I borrowed this from a friend recently. Rockstar has been having a pretty big problem lately, and RDR2 is the worst case of it, which is that the sandbox aspects of the game (the actual interesting shit) is completely at odds with the storytelling side of the game. Problem is their games are so fucking successful I'm not sure this problem will ever be something they fix.
The game also incentives you to engage with the scripted story stuff more than the interesting sandbox stuff by rewarding you far more for doing the story stuff than the sandbox stuff. Hunting is pretty nice in this game. In some spots you don't even really even need the tracking vision because the footprints or whatever are actually clearly showing up on the ground. But hunting is a chore that nets you next to nothing. You barely get any money from it. You can't stow shit for shit. You don't need to eat so you're not hunting for that reason. You can use the meat you get to heal, but I've been so flushed with healing items like canned beans I don't see any reason to do that. The only real reason to hunt really seems to be to feed the camp, but that gets back to the stowing thing, which makes it an annoyance because you'll have to go out multiple times to get as much meat as you need to get the camp into the green. The hunting in this makes me wish they made wagons something you could own, so you could carry more than one fucking deer at a time.
The camp is also a huge giant missed opportunity. What it should have been is a more advanced freeform version of the heist from GTA5. A place where you have a pool of characters with different skill sets and personalities that you pick for different jobs you go on, with a set of different missions types like bank and train robberies where you can set up how you want to approach whatever thing. Instead it's just a hub area you get missions from, and weirdly it has even less options than even the GTA5 heist.
Bounties, at least what I've experienced of them, are even less interested than in the previous Red Dead. Previously they were like these bad little arenas, in a right world Rockstar would have learned something from MGSV and the Bounty missions would be in areas where the player can attack the mission however they wish...but I guess that takes a level of planning in level layout they don't wish to engage in. Now Bounties just seem to be these boring scripted events. I think every one but one so far has worked by going up to the bounty and triggering an event where you talk to them before you have to chase them down, or in one instance it trigger a dual.
It's very weird to me that you're unable to go prone, especially since you can dive while shooting, and there's some stealth sections. It's also funny to me because the trailer seemed to have some Django Unchained stuff, and a big part of the big shootout in Django Unchained is Django using a guys body as cover as he's prone on the ground.
How on rails the missions are is so fucking annoying. Yesterday I was doing this mission that ended in a barn burning down. When it goes bad, which is basically the beginning of the mission, you and your group are chased down by a bunch of guys on horses. What the game wants you to do is ride off with your group as you shoot the people behind you. What I did was loop around the guys chasing me and shot them all in the back as they chased after the rest of the group. Despite killing them all I failed the mission because my group were slightly too far ahead of me. And this was just ever so slightly ahead of me, as they were still visible. Then I got to the barn, and I couldn't leave the barn despite having a place cleared because the game really wants me to be in the barn when it burns down.
The inventory and clothing system sucks. The weather system means you should just have a quick little way to put on and take off clothes. All I really need is some way to quickly put a jacket on, or remove a layer of clothing if it's too hot. Instead the game has some stupid whole outfit system that might accidentally leave you without what you need for a specific region. This seems like the dumbest of fuck ups because in trying to reinvent the wheel they created maybe the worst way to equip something I can think of. Funny thing is it seems to have been done in the name of immersion, but it doesn't add any kind of immersion at all. A simpler more practical way of doing what they seemed to be going for is how Monster Hunter World takes care of things like ghilie mantles, would've looked cooler too to actually see your character put their jacket on.
The melee system in this game is also fucking terrible. Now you'd think in a third person shooter this might not be too much of a problem, but it feels like the game is always asking you to engage in it's melee system. I feel like at least a third of the missions I've been on so far rope me into some kind of fistfight. So far the debt collection missions, if they have any kind of combat at all, seem to just be an excuse to get you into a fistfight.
