Red Dead Redemption 2 (video game)

[shootemindehead]

Fast Travel - it's an upgrade for your camp. Once you've unlocked that ability, one of the things you can do is unlock fast travel. The rest of the camp upgrades are mostly cosmetic IIRC and were underwhelming, but fast travel was definitely useful. You can also get a stage coach to act like a taxi - interact with it and choose where you wanna go for a price. Fast Travel points are generally limited to towns and settlements or railway stations, so you have to horse about still. Sure. I've played the first one. But you used to be able to just FT from your own campfire. In any case, I'm not too pushed about it. You can get from one end of the map to the other pretty quickly. I don't really understand what you mean by it not being a "game". I was always engaged with it, I wasn't just watching a movie go by ... it's not like playing Yakuza 0 (which is one I'm still part-way through) where the cut scenes go on for feckin' ages, sometimes so long the controller switches off to save power! Sometimes when playing that game I do come away thinking 'how much did I actually just play during that hour?' ... RDR2, on the other hand, I was always actively playing it. So I don't get what you mean. Well, there's just no challenge I suppose. It feels very passive at times. There's so little to the actual missions that I ended up just farting around the map. But, as I said, there wasn't much of a challenge in RDR either, nor in any other GTA type of thing and I've been playing them since it was a top down pixel game in the 90's. I suppose I'm just a bit jaded with the whole GTA type "game". They have their fun, in that they are experienced. But, I don't feel like I played an actual game in the same way as something like Total War, or Shadow Tactics, where I have to think about what I'm doing or where I'm going next. That Yakuza thing sounds like something to be missed though. Long cut scenes is something I've long since tired of.

[MinionZombie]

Well, there's just no challenge I suppose. It feels very passive at times. There's so little to the actual missions that I ended up just farting around the map. But, as I said, there wasn't much of a challenge in RDR either, nor in any other GTA type of thing and I've been playing them since it was a top down pixel game in the 90's. I suppose I'm just a bit jaded with the whole GTA type "game". They have their fun, in that they are experienced. But, I don't feel like I played an actual game in the same way as something like Total War, or Shadow Tactics, where I have to think about what I'm doing or where I'm going next. That Yakuza thing sounds like something to be missed though. Long cut scenes is something I've long since tired of. Ah, so you find it too easy? I don't mind that, I'm not exactly a skilled game player, although I do wonder why these open world games don't have difficulty settings that could just tweak certain statistical things - how much damage you deal, how much damage the NPCs dish out, how effective health items are etc - so that it can be tweaked to each individual player. I utterly despise having to do things again and again in games - I remember getting frustratingly stuck at several points during Saints Row 2, and then it was just no fun any more until I finally, after so many attempts, managed to squeak past the bit that was holding me up. There was no sense of satisfaction, for me, from that, so I do prefer to be able to just play the damn game and enjoy the gameplay and the world and so on - but there should be options for players to change to suit themselves. It's like "Control" - I really enjoyed that game, as I'm a big fan of Remedy, but I was so annoyed that they didn't include an "Easy" mode, because some of the side-bosses were so friggin' hard that I just had to avoid those side missions entirely, and one particular boss was such a massive pain in the balls that I was fuming when the same damn one turned up again in a side mission! Why not just include an "Easy" mode for those who want to choose it? They did the same thing with Alan Wake (a game I adore). Not everyone has an awful lot of skill at playing games, but they want to enjoy the gameplay, the characters, the story, the setting etc. Give the player options to suit their abilities and style of play. Can't be that hard, can it?! As for "Yakuza 0" - I am enjoying it, having sunk more than 40 hours into it so far, but it does frequently sink into annoyingly long cut scenes at times. Even interacting with the world around you there's so much 'nothing' dialogue filling up the space when you talk to folks - the writers really needed to edit it down, 'cos I'm finding myself just mashing the "A" button more and more, skim-reading the dialogue as there's so much of it ... but I want to understand the story so I sit through these exceedingly long cutscenes. When I'm just able to go around the game and play as I want, enjoying the open world, it is quite a lot of fun (if a bit repetitive at times). I've been dipping in and out of it. Right now I've just started playing Doom Eternal ... ... not a fan of this new 'different kills to pick up different items: health/ammo/armour' bullshit ... ... needlessly complicates a winning formula. They should have a 'play it like Doom 2016' mode. I mean, christ, I'm on the easiest setting and I've been close to death numerous times, always running out of friggin' ammo - that's not fun. I wanna rage about, tooled up, killin' some demons. I don't see why they needed to piss about with the formula like they have. Still, early days on it at the moment (I'm only on level two), and I am getting entertainment out of it ... just less than I would have otherwise. - - - Updated - - -

[shootemindehead]

Ah, so you find it too easy? I don't mind that, I'm not exactly a skilled game player, although I do wonder why these open world games don't have difficulty settings that could just tweak certain statistical things - how much damage you deal, how much damage the NPCs dish out, how effective health items are etc - so that it can be tweaked to each individual player. I utterly despise having to do things again and again in games - I remember getting frustratingly stuck at several points during Saints Row 2, and then it was just no fun any more until I finally, after so many attempts, managed to squeak past the bit that was holding me up. There was no sense of satisfaction, for me, from that, so I do prefer to be able to just play the damn game and enjoy the gameplay and the world and so on - but there should be options for players to change to suit themselves. Umm..mildly unrewarding, rather than easy? I think it's very pedestrian? It's a game that I'll walk through from beginning to end without too much of a sweat, if you know what I mean. That doesn't mean that I think it's awful, however, and I have already sunk 60+hours into it over the Christmas holidays, mainly cos I've had bugger all else to do. So, in that respect it was worth the money I paid for it. As for difficulty, most of the time that just means "more" and "harder to to kill" in video games which is the cheap way out. Things just become more annoying and not more difficult in a logical manner. So players get "stuck" as you say, which isn't the answer to the issue. These days gameplay is probably the most difficult thing to get right in any computer game and 'Red Dead Redemption 2' is no exception. It's entertaining though, and stuffed with detail - a lot of which many players won't even see. And there is activity galore, as I've already said. I spent 3 hours yesterday shooting birds for their feathers to improve my arrows. My wife thinks I'm mad. Give the player options to suit their abilities and style of play. Can't be that hard, can it?! It's more difficult than you might think, Mini, and most of the time it constitutes merely using more bullets to kill something rather than making the AI smarter or allowing the player to use their own smarts. Right now I've just started playing Doom Eternal ... ... not a fan of this new 'different kills to pick up different items: health/ammo/armour' bullshit ... ... needlessly complicates a winning formula. They should have a 'play it like Doom 2016' mode. I mean, christ, I'm on the easiest setting and I've been close to death numerous times, always running out of friggin' ammo - that's not fun. I wanna rage about, tooled up, killin' some demons. I don't see why they needed to piss about with the formula like they have. Still, early days on it at the moment (I'm only on level two), and I am getting entertainment out of it ... just less than I would have otherwise. Haven't played a Doom game in about 15 years, so I don't know what they're like now. But I kinda "grew out" of FPS games. However, I'd like to see a situation whereby if you have to husband your ammo so rigorously, then enemies should be easier to kill (headshots) or, at least, able to get around by stealth. That requires true open ended gameplay though and that's not easy to do. Especially in a game that's on the rails like 'Doom' where everything is essentially pew pew. I think the most enjoyment I have ever got out of a game (in modern times anyway) has been 'DayZ', despite all of its many flaws. It's been the game where I have had the most tense moments I have ever experienced in a computer game and there are moments of "achievement" too, like just staying alive for month . It can be incredibly frustrating at times as well and some of the mechanics are just silly. It can also get a bit boring even. But, there is nothing like it that I have played. Single player or multiplayer.

[MinionZombie]

I know what you mean about trying to vary the gameplay or make it more interesting. Open world games do tend to resort to 'go here and kill everyone' or 'go here, get this, bring it back' missions. You can make those good, by making the mission a good spectacle, but the actual requirements of the mission can be very simple (the 'go here and kill everyone' thing). Missions where you don't need to kill folks, but need to do some other requirements can make things more interesting, especially if they build to a bigger mission (the heists in GTA V added a frisson of something a bit more complicated, with options to approach loud or quiet ... even if you'll inevitably get into a big shoot out in the end anyway). I think it'd be nice to interact more with the world around you in order to achieve some specific results - to affect the world around you (e.g. in GTA V you had the stock market, but it didn't really make any sense at all and had bugger all effect on the world around it, or the world had bugger all effect on the stocks). To be able to manipulate how the NPCs think ... a game like RDR could have had a whole section where it's kind of like Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars, and you could choose how you wanted to play people off against each other by picking from a selection of options. Of course, that does mean working in various paths, but it would lead to replayability as well. I do like that Rockstar finally added in the option to replay specific missions from the menu a while back, rather than having to do the whole thing again. I still think having scaled difficulty - damage dealt and taken, amount of ammo picked up, how reactive and aggressive enemies are etc - could be factored into a game like RDR2 relatively simply, for those who want that, or indeed, to make them a bit easier for those who don't have the player skill for it. I circle back to my previous point about Alan Wake and Control not having an "easy" mode, it was just "normal" and up. Very silly, made no sense to me at all, even moreso with Control as they simply didn't have a reasonable excuse for that and many more people got pissed off with sudden spikes in difficulty with Control, even in "normal" difficulty.

[shootemindehead]

I know what you mean about trying to vary the gameplay or make it more interesting. Open world games do tend to resort to 'go here and kill everyone' or 'go here, get this, bring it back' missions. You can make those good, by making the mission a good spectacle, but the actual requirements of the mission can be very simple (the 'go here and kill everyone' thing). Missions where you don't need to kill folks, but need to do some other requirements can make things more interesting, especially if they build to a bigger mission (the heists in GTA V added a frisson of something a bit more complicated, with options to approach loud or quiet ... even if you'll inevitably get into a big shoot out in the end anyway). There was a great game out about 20 years ago called 'Hidden and Dangerous' where you played as a squad of Commandos or SAS. Basically you had to infiltrate some German strong hold to fuck things up in some way. But getting seen meant everything got much, much harder and the mission became extremely difficult to pull off without casualties or failure and once your squad members were dead, they were dead. It could also impact future missions. If Jimmy is using a suppressed weapon and gets nabbed by Gerrie, you get it in the next couple of missions. You had to actually think about what your were doing and what the next move would be. But it wasn't on the rails. There were numerous ways you could complete a mission. I'd really like to see more games of that type made. Unfortunately, "kill everyone" seems to be the default for video games just as much today as it was when 'Space Invaders' was made. I think it'd be nice to interact more with the world around you in order to achieve some specific results - to affect the world around you (e.g. in GTA V you had the stock market, but it didn't really make any sense at all and had bugger all effect on the world around it, or the world had bugger all effect on the stocks). To be able to manipulate how the NPCs think ... a game like RDR could have had a whole section where it's kind of like Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars, and you could choose how you wanted to play people off against each other by picking from a selection of options. I thought that this was going to be an option with the two plantation families near Rhodes. I haven't had too much interaction with them yet, but they seem to be right bunch of wankers. Of course, that does mean working in various paths, but it would lead to replayability as well. And this is the problem really. It requires a much deeper development time to design allowances for multiple play styles and furthermore, the time to QA each path would have to increase too. I used to work in QA and there was never enough time. Everything was dumped on you and you were always at the end of a deadline too. It's that type of approach QA that leads to the farcical nonsense we've seen in the likes of 'Cyberpunk 2077'. And with the depth and detail that goes into a modern video game, adding yet more dev process into the mix could mean that the average game would take 5 or 6 years to complete fully. RDR2 was over 7 years in the making and that was designed on top of the usual Rockstar type of GTA game that they've been doing for 2 decades mow.

[Tricky]

I did like the way you can go about different scenarios in RDR2 like the random encounter in Valentine where the prostitute has murdered a client at the saloon, and it can play out in a variety of different ways. You can help her dispose of the body like she asks you to, or you can run to the sheriffs office and report the crime instead, at which point you and the sheriff go back and arrest her and it turns out she's a serial killer and there's various lines of dialogue from both of them once she's been put in the cells. Later on you can then watch her hang, or if you feel guilty about that shoot the rope before she hangs and she runs off. It's all smoke and mirrors but it made the game feel more believable and like your choices matter. Another time I rescued a woman from a robbery out in the wilderness, and she asked me to take her back home. I wasn't that far away from something else I wanted to see so thought it wouldn't make a difference if I went there first, so I set off in that direction with her on the back of the horse and it wasn't long before she started panicking about where I was taking her so she jumped off the horse and ran away screaming something about me being dodgy.

[MinionZombie]

Ah, yes, the killer prostituate of Valentine ... I helped her with the body (tossing it to the pigs so they could eat the evidence). I fell for her story, haha! I saw a video of how it plays out alternatively with the hanging. Just a small bit of variation there, but as you say, it really does give some life to the world you're in while not getting so complicated for the folks making the game. I loved all the random little moments you could stumble across, or certain characters - like the wounded civil war veteran - or, in a house on the edge of Valentine, at night, you might find a couple of guys peeping through a window. You walk up, they run off, you peep inside - and catch (IIRC) some bare-ass dude getting spanked by a woman. I also liked how... BIG STORY SPOILER!!!   After you take over as John and meet some of these random encounter people again (but for the first time as John), they'll all actually reference the demise of Arthur Morgan. You can feel the passage of time, feel the echoes of past actions and so forth. Initially I even wanted John to be wearing Arthur's hat, but it felt kinda wrong, so I made sure John looked like John did in RDR1.

[shootemindehead]

I didn't get to meet her. But I did find a mutilated body under a rail bridge and an Ozymandia's quote scrawled on rockface. That was just outside of Valentine. Haven't seen much more of that yet.

[MinionZombie]

I didn't get to meet her. But I did find a mutilated body under a rail bridge and an Ozymandia's quote scrawled on rockface. That was just outside of Valentine. Haven't seen much more of that yet. Ah, yes, that's a separate subplot kind of a thing - there are several 'murder sites' around the map that you will come across, and once you have been to them all, IIRC, you put the clues together somehow and then you find the location of the killer who you can then confront. I didn't bother with actually pieceing it together or finding all the locations by accident, I just used a video online to go everywhere, get the info, and then go to the killer's lair, haha.

[shootemindehead]

So after 100+ hours the game has become fucked. I can't progress the Blessed are the peacemakers mission, where you, Micah and Dutch go to meet Colm O'Driscoll and you get caught and tied up. So, you're upside down and you have to swing to reach an object that will cut you free. But if I hit A or D, Arthur drops to the ground and the game crashes. If I use an XBOX 360 Dpad, he drops to the ground and the mission can't be finished. Serious, I'm ready to start flipping tables. Anyone experienced this and is there a workaround?

[Neil]

So after 100+ hours the game has become fucked. I can't progress the Blessed are the peacemakers mission, where you, Micah and Dutch go to meet Colm O'Driscoll and you get caught and tied up. So, you're upside down and you have to swing to reach an object that will cut you free. But if I hit A or D, Arthur drops to the ground and the game crashes. If I use an XBOX 360 Dpad, he drops to the ground and the mission can't be finished. Serious, I'm ready to start flipping tables. Anyone experienced this and is there a workaround? That sounds bad, especially given the game has been out ages for this sort of issues to have been resolved?

[MinionZombie]

So after 100+ hours the game has become fucked. I can't progress the Blessed are the peacemakers mission, where you, Micah and Dutch go to meet Colm O'Driscoll and you get caught and tied up. So, you're upside down and you have to swing to reach an object that will cut you free. But if I hit A or D, Arthur drops to the ground and the game crashes. If I use an XBOX 360 Dpad, he drops to the ground and the mission can't be finished. Serious, I'm ready to start flipping tables. Anyone experienced this and is there a workaround? I've never heard of that particular thing - are you running the game with all updates installed? Are there are any recent bug reports regarding it? Have you tried doing that mission over again? Rather than using the D-Pad on a controller, how about the left movement stick?

[shootemindehead]

That sounds bad, especially given the game has been out ages for this sort of issues to have been resolved? I've never heard of that particular thing - are you running the game with all updates installed? Are there are any recent bug reports regarding it? Have you tried doing that mission over again? Rather than using the D-Pad on a controller, how about the left movement stick? So, after a lot of buggering around, I found out that the my save had become corrupted because of a mod I was using (so duh on me), so I nuked that bleeder and I could swing for the metal file and cut myself loose. I feel like this guy...

[shootemindehead]

So, I'm coming to the end of this now, with a couple of missions to go before it's over and while I still think my initial criticisms are valid, it's certainly been a great ride, pardon the pun. It's such a fantastically realised game and there's a lot to enjoy in it, despite the "unsatisfactory" characteristic of a lot of the missions. Plus, with over 150 hours of play time involved, you certainly get your money's worth, that's for sure. The detail is incredible and sometimes, you just find yourself looking at things happening around you. The sound design is an absolute triumph too. I haven't heard a better and more convincing use of audio in a game, definitely not for some time anyway, and the voice acting is top notch. The story is pretty great, too, in spite of it being a prequel and would actually make for a decent movie if handled right. And Molly's correct, Dutch Van Der Linde IS a bastard. My biggest issue is with the perfunctory "go here, do this" nature of the mission game play though. But that may be down to me being just a bit jaded with Rockstar's shtick maybe. I mean nothing has changed in their GTA style games since GTA III and that was 20 years ago. But, despite that, it was still a fantastic piece of entertainment, once you're beyond the first few hours of tutorial stuff in the snow and you get used to the clunky controls. Strangely enough, in spite of my mild dissatisfaction with the game's mission structure and quality, I want to dive back into GTA V again as it's been a few years. I might see if that's available for cheap in Steam. I have it there on the playstation, but I can't be arsed digging it out. Shit, I might even have a punt on San Andreas cos that was gas. All in all, RDR2 was pretty great all round and I'm kinda a little bummed out that it's drawing to close now. But these things all have to come to an end. I can, however, see myself returning to this in a few years time, when I have forgotten most of it.

[MinionZombie]

When you say you're drawing to an end, do you mean in Chapter 6, or the Epilogue?