Red Dead Redemption 2 - now available on PC

[Konjad]

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I just had that video recommended to me last week. I didn’t even know you could make him that fat. Sounds like you’ve really got to try to make him fat.

 

[Konjad]

 

[pickmeister]

Gave the game another chance and I have to say, it's growing on me. The amount of details in the world is truly impressive and creates a nice, impressive experience.
I'm still at the start of the game but from what I've seen, even the writing is alright. I expected it's gonna be as shitty and over the top for over the top sake as GTA 5 but the conversations feel much more natural in this one.

 

[Fargus]

Gonna be some shoehorned feminism and other cringe later in the story. But overall it's not bad.

Its worth to play with some mods too, like hanging negroes with a rope mod, or a mod that lets you whack those annoying invincible kids in St. Denis, or online stuff and gun tricks for singleplayer. Just dont install\uninstall them midgame. Messed some things up for me like making basic recipes from campfire disappear.

 

[VerSacrum]

 

[pickmeister]

Thanks for preparing me for the upcoming cringe.

I did download some yesterday and since then, I can't beat anyone in a fistfight so I'll probably restart just in case.
Hanging negroes and whacking kids sounds great, I'll go and look for those immediately.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I completed this game a few years back, tried playing it now again, and all the memories of why it's utter shit came back to me.

Unlike many people who criticize it, I don't actually have any issues with the realism and the slow pace, I love those things in games. I also love how beautiful the world is in RDR2, and how much detail they put into it, and into animations, and other shit.

But despite that, the game is absolute garbage, for 2 very important reasons:

1. Rockstar approached it more as a movie director than a game developer, and the linearity of the missions is astounding even for a company known for its linear missions. You literally get Mission Failed screens for experimenting with anything and not following the game prompts like a fucking dog. On top of that, as I already mentioned in other threads, the story itself is hot garbage. Westerns are a genre known for solitary men heading out into the wilderness and doing cool shit, not some lackeys following a sociopath like obedient poodles, and catching TB halfway in, and dying for half the game, only to be denied any satisfaction at the end.

2. The actual combat, which is of course the staple of anything Western, is trash. This is what I want to outline in detail here:

a. People didn't wear armor in the Wild West, and used large caliber guns (e.g. Colt Single Action Army revolver used .44 ammo, and Colt Navy Revolver fired a .38 ball with lots of gunpowder manually packed in). Cowboys and ranchers used these weapons to put down horses, cattle, bears, etc, so you can imagine what they can do to a guy in a shirt/vest. So why the fuck does it take like 3-8 shots to the torso to kill an NPC in RDR2 with say a Cattleman revolver? There is no logical reason for this, so of course the actual answer is that Rockstar wanted players to use headshots (to kinda put their bs tools to use, like Deadeye).

b. Of course now that they know that players will use headshots, they code the NPCs to do bullshit moves in the middle of combat, like duck their head up and down or sideways, constantly switch their posture, positioning, etc. All of this to make the head harder to hit, and of course complete bullshit since no one would actually act like this in the middle of a gunfight.

c. Points a and b above make things very tough for players who actually want to play RDR2 in a fun way, ie with player skill. Instead, they incentivize trash gameplay, such as using Deadeye, which is another name for Cheating Mode. But you are only cheating yourself, does it feel fun to take down 10 guys when they are standing almost still, and you are Neo? It's the most boring kind of shooting.

d. Let's say you are a persistent type of fellow, and you say to yourself, whatever, I will try to master skillful shooting anyway. So you try. And that's when you realize that even the most basic Western shit is broken completely by BS rockstar mechanics. The most iconic thing about Westerns is of course the quick-draw. RDR2 has a bs quick-draw, if you hold down a couple of buttons, you can enter Deadeye automatically with a quick-drawing animation. But if you want to do the real thing, oh boy. So to quick-draw your revolver from a holster is 2 keys (either RMB + LMB or Tab + RMB). The first one is really flaky, since it doesn't work in various situations, depending on the context. The second one if the one you would use, but here is the kicker. Due to some bullshit scripting on the back-end of RDR2, this one doesn't work half the time in combat either. You will literally press Tab in the middle of combat, and it won't unholster half the time, cause enemy AI script or something bs is running at higher priority or whatever.

e. So forgetting the ruined close combat stuff, how about long range shooting? Well, you basically pop behind a rock or a fence, and play pop-a-mole for 10 minutes, mowing down 100s of enemies with easy headshots from behind cover. If you use Deadeye for this, you might as well let your dog do it, but even without it, it's some of the easiest and most boring shooting you will ever see.


Absolute trash!

 

[AwesomeButton]

Westerns are a genre known for solitary men heading out into the wilderness and doing cool shit,

And I spent about 400 hours living that fantasy, which no other game/interactive movie can offer at this level of production values. Thank you, Rockstar.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

So your fantasy is to follow an actual manly dude for 400 hours after realizing he is insane on railroaded missions, and then hunting on the side to pretend like the game has actual freedom (what kind of fish do I decide to hunt today!), and then die of TB for 200 hours?

Oh wait, you also love BG3. Never mind.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The most iconic thing about Westerns is of course the quick-draw. RDR2 has a bs quick-draw, if you hold down a couple of buttons, you can enter Deadeye automatically with a quick-drawing animation. But if you want to do the real thing, oh boy.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So your fantasy is to follow an actual manly dude for 400 hours after realizing he is insane on railroaded missions, and then hunting on the side to pretend like the game has actual freedom (what kind of fish do I decide to hunt today!), and then die of TB for 200 hours?

Oh wait, you also love BG3. Never mind.

I don't really care about the story missions. The story missions I think of as of happening to someone else. A movie. My open world gameplay is me, my decisions, I'm directing and playing the lead role.

No, I don't love BG3. Ppl have so much trouble understanding a nuanced position.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

The most iconic thing about Westerns is of course the quick-draw. RDR2 has a bs quick-draw, if you hold down a couple of buttons, you can enter Deadeye automatically with a quick-drawing animation. But if you want to do the real thing, oh boy.

Nice try. These videos are (just like the game itself) a cinematic veneer over the actual gameplay trash. Look at what they are using:

These guys all use external crosshairs (software or hardware stuff that overlays a constant crosshair over the screen). That already ruins the whole point of a quick-draw, since you can just overlay the crosshair over your target before drawing, without having to aim your initial shot. Also, they have to use a shitload of mods (look at the screenshot above), to completely change a lot of game variables, for example, lower NPC hitpoint bloat, because in the base game, it's so high, you can empty an entire six-gun into the NPC's torso, and they will get up like nothing happened and shoot you while you are reloading.

And this does not address my earlier point of the basic keys like Unholstering a gun not working half the time depending on the shit that's running in the background. Now you can film a cool video around that, but when you are playing, and that shit is happening often, it's a totally different thing.

 

[Ezekiel]

Got a kick years back out of other players accusing me of hip-firing sniper rifles with external crosshairs in Max Payne 3. The combat and movement absolutely crush Red Dead 2 and GTA. Shame the balancing was so bad and most people played in filthy Soft Lock. Also liked how the player characters talked instead of being like these weird mutes in later Rockstar multiplayer.

 

[orcinator]

Got a kick years back out of other players accusing me of hip-firing sniper rifles with external crosshairs in Max Payne 3. The combat and movement absolutely crush Red Dead 2 and GTA. Shame the balancing was so bad and most people played in filthy Soft Lock. Also liked how the player characters talked instead of being like these weird mutes in later Rockstar multiplayer.

Never played it but I vaguely recall someone complaining about being able to shoot around corners since the hit detection was tied to the crosshair and not the gun in the player's hand.
Also something about there being female skins and being able to shootdodge as a mafia wife.

 

[Ezekiel]

Also, I miss tacked on multiplayer. The kind where you could quickly get in, have your fun and get out. When you open Red Dead Online, it's already a commitment. Remedy should have tacked multiplayer onto Control. Those good mechanics used only on horrible AI.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I agree that the combat is on the easy side, but the story is clearly inspired by Butch Cassidy/the Wild bunch, and many other western tropes. Anyone who thinks westerns are all glory and happy endings featuring upstanding heroes has never seen The Shootist, or The Searchers, or Unforgiven. I agree with American Krogans take that Arthur's personality and beliefs are anachronistic and incongruous, but having a tragic dying hero is perfectly in line with the genre.

 

[Ezekiel]

Dead serious, Zombra. Banjo Tooie may not have had the best first-person multiplayer around, but, damn it, my brothers and I had fun shooting eggs at each other from the birds' throats. For a while, developers bragged about not doing multiplayer modes and putting all their focus on single player. Unless you are making a masterpiece of design, shut up. Even then, you can hire a team just for the multiplayer portion.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I agree that the combat is on the easy side, but the story is clearly inspired by Butch Cassidy/the Wild bunch, and many other western tropes. Anyone who thinks westerns are all glory and happy endings featuring upstanding heroes has never seen The Shootist, or The Searchers, or Unforgiven. I agree with American Krogans take that Arthur's personality and beliefs are anachronistic and incongruous, but having a tragic dying hero is perfectly in line with the genre.

The problem is not the tragic ending, it's how it was done in a really annoying, humiliating way. It's one thing to have John Wayne's character dying over the course of a 2 hour movie, it's a completely different thing to have to play a 80-100 hour long game with a sick, dying character. Also, characters in the mentioned movies were still badasses that went out on their own terms (or didn't even die at the end in some cases). Arthur was a literal henchman for Dutch, running around, doing errands for him, until he became disposable. That is not a Western story in any way, it's a dumb modern deconstruction by a company that thinks it has good writers and is making movies.

 

[Ezekiel]

Got a kick years back out of other players accusing me of hip-firing sniper rifles with external crosshairs in Max Payne 3. The combat and movement absolutely crush Red Dead 2 and GTA. Shame the balancing was so bad and most people played in filthy Soft Lock. Also liked how the player characters talked instead of being like these weird mutes in later Rockstar multiplayer.

Never played it but I vaguely recall someone complaining about being able to shoot around corners since the hit detection was tied to the crosshair and not the gun in the player's hand.
Also something about there being female skins and being able to shootdodge as a mafia wife.

I don't get the last part of your post. Max Payne's enemies, some of them, should have been shoot-dodging (and sliding) since the first game.

If you let players pick girls, most of them will pick girls. That's why my multiplayer shooter would not have character selection. Or I would make the girls have less stamina and power but smaller hitboxes.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Great game if you ignore the story and just play poker in Valentine.

The redditiod mod videos on youtube got me playing again.

I got pissed off when they forced Arthur to get sick with that one mission and stopped for a few years. Really enjoying it compared to everything else out there now though.

I stuck some mod that lets you add NPCs and stuff on it (I guess that's what those icons on the side are?), so I've probably ruined it as an "RPG", but I don't care. I just want to play dice and poker etc.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

I hate the inconsequence in the game design. Muh slow and realistic, but you can carry whole arsenal on your horse and you're gonna have to clean your guns but they will also automatically reload while on horseback. Mechanical bloat for no reason, bravo rockshit. To hell with dan houser I hope he fries there good.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Muh slow and realistic

Is it? Your character can bullet sponge and heal by eating a can of beans.

Mechanical bloat for no reason

It's just there to distract you from the fact that the game is basically the same thing over and over: ride horse > cutscene > gunfight > ride horse > meet NPC > listen to one-sided version of history > ride horse > repeat.

Minigames and mechanics distract you from this and make you feel like it's a simulation.

And it'd actually be fine, hollow as it is, if not for the stupid, forced failure storyline and the eye-rolling politics.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Great game if you ignore the story and just play poker in Valentine.

Best way to do that might be to download a savegame from nexus set at the epilogue/main story finished where all the side content is still available (missions, gear collection, hunts etc).

So much outsourced slave labor went into the world, outfits, creatures, animations etc only to be ruined by a handful of dumbasses' shit story writing and crap game design.

 

[Sentinel]

What is it about Arthur getting sick that makes people want to stop playing?

In terms of gameplay, it doesn't actually matter until the end. Or am I misremembering?