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.
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!