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Red Dead Redemption 2 |OT2| For A Few Hours More
- Thread starter More_Badass
- Start date
Same. Didn't find a single dinosaur bone, found 1 dreamcatcher randomly, haven't discovered any rock carvings except for maybe the intro one introducing the mission, etc. It's hilarious, I'm at like 100+ hours and I've barely found any of that stuff.
So basically it's a waste of time finding pelts to upgrade our satchel because we can already carry infinite items, but only a certain amount of certain items? Am I getting it ? Thx
Kind of. The thing is, different items have different utility. Being able to carry 3 or 5 or 99 cans of salmon is neither here nor there; it's useful, but it can be easily replaced by other things. Being able to carry 3 or 5 or 99 miracle tonics is an absolutely massive difference, because they are such a useful item that can't be immediately replicated with a single replacement. Similarly, being able to carry 10 or 20 of a certain crafting item is not inherently an issue early on, but when you find yourself doing a challenge where you need 60 of each to craft a certain number of tonics, being able to collect them all at once without having to stop to use them every couple minutes is a huge upgrade. But that's mostly side content stuff; for the main game, you really don't need to (ammo reserves are upped through purchasing bandoliers which you do independently of any crafting).
Also, there aren't an infinite number of items in the game. There's like 30 things that fall under provisions to restore cores in various areas. There are 8 or so tonics that restore your health bar, 8 or so for your stamina bar, 8 or so for your dead eye (a lot of those are duplicates, e.g. Health Cure vs. Opened Health Cure, but the game treats them as unique items). If you're full up, even with only 3 of each item, you have plenty to keep you going for many, many missions. But once you do unlock the satchel that lets you get 99 of everything, all of a sudden you realize that only having room for 3 of something does end up getting restrictive. It's a minor QOL thing that takes away any concern about inventory management.
Been replaying GTA 5 for the 4th time and even now I saw a few new character switch cutscenes ,despite there being quite a lot of repeats.
RDR 2, having played for over 100 hours, constantly new stuff. It's kind of insane.
so a few people are criticizing saying Arthur isn't a good character because he is a bad guy and the game tries to redeem him for all the bad shit he has done, how do you counter argue that?
It should go without saying that some spoilers will exist in a conversation about Arthur's character. I'm not going to spoil any of the events of the major events of the game, but my post contains references to conversations and vague events in the story, so it's fair to say if you haven't finished the Chapter 6 and don't want to read any discussion about Arthur's character development don't read this post.
Arthur is a brilliant character, I'd say the best character of any game I've ever played, but he might not be a good person. He's a complex character with real, authentic motivations who is torn in different, believable ways. There is no character in videogames who is done as well as Arthur, especially because Arthur's motivations are of this world, not other worldly. For instance, the main guy from the Last of Us does bad things, but he does bad things amongst the zombie apocalypse... His complex choices are driven by supernatural circumstances. Arthur's aren't. Arthur robs a poor family of their money because he is part of an outlaw gang led by a charismatic charlatan, trying to raise money to protect their extended family. What Arthur does is undeniably bad and mean spirited, but his motivations make sense, and the game slowly brings Arthur around... In those final missions that I had to do for the money launderer, I -- the player -- didn't want to do them, for the same reason that Arthur -- the character -- didn't want to do them.
I don't think the game tries to redeem him for the bad shit he's done; The game shows how hes tortured for the bad shit he's done, that's different than absolving him for bad deeds. You don't have to feel bad for Arthur, and really, I think Arthur himself tells other characters that they don't have to feel bad for him, that he made his own choices and he has to live with them, "And for what... a few bucks?" In the case of the poor family that Arthur really wrongs, the one that he seemingly tries to make amends to as the game goes on... Arthur is motivated to help them for the same reasons that he's motivated to help Dutch early in the game. I don't want to go into much more than that because it'll be spoilerish, but Arthur's personal motivations are the same in both instances, but those motivations drive him to entirely different decisions in one instance from the other.
There's two scenes in particular that I think would be judgments of Arthur's character, his final conversation with the Nun before she goes off (presumeably) to Mexico, and one of his conversations with the Native American chief. Neither of these characters absolve Arthur of his bad deeds; they encourage him to pursue good, and not pursue evil. The nun remarks how Arthur sees himself as a bad person being punished for his bad deeds, but she only sees him helping people.
I think anybody criticizing how RDR2 handles Arthur is someone who can't handle complex characters. They're people who hate Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone and can find no redeeming qualities in them, or can't understand why both Soprano and Corleone are so well liked. I think it's probably part of this contempory/modern addiction with having to see all people and all characters in this "unblemished perfect" light, or "fuck them to hell" evil, where there's no subtly, no complexity. Arthur is a flawed person, it's those flaws that make him genuinely the best written character in any videogame that I've ever played.
Arthur is a brilliant character, I'd say the best character of any game I've ever played, but he might not be a good person. He's a complex character with real, authentic motivations who is torn in different, believable ways. There is no character in videogames who is done as well as Arthur, especially because Arthur's motivations are of this world, not other worldly. For instance, the main guy from the Last of Us does bad things, but he does bad things amongst the zombie apocalypse... His complex choices are driven by supernatural circumstances. Arthur's aren't. Arthur robs a poor family of their money because he is part of an outlaw gang led by a charismatic charlatan, trying to raise money to protect their extended family. What Arthur does is undeniably bad and mean spirited, but his motivations make sense, and the game slowly brings Arthur around... In those final missions that I had to do for the money launderer, I -- the player -- didn't want to do them, for the same reason that Arthur -- the character -- didn't want to do them.
I don't think the game tries to redeem him for the bad shit he's done; The game shows how hes tortured for the bad shit he's done, that's different than absolving him for bad deeds. You don't have to feel bad for Arthur, and really, I think Arthur himself tells other characters that they don't have to feel bad for him, that he made his own choices and he has to live with them, "And for what... a few bucks?" In the case of the poor family that Arthur really wrongs, the one that he seemingly tries to make amends to as the game goes on... Arthur is motivated to help them for the same reasons that he's motivated to help Dutch early in the game. I don't want to go into much more than that because it'll be spoilerish, but Arthur's personal motivations are the same in both instances, but those motivations drive him to entirely different decisions in one instance from the other.
There's two scenes in particular that I think would be judgments of Arthur's character, his final conversation with the Nun before she goes off (presumeably) to Mexico, and one of his conversations with the Native American chief. Neither of these characters absolve Arthur of his bad deeds; they encourage him to pursue good, and not pursue evil. The nun remarks how Arthur sees himself as a bad person being punished for his bad deeds, but she only sees him helping people.
I think anybody criticizing how RDR2 handles Arthur is someone who can't handle complex characters. They're people who hate Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone and can find no redeeming qualities in them, or can't understand why both Soprano and Corleone are so well liked. I think it's probably part of this contempory/modern addiction with having to see all people and all characters in this "unblemished perfect" light, or "fuck them to hell" evil, where there's no subtly, no complexity. Arthur is a flawed person, it's those flaws that make him genuinely the best written character in any videogame that I've ever played.
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I played through the entire game without doing much of the pelt accumulation/upgrades. It's a system in the game that I didn't even really understand how it worked. I never felt short on ammo, elixers, food, etc. Towards the end, I started doing some of those missions as a completionist and appreciated the additions, but it's not something you have to do at all... Like the other poster said, they seem like quality of life additions, not necessities. As a completionist for games like this, I enjoy doing them so now even beyond the point where I need them, I'm pursuing them just to do them.
Is there any way to roll back to the patch before they downgraded the graphics in single player? I'm on Xbox.
I have to agree with that description of Arthur. He's absolutely phenomenal, and the progression through the story is convincing, believable and very well written. It's the best and the most sophisticated view of a character battling between his inner demons and trying to find any remaining good inside him that i've ever seen in this medium. Avoiding the pitfalls of trying to find an easy way out for the most lowest common denominator type of storytelling.
To think people were pre-judging his character as "boring" based on the reveal of his character design in the original trailers. Laughable.
I'm really hoping the guys at Rockstar take the approach they did with this game and Arthur in terms of how they handle the lead(s?) in GTA6.
To think people were pre-judging his character as "boring" based on the reveal of his character design in the original trailers. Laughable.
I'm really hoping the guys at Rockstar take the approach they did with this game and Arthur in terms of how they handle the lead(s?) in GTA6.
Not if you want to use any online features obviously. If you own it digitally, I'm pretty sure you're SOL, but if you have the disc, you can install (while not connected to the Internet) and then disable updates. The game will prompt you to download updates upon boot, but I believe you're given the option to defer to a later date (I was on PS4, not sure how Xbox handles that). Worst case scenario, just install and play while not connected to the internet. Now, I will say, the "downgrade" is essentially unnoticeable with the most recent patch. I don't know that it even is there anymore. The game looks phenomenal, and nowhere better than on the X1X. You won't be thinking "well this looks like shit," believe me.
Excellent post all around, but I specifically want to comment on this bit. Our media is filled with stories of "protagonists" who are, frankly, evil people. And we view their stories from their perspective and see how the battle between the desire to do good and the nature of evil plays out within them. I was having trouble thinking of examples when I read the post you were responding to, but mob movies/tv is a great example. I'd also offer Breaking Bad; Walter White is the character we're meant to root for, but we also see him descend into a path that renders him almost irredeemably evil by the end. You've also got movies like Heat, where DeNiro plays a criminal who is softened in the audience's eyes because of his desire to be a "just" person; meanwhile, Al Pacino's detective is a deeply flawed individual who is ostensibly the good guy, and yet we don't necessarily want to see him win. The dichotomy between good and evil is a battle we see played out in iconic characters like Han Solo, or Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, or even Robin Hood (committing an evil act to benefit deserving people). The nature of individuals confronting this battle within themselves dates back to at least Odysseus, and probably long before that.
I feel like the PS2 GTA games stopping 100% completion as soon as you use a single cheat is probably why they started doing that.
Yeah I guess, but at least you could save, I remember using the give all weapons a lot.
Also, I should probably stay out of this thread until I've finished the game, I don't wanna be spoiled.
Yes, but I should preface it that while I like John and I'm a huge fan of RDR, I've never been enamored with him as a character... Or at least, I like him (love how the voice actor portrays him and he's a very likable protagonist), but John has major flaws in how simple he is that I think gets ignored because RDR1 is such a good game.
My biggest criticism of John as a character (and it's really a criticism of RDR) is that John is supposed to be a world-weary gunslinger, rough and tumble, whose led this life of crime but now has to do the law's bidding for a higher purpose ... but ... JOhn gets taken advantage of by every dumbass idiot in the West for ~40 hours of story. Like, every two-bit hustler, crooked grave robber, idiot shop keeper, low-level Mexican bureaucrat, and even up to the primary antagonists the G-men in the final chapter, they're all easily taking advantage of John to have him do whatever they want, and almost every encounter plays out the same:
John: "Hey you, I'm looking for this guy and I'm told you could help me. Don't trifle with me, because I'm a cold blooded killer."
Dumbass: "Oh, hello there, yes, I know about this guy and I will bring you to him, but you have to help me."
-- 5 missions go by with the same script where John is doing stupid tasks for them --
John: "Hey! You told me you'd bring me to this guy and you haven't I'm not going to help you anymore! I'm a cold blooded killer, remember!?"
Dumbass: "Oh, well now I'll really take you to him if you help me one last time!"
-- FInal mission with that dumbass that doesn't bring you to the guy, but introduces you to another dumbass who takes advantage of John again --
Nearly the entire game is this structure, from Nigel Wes Dickins, to Irish, to Seth, to the Mexicans government officials, to the Mexican rebels, to the Mexican towns folk, to the FBI guys in Blackwater, to the Yale college professor, and on up. There's only a tiny handful of major characters in the game that don't take advantage of John and who aren't idiots:
- Bonnie McFarland
- The Sheriff in Armadillo
- Landon Ricketts
- John's family, of course
For instance, I'd juxtapose Officer Tenpenny from GTA:SA against Dutch or the FBI at any point in RDR1 and he's 10x the antagonist of anybody in RDR, and Tenpenny being so good (he's everything that Dutch or the FBI isn't) is what makes CJ and his motivations so convincing. Tenpenny being so good is what sells you on guys like Rider and Big Smoke abandoning their family. But, up until Dutch in RDR2, I would have said that Tenpenny is my favorite character in just about any game, and now I think it's probably either Arthur or Dutch, but I also love almost all of the main cast of RDR2, I think they're all sooo well done and beyond almost anything else in any other game. There's only a few characters that I think should have more depth, Micah, for instance... He's just a dead give-away as a "bad guy" from the instant that you meet him.
Now... I get it... Rockstar games are generally structured this way, and it doesn't prevent me from still loving the original Red Dead Redemption, and still liking John, but I generally don't think John is a great character even though he's a very likeable character, I think when you really break down his motiviations and choices from RDR1 alone, I think John's character is just one sided and kind of weak. He's a good example of how to do a bland character and still make that character very likeable. I also think that Red Dead Redemption 2 does a good job of making John in RDR1 a little more .. understandable. BAsically everyone in RDR2 constantly talks about how dumb John is, and I sort of wonder if Rockstar ever really thought about how everyone takes advantage of John in RDR1 and decided to make that a characteristic of him in RDR2 now that you see John from another perspective.
John and Niko from GTAIV are very similar characters. They're playing 'fish out of water' characters for most of the game, and despite that they have this history of being cold blooded ruthless gangsters/outlaws (Niko: "I've killed people... I've hustled people..."), they can get easily taken advantage of by, say, a necrophiliac grave robber or a steroid-junkie dumbass weight lifter, and ultimately there's not a strong motivating bad guy in either story (RDR1 is better at this than GTAIV for sure). Rockstar fell down a similar pit with Michael, Franklin, and Trevor in GTAV. I think Trevor has authentic motivations throughout most of the game, but Michael in particular, gets conned and hustled by characters who just aren't convincing like his FBI buddy, or the other head of the FBI, or all of these other kind of low-level losers; Franklin makes a little more sense, he is just in the pursuit of his vision of the American dream, which makes sense for him to go along.
I was so pleased with Red Dead Redemption II, and it's a total about-face for Rockstar. Since GTA:SA, they really missed the mark with character motivations for almost 15 years, and despite that I still really liked RDR1 and GTAV (I didn't really like GTAIV, and I'm critical of it now, though I enjoyed playing it for most of the game at the time), Red Dead Redemption II has really surpassed anything they've done before and, IMO, anything that any gave developer has ever done.
Yeah, totally agreed on Walter White.
Mobster and 'true-crime' movies are probably the easiest to find similar characters. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another one, and RDR2 takes a lot of nods from Butch Cassidy as well (I mean, one scene in the game is near 100% replication of it, and I love that they did it... I just wish they said "ohhhh shiittttt" going down). Butch & Sundance are both more likeable and you never see them do anything genuinely evil in the movie, it's all mostly hijinx, two-bit bankrobbing, and I suppose general emotional abuse with their shared love interest, where as you watch Arthur, Dutch, and the gang do genuinely bad things to innocent people. Stringer Bell from the Wire is another, a guy who you can't help but root for despite that he's involved in really bad things, he does things that makes him a bad guy, but it's hard to not sympathize with him in some way.
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the question is.....
will Dan Houser revert back to the silliness of GTA 5 after this game for GTA 6? or will he continue to build on what he accomplished with Arthur and RDR 2?
will Dan Houser revert back to the silliness of GTA 5 after this game for GTA 6? or will he continue to build on what he accomplished with Arthur and RDR 2?
Without spoilers, what is the best point to really drop the story and focus on roaming around and doing side stuff? The story is very compelling but I'd like to carve out a fair bit of time for optional stuff before continuing. Is there a chapter that's best to do this in? If so, what part of that chapter? i.e. beginning or end of chapter 3, beginning or end of chapter 4, etc. Appreciate any guidance.
I know i have been asking this question a bit on other threads, but I wanted to get your guys opinions
Are the Houser Brothers, can we consider them legends of the game industry on the same level as say Warren Spector, Neil Druckmann, Kojima, Miyazaki. Or are they not at that level yet? My friend and I have been debating this for a while now
Are the Houser Brothers, can we consider them legends of the game industry on the same level as say Warren Spector, Neil Druckmann, Kojima, Miyazaki. Or are they not at that level yet? My friend and I have been debating this for a while now
I know i have been asking this question a bit on other threads, but I wanted to get your guys opinions
Are the Houser Brothers, can we consider them legends of the game industry on the same level as say Warren Spector, Neil Druckmann, Kojima, Miyazaki. Or are they not at that level yet? My friend and I have been debating this for a while now
How can they not be? They're the creators of the biggest game franchise in the world (GTA).
well technically David Jones created Grand Theft Auto, but i guess you can say the Housers were the ones that brought GTA 3 out to transform gaming
Chapter 2 and 3 are the best parts of the game for roaming and doing side stuff. Chapter 4 you can as well, but the story gets a bit more compelling and pressing and Chapter 4 has a general area of focus so I'd recommend 2/3. Chapter 6 is long and there are a lot of side quests and its so late in the story if you've been playing that long you are probably going to want to concentration on the story.
After Chapter 3 I guess you could say it makes a bit less sense that you'd be roaming around and shooting the breeze - you can, but it makes less sense given that the narrative picks up.
Considering recent comments they'll go back to the ironic bigotry from GTA and threads in this forum (assuming it's still around by then) will be a disaster.
The reason RDR2's writing is actually somewhat decent is because the material for it is different and they had different movies to rip-off as Rockstar has always done.
RDR 2 has amazing writing and Arthur is considered the greatest protagonist of this gen
I lean towards "as early as possible," but some content doesn't get unlocked until you do story mission tied to it (e.g. early on in Chapter 2 there is a mission called Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego which unlocks legendary animals for hunting). Once you've unlocked the ability to fish (through a Chapter 2 misison), you'll basically have access to everything outside of the horse fence, and the story moves along at a slower pace in Chapter 2 which lends itself to more exploration. Now, some of the strangers are chapter specific, so you won't have access to all of them until a little later. On my second playthrough I prioritized side content in Chapter 2, while still taking on the occasional story mission to drive things forward; I had completed all of the satchels before Chapter 3, along with most of the legendary hunts, and completed all the camp stuff early on in Chapter 3. I completely cleared any remaining stranger quests early in Chapter 4 which left me free to prioritize the story going forward.
Also, without spoiling anything, there are a couple strangers/sidequests that don't appear until Chapter 6, and they're easy to miss if you're sticking to the story. I highly recommend finding them, as they are some of the best side content in the game, and open up a deeper look into the complexity of Arthur's character.
I wish they'd hurry up and release the soundtrack. It's got some brilliant moments; May I Stand Unshaken, That's the Way It Is, whatever that song is that plays when you're descending out of the mountains at the end of Chapter 1. There's a mission in the epilogue that has a very unique song associated with it, and that song is currently stuck in my head, and I can't even play it to get it out of my head without loading some random YouTube video to find it. Release the soundtrack! And the score while you're at it!
is RDR 2 considered profitable at the moment. with the resources their putting in online its not making the same money as GTA Online?
I'm still waiting for this too. Shortly after the game came out they announced the soundtrack would be released, but that was about 5 months ago now.
remember when everyone thought Arthur was going to be generic in trailer #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F63h3v9QV7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F63h3v9QV7w
After a few weeks of playing mostly FF14 (great game), it's crazy to come back to this and see just how amazing a game can look and feel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-DzZBdMRYA
i love this scene. Dutch often peddles his philosophy to those who are uneducated. The moment he has to defend his ideas to someone equally as educated like Lenny, he gets angry and defensive
he wants affirmation not debate
i love this scene. Dutch often peddles his philosophy to those who are uneducated. The moment he has to defend his ideas to someone equally as educated like Lenny, he gets angry and defensive
he wants affirmation not debate
Yeah, I wonder that myself.
There were characters in GTA5 that were done decently well, like I think Trevor and Lamar were the most well done characters in that game... Even though Trevor is, obviously, a horrible person, he actually has complex emotional motivations as opposed to characters like Michael and Franklin. Michael's motivations are incoherent. Franklin's are as generic and one-sided as you can get ("MONEY!"). Trevor, while a horrible person and obviously a psycho, actually has very interesting psychologically deep motivations... The weird relationship with his mother and as a result with other people, his really twisted but consistent sense of right and wrong, how he sees himself compared to other people. There's stuff that that the other characters in that game just don't have.
GTA, though, is just overly cynical. All the characters (except for Trevor, I think), hate the world that they live in. Every character from the most minor NPC, to the dominant protagonist, to all of the antagonists and side characters, are deeply cynical, and it makes the story one-sided, bland, and exhausting. I think you can contrast this to RDR2, where there are cynical characters and cynicism is part of some character's personality, but for the most part, there's an optimism and hopefulness ... which probably comes from Dutch, but it makes for real character change and depth in personalities. If someone dies in GTAV (anybody, side character or not), it doesn't feel consequential because you feel like the characters you play as are so cynical about those characters that it doesn't carry meaning for you, the player. In RDR2, it's the opposite. When characters die (Spoiler: some characters will die in this game!) they feel meaningful and important because you feel like those characters mean something to other characters in the game, and as a result you care about them more.
We'll see... GTAVI will probably go back to the overwhelming cynicism of GTAV. I think the comments the Houser's made about "Writing in the age of Trump" makes sense though. Trump ... is basically the manifestation of GTA's over-the-top hyperbolic characters, except he's that in real human flesh, and so to TOP Trump is so difficult. GTA has always taken a satirical approach, sometimes succeeding but often times failing, but when the mainstream President of the United States is more ridiculous than the satirical political characters that Rockstar has done in the past, it's way harder to then top that.
why does Uncle think Dutch reading too much is a bad thing/problematic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HqU6gL6Wfo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HqU6gL6Wfo
http://tevisthompson.com/its-not-coming-back/
http://tevisthompson.com/its-not-coming-back/
thoughts on Tevis Thompson's critique of the game?
http://tevisthompson.com/its-not-coming-back/
thoughts on Tevis Thompson's critique of the game?
Well...to say it's poorly written is an understatement, says "Arthur is a character without character" (what?), and says people who like the game are basically MAGA hat wearing conservatives (???). I don't think there's anything to discuss.
I just discovered the /r/reddeadmysteries subreddit and there are so many things I haven't discovered in this game yet. I actually stopped reading because I want to stumble across these myself.
That is one of the single worst pieces of critique I have ever read about anything ever. The entire thing reeks of "bitch eating crackers" hatred, where the author's distaste for a game has spilled over into calling it not just possibly the worst game of all time (which is a piece of hyperbole that is frankly offensive in its stupidity), but using it as a cudgel to insist that every critic who liked it is a hack and that players who enjoyed it (or indeed God of War, Celeste or Return of the Obra Dinn, the "mediocre" titles that are somehow making best of the year lists) are somehow the destructive force that is ruining gaming for the truly woke. It is masturbatory horseshit from someone who thinks they know better than the majority of the people. It's fine if you want to sit around sniffing your own farts, but insulting everyone who doesn't think the same way as you makes you sound like an insufferable dipshit. And if you go on to read his review of what makes Assassin's Creed Odyssey one of the best games of the year, nearly all of it applies to Red Dead Redemption 2, a point that he obviously realizes as he has to call it an "alternative to that malakas cowboy game" at the end lest his hypocrisy be on full display. Just worthless sputtering outrage.
I did agree with his take on Subnautica. Brilliant, underrated game, and I highly encourage everyone to check it out.
That's Micah & Hosea, right? Maybe the wrong video.
But, Uncle being an old hillbilly is probably suspicious of people reading educational material. Likely for the same reason that John is suspicious of his son reading books in RDR1 & 2, just a general skepticism of academia, which is associated with urban folks, government, etc.
This is a pointlessly stupid rant which isn't even about Red Dead Redemption II, and doesn't explain any of why the author feels that way... The author just keeps stating "it's a con" As if saying that over and over again, and saying it in different ways over and over again, makes it true.
If someone can play the game and legitimately thinks that the characters, character development, and story are bad, then I really don't think they have taste, or they hate the game for other reasons and have already made up their mind about it and have decided it's all terrible. I think the criticism of gameplay mechanics and mission design in Rockstar games is true and if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing, but if you could stomach the mission design and gameplay mechanics enough to play through the game, and you reach that conclusion about characters and character development, then you're just not a smart person.
There are many points that are just objectively wrong in it, like how RDRII is a story about "white frontier freedom." It really isn't. Red Dead Redemption 1 is a story about "white frontier freedom," about how civilization and the government is sweeping further throughout the previously lawless west. But almost none of RDRII is about that. Red Dead Redemption II is a relationship drama from the very beginning through to the end. And RDRII tells more compelling stories about non-White characters, in a better way, than any major game in the last 5 or 10 years, maybe longer. A lot of games that feature prominent people of color or non-white characters, especially in the "AAA" category (As much as I dislike the phrase, most people get what I mean by it), treat race or being non-white as just a fact of their characters, but something that the game never addresses why it matters. For instance, Alyx Vance is a person of color in Half-Life 2, but Alyx Vance could be white, black, Asian, Dutch Irish, or Inuit and it really wouldn't change any of her character because her race is more or less just a factual accident of her character (this isn't a criticism of HL2, Valve, or Alyx Vance either, it's just how it is... and HL2 came out in ~2002 or whenever so that game was generally ahead of the curve making female POC characters that weren't just sexual eye candy for the player).
Beyond that, the main thesis of this post is about how like this 'idealized' view of White America "is not coming back," or something, but ... Red Dead Redemption II is not an idealized view of the West, it's an anti-Western. And for someone who thinks critically and writes about videogames to not realize that about RDRII is ... just a major gap in understanding.
But, personally, I suspect that author hates the game for other reasons, or never actually played it, and so is writing that conclusion as a hot take to generate a reaction.
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I'm just about to wrap up the story on my second playthrough (I only have the final mission of the Epilogue to go). I have one final stranger questline outstandning (Evelyn Miller), and a bounty hunting target, and then it's just a matter of wrapping up all the collectables; I've still got to find some dino bones, do 20 or so challenges, get 8 or so legendary fish, 3 legendary animals, 3 levels of hunting requests, 30 cigarette cards, 2 more robbery types (which I'll get as part of the bandit challenges), and a couple gang hideouts. There's too much content in this game. I am curious to try 100%ing it, although I'll never get all the trophies because I'm not touching the online with a 60 foot pole.
It's just why would that guy accuse us of liking the game as not being true gamers? Like what kind of criticism is that
Boy, just finished the game (not epilogue) and what a great story that was! Arthur Morgon is one of my favourite protagonist ever. A question. Is there a pay-off to playing the epilogue? I've played a few minutes and i'm kind of meh about it. Can i call it quits now without missing anything major?