Red Dead Redemption 2 - now available on PC

[PorkyThePaladin]

No, RDR2 gameplay is utter shit. It is NOT shooting the shit cowboy-style.

Compare RDR2 gameplay (once you get past the purdy graphics and the beautiful horse shitting animations) to good Western movies. There is literally almost nothing in common.

Western movies (or books for that matter) consist of intense scenes, where protagonists have to shoot down their opponents very quickly, under intense pressure, or have interesting long range shootouts, using cover, initiative, sneaking around, etc. Quick-draw duels (a Hollywood/circus invention, I know, but still, this is the genre), people waiting in ambush, that sort of thing.

RDR2 combat gameplay, on the other hand, consists of various kinds of cheese modes none of which present any of this intensity or sense of satisfaction, or feeling of skill. See below for details:

1. Long/medium range shooting: you get Arthur behind cover of some sort, and do some popamole shooting, where you pop out from behind cover, take a few easy pot shots using the reticle, and can take out entire armies this way over time. This approach is very crappy because
a. Arthur has way too much health, so even if he does get dinged, it doesn't matter.
b. The cover system is unrealistic, as it's binary, you are either behind cover or not, the shape or actual coverage of cover doesn't matter, you will be pretty safe behind it, whereas in real life, hiding behind a tree with half your body visible would get you killed in quick order.
c. Enemy AI will not try to charge you, or flank you or anything interesting, they will just pop up the same way behind their cover, except their aim really sucks.
d. You can enable Dead-Eye mode for extra cheese, and kill already easy to kill enemies in slo-mo.

2. Short range shooting: There are no good organic quick-draw mechanics, for example, you can just draw your revolver normally but it takes something like 2-3 keys, and is kinda contextual, so in some circumstances you have to use different keys, or wait for a second or so or it won't work properly. There is another way to draw it quicker, where you "quick-draw" it and start shooting right away from the hip, but there is no initial reticle for that, so the first shot or two are blind essentially (unless you have a physical reticle marker on your screen like some of those youtubers who make those quick draw videos). As if that wasn't bad enough, enemies have ridiculous torso health, so you can empty an entire cylinder into them, and they will still live routinely, as the game seems to expect you to use headshots exclusively. Since making blind headshots is not a thing, the quick-draw mode is kinda useless without intensive modding.

Theoretically, you should be able to do regular draw headshots, but the problem here is enemies are programmed to duck and weave and move constantly, and wear hats and all that kind of shit, which makes nailing headshots consistently rather challenging. Which was probably implemented so you could do approach 3.

3. Dead-eye quickdraw: with this, you can hold down a couple of keys, and Arthur will quick draw in slo-mo, and easily dispatch his enemy. This is rather effective, but is boring, since it takes no skill.

So there you go, a lot of combat styles, all of them some combination of boring and skill-less. IE, the exact opposite of Western movies/books.

 

[Machocruz]

Boring and skill-less describes Rockstar games in general, for a while now.

 

[AwesomeButton]

No, RDR2 gameplay is utter shit. It is NOT shooting the shit cowboy-style.

Compare RDR2 gameplay (once you get past the purdy graphics and the beautiful horse shitting animations) to good Western movies. There is literally almost nothing in common.

Western movies (or books for that matter) consist of intense scenes, where protagonists have to shoot down their opponents very quickly, under intense pressure, or have interesting long range shootouts, using cover, initiative, sneaking around, etc. Quick-draw duels (a Hollywood/circus invention, I know, but still, this is the genre), people waiting in ambush, that sort of thing.

RDR2 combat gameplay, on the other hand, consists of various kinds of cheese modes none of which present any of this intensity or sense of satisfaction, or feeling of skill. See below for details:

1. Long/medium range shooting: you get Arthur behind cover of some sort, and do some popamole shooting, where you pop out from behind cover, take a few easy pot shots using the reticle, and can take out entire armies this way over time. This approach is very crappy because
a. Arthur has way too much health, so even if he does get dinged, it doesn't matter.
b. The cover system is unrealistic, as it's binary, you are either behind cover or not, the shape or actual coverage of cover doesn't matter, you will be pretty safe behind it, whereas in real life, hiding behind a tree with half your body visible would get you killed in quick order.
c. Enemy AI will not try to charge you, or flank you or anything interesting, they will just pop up the same way behind their cover, except their aim really sucks.
d. You can enable Dead-Eye mode for extra cheese, and kill already easy to kill enemies in slo-mo.

2. Short range shooting: There are no good organic quick-draw mechanics, for example, you can just draw your revolver normally but it takes something like 2-3 keys, and is kinda contextual, so in some circumstances you have to use different keys, or wait for a second or so or it won't work properly. There is another way to draw it quicker, where you "quick-draw" it and start shooting right away from the hip, but there is no initial reticle for that, so the first shot or two are blind essentially (unless you have a physical reticle marker on your screen like some of those youtubers who make those quick draw videos). As if that wasn't bad enough, enemies have ridiculous torso health, so you can empty an entire cylinder into them, and they will still live routinely, as the game seems to expect you to use headshots exclusively. Since making blind headshots is not a thing, the quick-draw mode is kinda useless without intensive modding.

Theoretically, you should be able to do regular draw headshots, but the problem here is enemies are programmed to duck and weave and move constantly, and wear hats and all that kind of shit, which makes nailing headshots consistently rather challenging. Which was probably implemented so you could do approach 3.

3. Dead-eye quickdraw: with this, you can hold down a couple of keys, and Arthur will quick draw in slo-mo, and easily dispatch his enemy. This is rather effective, but is boring, since it takes no skill.

So there you go, a lot of combat styles, all of them some combination of boring and skill-less. IE, the exact opposite of Western movies/books.

Next thing Porky dissects will be Assassin's creed gameplay, arriving at the shocking conclusion it's a AAA twitch action game, designed around consoles. Stay tuned for the big revelation.

 

[KVVRR]

No, RDR2 gameplay is utter shit. It is NOT shooting the shit cowboy-style.

Compare RDR2 gameplay (once you get past the purdy graphics and the beautiful horse shitting animations) to good Western movies. There is literally almost nothing in common.

Western movies (or books for that matter) consist of intense scenes, where protagonists have to shoot down their opponents very quickly, under intense pressure, or have interesting long range shootouts, using cover, initiative, sneaking around, etc. Quick-draw duels (a Hollywood/circus invention, I know, but still, this is the genre), people waiting in ambush, that sort of thing.

RDR2 combat gameplay, on the other hand, consists of various kinds of cheese modes none of which present any of this intensity or sense of satisfaction, or feeling of skill. See below for details:

1. Long/medium range shooting: you get Arthur behind cover of some sort, and do some popamole shooting, where you pop out from behind cover, take a few easy pot shots using the reticle, and can take out entire armies this way over time. This approach is very crappy because
a. Arthur has way too much health, so even if he does get dinged, it doesn't matter.
b. The cover system is unrealistic, as it's binary, you are either behind cover or not, the shape or actual coverage of cover doesn't matter, you will be pretty safe behind it, whereas in real life, hiding behind a tree with half your body visible would get you killed in quick order.
c. Enemy AI will not try to charge you, or flank you or anything interesting, they will just pop up the same way behind their cover, except their aim really sucks.
d. You can enable Dead-Eye mode for extra cheese, and kill already easy to kill enemies in slo-mo.

2. Short range shooting: There are no good organic quick-draw mechanics, for example, you can just draw your revolver normally but it takes something like 2-3 keys, and is kinda contextual, so in some circumstances you have to use different keys, or wait for a second or so or it won't work properly. There is another way to draw it quicker, where you "quick-draw" it and start shooting right away from the hip, but there is no initial reticle for that, so the first shot or two are blind essentially (unless you have a physical reticle marker on your screen like some of those youtubers who make those quick draw videos). As if that wasn't bad enough, enemies have ridiculous torso health, so you can empty an entire cylinder into them, and they will still live routinely, as the game seems to expect you to use headshots exclusively. Since making blind headshots is not a thing, the quick-draw mode is kinda useless without intensive modding.

Theoretically, you should be able to do regular draw headshots, but the problem here is enemies are programmed to duck and weave and move constantly, and wear hats and all that kind of shit, which makes nailing headshots consistently rather challenging. Which was probably implemented so you could do approach 3.

3. Dead-eye quickdraw: with this, you can hold down a couple of keys, and Arthur will quick draw in slo-mo, and easily dispatch his enemy. This is rather effective, but is boring, since it takes no skill.

So there you go, a lot of combat styles, all of them some combination of boring and skill-less. IE, the exact opposite of Western movies/books.

Yeah like I said, it offers virtually no challenge. The game is a breeze made for a casual audience, but imo that just makes it mediocre, not bad. Bad would be more akin to the shooting feeling like how it is to move your character around where the game actively fights you on it and it takes ages to do anything. Those youtube quick draw videos that you mention might be ineffective as hell to do but you know they look like? They look like fun. The same way hogtying some poor bystander and leaving them over traintracks to be ran over or shooting a horse's rider only to see the horse freak out and run away with the body still on it. None of this is deep or challenging, it is pretty mediocre if you look at it under a critical lens, but again, that just makes it mediocre, not bad. And mediocre gameplay's fine.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah like I said, it offers virtually no challenge.

I guess you've completed at least some of the ingame challenges, and they were piss easy too then.

 

[KVVRR]

Yeah like I said, it offers virtually no challenge.

I guess you've completed at least some of the ingame challenges, and they were piss easy too then.

The ones tied to that stupid medal system? I'd rather hit my pinkie toe against a door for an hour, I hate the sort of challenges those offer. "Do this mission under X amount of time for a gold medal!" how about you get some bitches instead I'm trying to enjoy myself here not speedrun this game like if I was on HRT.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The ones tied to that stupid medal system?

No, those are mostly silly objectives that ask you to break your immersion. I meant these: https://www.vg247.com/red-dead-redemption-2-challenges-list

Some are busywork, but some encourage you to explore and while exploring, get sidetracked and have something unexpected happen. That's how I spent the overwhelming majority of my time in the game. The gta-style missions pale in comparison to the open world gameplay. Most people railing against the game mean the missions, i.e. interactive movie, and have missed the actual fun part.

 

[KVVRR]

The ones tied to that stupid medal system?

No, those are mostly silly objectives that ask you to break your immersion. I meant these: https://www.vg247.com/red-dead-redemption-2-challenges-list

Some are busywork, but some encourage you to explore and while exploring, get sidetracked and have something unexpected happen. That's how I spent the overwhelming majority of my time in the game. The gta-style missions pale in comparison to the open world gameplay. Most people railing against the game mean the missions, i.e. interactive movie, and have missed the actual fun part.

I haven't, actually. I remember seeing the Herbalist challenges and assuming they'd all be of the same caliber (so just pick/craft X of Y).

 

[Ezekiel]

I've never seen a graphical anomaly like this. The upper-left. What is that?

 

[Ezekiel]

Still am taken aback by how terrible the gunplay, that we downgraded from Max Payne 3 to this. If you think it's the worst possible comparison, you haven't watched enough westerns, the ones where the fights are pretty active.

I micro-play this, incrementing the story over years, because it's so joyless. Said it before, but it's not a western at all, it's a badly written, annoying soap opera, with a yapping, whining WOMAN for a protagonist.

 

[Ezekiel]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1174180/discussions/0/5123418933936922173/

Seriously? There is no way to keep the dot in the center of the screen from becoming red over enemies except to edit the files? That red dot is a cheat, revealing enemies even in fog.

 

[soutaiseiriron]

I've never seen a graphical anomaly like this. The upper-left. What is that?

your GPU is faulty and artifacting, sorry
happened to me. it sucks. try lowering your settings and capping your FPS to a low amount so you use as little power as possible and check your temps and see if it remains

 

[Ezekiel]

I ordered some PCIe retention clips, in case. It broke off a while back, like my old motherboard's. Hate those things. They need to change the design if the cards are gonna keep getting bigger and bigger.

 

[deama]

I've never seen a graphical anomaly like this. The upper-left. What is that?

your GPU is faulty and artifacting, sorry
happened to me. it sucks. try lowering your settings and capping your FPS to a low amount so you use as little power as possible and check your temps and see if it remains

Usually with artifacting like that, it's to do with the memory, possibly mhz on memory is too high now cause GPU getting old or something.
I tried overclocking it at one point and got similar things happening.

 

[Ezekiel]

Arthur Morgan's voice if it wasn't so laughably fake.





What Roger Clark talks about in the interview doesn't matter. I didn't watch it. Just posted to show how forced his character voice is.

 

[unseeingeye]

The gta-style missions pale in comparison to the open world gameplay. Most people railing against the game mean the missions, i.e. interactive movie, and have missed the actual fun part.

This is how I feel as well. I got my share of shit for detailing my love for this game earlier in this thread, but have been replaying it recently and my fondness for it continues to increase. In retrospect especially considering Dan Houser left the company, it is one of those games that seems nearly miraculous that it got made at all.

The open world offered in this game is second to none and I consider the "free roaming" aspect in-between missions to be the actual "game" where the story missions are closer to an interactive film with the reach of a long novel. With every other game I can think of that attempts this manner of wedding storytelling with gaming, a linear interactive movie is the absolute last form of entertainment I'm interested in, but what was achieved with this game has no equals and as such cannot even be considered in the same realm as the rest of them.

I was a teenager when the first GTA came out and I remember playing the first two and thinking they were enjoyable at the time, but I have never been a real fan of that series nor of Rockstar in general. I couldn't play GTA V despite three attempts at trying to appreciate it for what it is, yet the gameplay and world structure are very similar to the Red Dead Redemption games. Maybe it is just the setting and characters but something about the Red Dead open worlds feels so much more meaningfully alive than the GTA games, but even beyond that series I find them to be the most engaging and significant open worlds ever made.

I know that many people dislike what they feel are cumbersome controls, lengthy animation sequences for most every action, the slow-paced manner by which the world and its potential are introduced, etc but I just don't feel that way at all and actively enjoy replaying the game every time I return to it. It certainly isn't a difficult game; truly there is very little there that is genuinely challenging to most players. I play it on PC with a mod and a handful of personal edits (changing things like making the Carcano rifle capable of being aimed down sights and the option to remove the scope entirely) but use a controller and I enjoy the combat for what it is. Mostly I enjoy the game for the hunting and adventuring, the utterly astounding environmental sound design, and the opportunity to virtually pretend to live in a pseudo Old West and Mid West. Something that also makes the game so engaging is the option to interact with every nearly every single NPC in the game; some of Arthur's responses if you mix up greeting and antagonizing are hilarious (yesterday I had him say to a prostitute offering her services "No thank you, ma'am" and then "I prefer mammals") and the variable consequences that follow these interactions lead to the most fulfilling moments for me.

As for the story and main missions.. I get what puts off some people, but I like it overall. I have my issues with certain aspects of it, and there is some woke shit thrown in, but on the whole I think many of the characters are very well written, as are the motivations and behind-the-scenes machinations left purposefully obscured just enough to leave you with interesting questions after finishing it. I do wish the epilogue had more substance and I despise the way they handled John's character model but it has its moments too and going back to the earlier game territories to see the many changes over time is so nice.