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Prequel to the 2010 Red Dead Redemption which itself was a sequel to 2004′s Red Dead Revolver. All by Rockstar of Grand Theft Auto fame. I borrowed the game from a friend, and got to the second act before deciding I would never play it again.
The game is gorgeous, anything to do with the world looks damn close to perfect. Vistas, settings, environment, biomes, even props look great. Weirdly, the first name on the opening title scrawl is Director of Art, followed by Writers, which kind of show where their priorities lie with this game. The plot follows the Dutch gang from the previous game, but further back in time. John Marston, the previous protagonist, is just a young’un and the player plays as Arthur Morgan. The gang proceeds west to avoid The Man. Everyone wants to continue doing illegal stuff and there’s no law out west. I felt quite invested in each of the characters as they all seem like good people just trying to get by. Everyone joins Dutch’s gang because he takes care of everyone and treats them all like people rather than just expendable revolver fodder. Finding your own place in the world is a struggle for everyone, so caring for the entire gang keeps the Player going. Though everyone else doesn’t seem to do much, the player is the only one really contributing and moving things along; By contributing money and food, etc. In a way, the player deserves to be in all the stories because they’re the Player and should see everything, but it also shows that these characters don’t really do anything other than wait for the player.
This game has a lot of systems. Mainly, when the player presses L2 (LT) while aiming at something there are contextual actions that the player can execute. Rob, hogtie, say hello, antagonize, pat your horse, so many things. The Player can also change reactions towards and from NPCs by pulling their gun or keeping it holstered. Gotta admit that I played as a nice guy and didn’t try to shoot anyone that didn’t deserve it. There was an instance when I walked into town and one of the rival gang members started giving me grief. What I did was pull out my lasso and hogtie him. As soon as he was tied a bounty was placed on my head for kidnapping. I didn’t take him anywhere! The other option would be to fight him which I’m sure would end up with another kind of bounty placed on my head as well. If I had antagonised him back would he have instigated a fight with me and I’d shoot him to defend myself? Pretty sure I’d have a bounty then as well. As a Player, I felt pretty powerless. For all the agency given to interact with the world, the systems are limiting. While flipping through the clothing catalogue at the general store, which is a nice way to present an item shop, I couldn’t preview the actual clothing aside from a black and white drawing in the catalogue. Money is precious, especially in this game, you don’t wanna buy an outfit and not to like it. The goods are in the store, I don’t see why the player can’t “try on” clothes.
Arthur controls… Oddly. When a button is pressed, he doesn’t react. A fax is sent to his people, his people sign off on it and the order is messenger pigeon’d to him. He then does what was requested of him in 3 weeks’ time. I’m really not sure what happened during development that they decided on these sluggish controls. It’s definitely a design decision that they consciously went with. But I cannot figure out why anyone would consciously decide that. The only thing I can figure out is to have a smooth delta from stationary to moving, so that all the animation coverage that was done looks good. Bloodborne has good looking animations in addition to feeling responsive, and aesthetically looks better, to me. Sluggishness is something I got used to quite early, despite frustration with the cover system. It’s not ideal but it is something players can adapt to.
Here’s where it all ended for me. Did a random mission of the second act; Receive a journal entry (happens after every mission done); Read the recap. At this point I noticed there’s a little UI prompt (UI for the most part is easy to understand but is hard to notice) and I flip the page. I had received a silver medal for my performance, I’d only ever gotten silver and bronzes. It is possible to get a gold rating, but the game never tells the player how except until after the fact. You can then replay each mission to get a higher rating if you wish. For a game that’s so dedicated to having diagetic in-world systems, this is the most jarring thing. Why have a rating at all? I’d have to replay all the missions I did earlier to get the gold rating. The game is painful enough to control and play as is, why would I replay each mission? I’m also not sure how well the story would hold up on multiple playthroughs. Gamey systems like this have a place in more action-y fast paced games that have short missions that are replayed for mechanical pleasure. This is not one of those games, and such a system has no place other than to pad the runtime and frustrate the player.
It is also puzzling how everyone else’s game looks so much better than mine. I’ve watched a ton of footage of this game and they all look better. Is it because I don’t have a 4k TV? Though my PS4 Pro should make everything 4k, and then downsized to 1080p, which would look even better. You can activate a ‘Cinematic Camera’ during missions that has the camera follow from afar like a pre-shot movie. 3 pre-shot movies, since there are multiple camera angles. You can put that kind of stuff in 8 years of development and a ton of crunch, I suppose. Sometimes during cutscenes the player can move around, which has letterboxing like the cinematic camera, but some require no control. I could just never tell what was the game camera, cutscene camera, or a cinematic camera, and which of those I had control over or I could just watch. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever fiddled with a camera so much, as there are multiple camera modes (first person, third person, pulled back, cinematic), and so many things to look at.
In a way, I suppose I could give up on getting good mission scores and just go for the story, but I’m not that kind of Player. If that system wasn’t in the game, I honestly would keep playing. That system is so jarringly harsh that it’s a dealbreaker for me. Every other little annoyance were just that until I discovered this and couldn’t take it any more. Sort of like how the scales were slowly tipping out of favour for the game, and this just sealed the deal. There were a lot of bugs that popped up for me as well, not major bugs but just enough for a laugh.
The general consensus is that this game got such a good score because it looks good and it has a good story. This is not a game, this is a movie. This is a cowboy simulator with a story. If there is a overall feeling that game stories are bad, and if a game with an actual good story comes around, that game does not deserve a high score based on story. Yes, stories are important. Perhaps there could be a rating system where, instead of a single number score, there are… Maybe 5? Story, gameplay, art, technicality, sound. If that is the case, Red Dead Redemption 2 could probably get a 40/50 (35/50 from me though) which is still a damn good score.
