I continued working my way through Red Dead Redemption 2 today. I did the Bank Heist in Valentine and did a stage coach robbery camp activity too.
The game looks really gorgeous now that i don't have to worry about FSR muddling everything up.
One example is the mentioned robbery mission. The whole quest had raindrop falling from the roof that i just couldn't see before. Not to mention the way the bricks and stuff were wet from it.
I've done this robbery mission so many times now (in all honesty it's probably about 4 though) that it feels like second nature. Usually i just blow the safes open. But this time i decided to pick them all. I made off with $3000.
While on my way back from this mission, i had to stop to do the Second part of the Downes quest. I stopped at their farm, and before talking to them i went and played with their animals. They had this adorable dog chilling in the back by the goats.
I'll get through the RDR2 story one day. I played it for two stints last year but I just space out and lose immersion every time the main story forces you to kill one hundred lawmen in the middle of a town. For a game that put so much effort into making the open world vibrant, alive and dynamic you face very little consequences for committing what can only be classified as genocide in the main story.
I mean it is an era where up and moving 100 miles basically meant you started your life over. But that was kind of the plot: they were a gang of that era where they could run in a town, wreak havoc, disappear, and the infrastructure didn’t yet exist to reliably track them across the gigantic land mass that is North america.
But by the time the game rolls around the beginnings of the modern federal government are happening and agencies to track people like them across the country are in full swing. So all of a sudden their way of life is coming to a close, quickly. Instead of just some pissing off a sheriff in a town and never being able to go back there, occasionally having a bounty hunter after you, you now have a huge team of people with the resources of a government coming for you.
I think part of it that’s understated is the size of the map. The map is obviously big for a game but it’s supposed to be a huge chunk of America. When you compare the geography of the map to America it’s somewhat clear that it’s supposed to be a gigantic swath of America, from like Montana down to Louisiana and across to Texas. You can ride across the map in 20 min but obviously this would take months irl. Obviously this is about gameplay balance but as a result you lose the sense that Arthur is going extremely far away when he’s going from valentine to st denis, when in reality that would be like a month of riding and crossing several states. Even if he did a genocide that would probably shake the heat for a little while back then
They did obviously play it up of course. If you literally murdered everyone in a town back then there would probably be more of a response from the surrounding towns to find you. But gamers like violence and it’s again about balancing gameplay vs authenticity. usually gameplay wins because otherwise you end up with a boring game
You spend the entire game moving from place to place because the gang keeps getting into too much trouble.
It might well be a me-problem. I had the same issue with Sleeping Dogs that I just finished last week. So I might just have a fundamental problem with the type of gameplay design these kinds of games go for and the fundamental ludonarrative dissonance you have to be able to look past to enjoy them. I just have a hard time squaring off war crime levels of mass murder as "getting into a little too much trouble". Killing a lawman or two as things get out of hand in Valentine? That's getting into a bit too much trouble. But Arthur Morgan literally kills hundreds upon hundreds of people and that just breaks my immersion.
The gameplay is definitely way exaggerated because it would not be very engaging to get into one gunfight per chapter. I interpret these parts of many games symbolically—the amount of violence is to make a point. The game would be very short or really boring if it was realistic in that regard.
Arthur is a really complicated character who, despite being sometimes sympathetic, is ultimately not a good person. Even if you make only "good honor" choices, his story is still filled with points where he struggles to reconcile his actions with his beliefs. You wouldn't want to live near a person like Arthur in reality, and he doesn't like being that person.
RDR2 is ultimately a story about bad people struggling against other bad people. One group represents the lawless banditry that is dying out, while the other is the capitalist yoke that wears a nice suit. Lots of normal people get caught in the middle, and they usually suffer for it.
It succeeds for me because it still keeps the humanity in focus. Bad people are humans too. It does not absolve them, but it underscores the conditions that can manufacture them.
I don't really disagree with you about the nature of the story, and I don't have anything against the overall narrative. I just personally think the story could have been told with fewer bloodbaths and outright massacres and still be compelling. In fact, for me every innocent you kill would feel more impactful morally and narratively if there were fewer of them.
But maybe I'm out of touch with the attention span of the modern mind.
There's nothing wrong with having different preferences. It doesn't have to be because someone has a worse or better attention span.
I personally do think the number of enemies that had to be killed should have been decreased. For me, it was mostly because it became comical sometimes that more guys kept coming out of the woodwork. After the fiftieth O'Driscoll you kill, you start to wonder if it's a gang or a country's military.
I'm sorry. The attention span comment wasn't directed at you personally, it was reflecting on your point that people would find it too slow and boring with fewer kills. It wasn't meant as a jab at all.
I think it sounds like we're mostly in agreement. And yeah, the O'Driscolls spawning in and popping up like whack-a-moles is another great example!