube playing the game while trying to be funny.

Just go watch Dead Wood instead, it has better pacing for someone passively standing by.


And the article is pretty stupid if you ask me. Zelda BOTW has a great open-world, but also has a completely different design concept. BOTW's world structure is crafted around enviromental manipulation, combat and puzzles. In RDR2, you have survival, social structures, far more quest/storybased gameplay.

If there was a game i would compare this one to, it would be Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Certainly better than "playing" it for 160 hours where 100h is spent on horse going from location to location listening to random pointless conversations.
Also the collected story parts on youtube cut out all the shitty gameplay and horse riding and only keep the story parts. And since those are all scripted with very little player choice you lose nothing by just watching it on youtube.
Your comment is true for twitch, it is why I just watch it on twitch casually until I get bored because you cannot skip the horse riding and other shit like combat.

Also we need to fill time waiting for Pathfinder loading screens :D

 

[AwesomeButton]

No excuse for watching LPs on Twitch if you can watch them archived on youtube and scroll through the useless parts.

I prefer to wait for the "RDR2 Announced for PC" ones

I'm still waiting for the first one to be announced for PC. It was a much better game.

Not this bullshit about a hardcore ruthless killer outlaw gang leader that is not afraid to have a millennial cry and respects wahmen. Wtf is that shit?

Like I said above, get off 4chan dude. Outrage warriors never change.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Why can't you hire prostitutes in 2? So far as I know, John wouldn't hire prostitutes because he was loyal to his wife. Arthur has no such restriction.

He has a love interest.

And like I said in a earlier post, the scripted sequences are pretty much pop-a-mole, but when you fight dudes randomly in a forest or what not, enemies will rush you, flank and such, it can actually be pretty terrifying if you don't cheat with the lock on. Cover is not 100% protection either. If they get just a little angle on you, they will hit you, and some covers break under fire. My current style is a lot of running and flanking, getting in close with one cattle revolver in each hand. Makes it easier to hit when you can pop out 12 shots in short succession in close range.

Actually enjoying the game a hell of a lot now, switching from gaming to larper mode.

I wasn't asking about the combat. I've seen the combat. I want to know why I can't get the prostitute to play toss the lasso on my little cowboy.

 

[Alienman]

Read the first sentence.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Read the first sentence.

That's not a valid excuse. Especially with player interaction. Nowhere near the same as being married before the start of the game.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Arthur's got lady troubles. The whole situation with Mary and some of his journal entries make it seem like he's got sour grapes about Abigail after she married John.

Spoiler

He also had a child with some younger girl and they both died, he seems afraid of that happening again.

 

[Ezekiel]

Sooooo... general consensus is that it's vastly inferior to BotW, far as sandbox games go?

I agree with that. Breath of the Wild is funner to explore and the gameplay isn't crappy. I didn't get my refund today. I'm stuck with this trash auto-aim shooter. Like I said, Free Aim is unplayable. I don't remember playing a game with such awful sensitivity and responsiveness.

 

[Zed]

botw fucking blew steamy ass. they did away with everything that made 3D zelda good.

RDD2 is a million times better.