latenightnoir

Plus you can always laugh about it afterwards (as long as it's not a creepy/intrusive/tasteless attempt at flirting), and that can serve just as well!

I fully accepted my complete lack of game, so I purposefully turn flirting into a playful parody with extra-campy Smooth™ lathered all over that puppy, and the reactions so far have been really positive!

I still can't tell when someone else is flirting with me, though, so I just joke about that, too! I make it clear that my love language isn't Sexy Talk in general, so I just ask "are you flirting with me right now?" at inappropriate times, which nets me at least a frustrated chuckle.

As a great man once said: "you laughed, I'm off the hook!"

"Better out than in!" - the green guy from Shrek

In terms of story complexity and depth, I completely agree with you. RDR2 is even better than GTA IV, and that was a pretty hard act to pull to begin with!

As an overall game, though, I do see it somewhat on par with GTA V.

Sure, the story's nowhere near as gripping or even smart necessarily, but the characters do have depth, the narrative content makes sense, and it does have some interesting interactions between the characters which humanise them just enough for me to want to see the story through. It kinda' feels like someone tried to pull off Seinfeld in the world of GTA and sort of succeeded in creating a game about nothing much as far as the themes are concerned.

This is compensated a lot by the Online component, which seems to be the second half of the story - there are a lot of returning characters, we get to see the evolution of some favourites, the missions and objectives themselves pretty much go nuts way more frequently than the single-player ones. It's clear that Rockstar focused a lot more on the online component that time, but the story content's still good and even more interesting overall.

Now, credit where it's due, RDO does a lot more to keep the multiplayer in the sandbox, with far fewer activities being relegated to dedicated lobbies, and has a lot more NPC interactions as well, but it still feels relatively barebones when compared to GTAO (this loops back to my first point about it receiving less love, thus less development post-launch).

But, yeah, again, GTA IV (especially when including TBoGT and TLaD) and RDR2 are THE epitome of Rockstar storytelling.

Edit: hey, maybe I'm just being a sourpuss and Rockstar will knock our socks off with the storytelling in VI!

If we're talking about GTAO, I agree. However I have a different opinion about RDO, it had the potential to be less of a griefer cesspool than GTAO, but Rockstar had even less motivation to prevent cheating than they did in GTAO, so...

"We believe this piece used to be called The Funkolossus of Rhode Island. Humans used to be tiny, y'know!"

This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!

Yep, totally no biggie that Fascism's now thoroughly rooted in a Superpower nation and that millions of people are, yet again, being persecuted because rich douchebags think themselves kings. Just a regular Tuesday.

Can't speak about the mad part, but what I meant about RDR2 is that it obviously got less love from the community than GTA V, which is why it's essentially been shuttered in terms of any expansions/online components - while GTAO keeps receiving new mini-expansions even with GTA VI around the corner.

Not to mention there are no talks about furthering the series...

That's why I consider it underappreciated.

Edit: also to add, RDR2 is to RDR1 what GTA V is to GTA IV.

Easy, you start hanging out, gather a crew of like-minded cowpokes, set yourselves up with a Posse, and LAN Party your collective way to Legendary status!

As a side note, RDR2 deserves a 'GTA VI' more than GTA does, such an underappreciated game (and social commentary!)

This is just surreal, I swear...

It sure is starting to feel Great Filter-y nowadays, yeah...

I swear, there's nothing more cathartic than having an ugly-sob session brought on by some of the vistas in DS3, or by seeing the slowly growing family of lost souls in Majula. And that first time you realise just how (needlessly) wrecked the world is in the first one... *chef's kiss, exquisite suffering!

I still don't understand how a game can empathise that well with despondency, but it absolutely does. All of them do, but the Dark Souls installments especially.