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!
Finish the epilogue. Seriously. It's a bit slow at first, but there are some genuinely great moments, particularly the very last mission. You'll be doing yourself a disservice by not finishing it, even if you just read or watch it. Just burn through the missions one after another, it doesn't take too long if you do it that way. The epilogues (and small cutscenes during the credits) give some answers to things that happened at the end of the main story.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?
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?
The epilogue offers some nice closure and sets the scene for Red Dead Redemption 1 if you've played it or intend to. It's also got some genuinely good missions. The first few are slow, but it picks up. And, of course, it opens up an enormous section of map you couldn't visit during the main story. It's not a bad thing to take a break for a few days to process the main story, but I would recommend completing the epilogue after 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?
Alright, will take a few days off before doing the epilogue. The end of chapter 6 drained me emotionally andJohn sucks
Well this is crap.
I just started the epilogue.
Seems the horses you had as Arthur are all gone, even Buell you get from Hamish, that fucking sucks, I didn't even get to ride him.
Please tell me Buell respawns.
Aaah too bad sounds like you can't.
I unlocked Buell in the epilogue.
It does kinda make sense that the horses are gone from Arthur, John's a different person and 8 years pass between the end of the game and the Epilogue. Too bad for people who just unlocked Buell in Chapter 6.
Didn't even know you could do the stranger missions in the epilogue.
Will think about that when replaying the game someday.
Yeah, this. Some of the challenges are cool and interesting, but virtually everything about how they are presented and executed within the game is implemented very poorly. That said, completing one set in each of the three areas (stamina, health and dead eye) is a good way to get a stat boost; completing one challenge group to completion gives you an additional bar, and completing all three gives you a second bar (it's the only way to max your stats). Here's which challenges boost what:So trying to complete the challenges was a mistake. I got annoyed especially at tbe bandit ones and basically lost interest to play.
Now Im just focusing on the story again while doing the occasional hunting for upgrades and I'm loving the game again.
The game has no difficulty settings and is already super easy even without crafting so I think I'll just complete the story and then go back to the more mundane things. It was actually the bandit challenge that I was trying to do because I was trying to roleplay as a good guy so I figured I would get that out of the way first. But it was so repetitive and I was just not having fun and losing a ton of honor so I gave up lolYeah, this. Some of the challenges are cool and interesting, but virtually everything about how they are presented and executed within the game is implemented very poorly. That said, completing one set in each of the three areas (stamina, health and dead eye) is a good way to get a stat boost; completing one challenge group to completion gives you an additional bar, and completing all three gives you a second bar (it's the only way to max your stats). Here's which challenges boost what:
Health: Herbalist, Hunter, Weapons Expert
Stamina: Survivalist, Horseman, Explorer
Dead Eye: Bandit, Gambler, Sharpshooter
You flat-out cannot complete Herbalist or Horseman before the epilogue, and I don't believe you can do Survivalist either, so don't worry about those early on (you can do them as you go, obviously, but eventually you'll hit a wall, so if you're only interested in the initial stat boost, they aren't a good choice). Explorer is the easiest and most fun challenge set, so there's Stamina wrapped up. I vastly preferred Hunter to Weapons Expert, so I recommend that for your Health option. Bandit is annoying but can be done early. Gambler is obnoxious RNG, but some of the sidegames are actually fun (poker is always fun, and I actually enjoy the domino game where you have to have sides divisible by 5). Sharpshooter would be my choice for Dead Eye (I actually ended up getting Gambler first, but Sharpshooter is entertaining). So if you just do those three - Explorer, Hunter, Sharpshooter - you'll get the best stat boosts you can manage before the epilogue, and none of them are particularly grindy.
Note that to get the stat boosts, you have to buy the complete item sets from the Trapper in each respective group, and they only fully unlock upon completing Challenge 10 in any respective group.
I don't believe they count towards 100% completion, no.Do companion item requests affect the story in any way if I don't get them?
Ok and it doesnt change cutscenes or the ending or whatever?
No, nothing like that. They just give you an extra item at your tent like a health potion or cigar or whatever. There's not even much of a cutscene associated with giving them to people. It's pointless.
Wraps are purely cosmetic, they don't offer any stat boost. And any weapon customization that does impact weapon stats has to be equipped on the weapon to make a difference to stats for that weapon (e.g. giving a shotgun a longer barrel gives a slight improvement to the accuracy stat, but that boost goes away if you shorten the barrel again).Do wraps still apply to weapons if I buy them but don't have them equipped similar to bandoliers and satchels or not?
That was chapter 3, I know because I just finished it a few hours ago :(A couple weeks after release. It's been improved since, but it doesn't feel like the lighting is completely restored to the way it looked on release. But it's a real subtle difference that could easily be in my head; it still looks fantastic.
I just did Horseman challenge 9; 17 minute dry dash from Van Horn to Blackwater. They should call that challenge "A Long Ride in a Pretty Game" as homage to the chapter 4 mission "A Short Walk in a Pretty Town." A max bonded Arabian is blindingly fast.
I've gotten so used to big thoroughbreds that I didn't really pay attention, but the black Arabian from the Saint Denis stables is a rocket in comparison to the horse I had for most of the game.That was chapter 3, I know because I just finished it a few hours ago :(
Also Ive tried various horses and tbh I dont notice a huge speed difference, maybe they need to be side by side idk. I have a pretty good race horse that I bought from the stables too, along with the fastest saddle and max bonding.
I've had three faster horses than my hungarian halfbred and they've all died on me lol.I've gotten so used to big thoroughbreds that I didn't really pay attention, but the black Arabian from the Saint Denis stables is a rocket in comparison to the horse I had for most of the game.
That was a great article (warning; it has major spoilers for basically the entire plot). I don't necessarily agree with everything either, but at least he lays out his arguments well (as opposed to that other critical piece that was posted where the author simply says that people who don't agree with him aren't real gamers). I didn't have nearly as much issue with the controls as he did, but I still accidentally put my fishing pole away while I'm trying to bait it, so that certainly rings true. And his point about the overall difficulty of the game is bang on; the only real change becomes "ok, now instead of 5 enemies there are 50 enemies." The shooting is passable, but it's not really good enough to be the sole gameplay mechanic for engaging with the world. I mean, hell, the game goes out of its way to say "there are so many things that you can do besides shooting; you can talk to everybody!" OK, fine. So why does every single mission become a shooting gallery?Article on the game from Film Crit Hulk here. Well, I say article but small novella might be more accurate!
Some good points in there, goes more in-depth with views he's aired on Twitter. Whilst I don't necessarily agree with them all I can certainly see how he's formed his views and how they'll resonate with a lot of people.
He also covers a lot of ground on the issues that I also had with the main narrative thrust of the title. As someone who truly loved the game and thinks Arthur's ending is one of my favourite from any game I've seen there were certainly a lot of moments that had me scratching my head as to reasoning. The main one for me is that it's never made clear as to why Arthur trusts Dutch so implicitly beyond him literally saying it. As the author says, we as the gamer never get to see Dutch in the way that Arthur does. We're just supposed to accept that viewpoint but without being shown why.
Anyway, there's a lot to digest but it's well worth a read.
That was chapter 3, I know because I just finished it a few hours ago :(
Also Ive tried various horses and tbh I dont notice a huge speed difference, maybe they need to be side by side idk. I have a pretty good race horse that I bought from the stables too, along with the fastest saddle and max bonding.
I've gotten so used to big thoroughbreds that I didn't really pay attention, but the black Arabian from the Saint Denis stables is a rocket in comparison to the horse I had for most of the game.
Ive had challenges with slow horses so it probably just hasnt triggered yet.I noticed when you have a fast horse, you'll get challenges from people looking to race you. I had a fast horse from Saint Denis for a while and routinely got challenged to ad hoc races, which I stupidly declined at the time because I'd be in the middle of something. But after going back to a slower horse, I haven't had that challenge again yet.
I've gotten challenged to a race on a basic Morgan in my first playthrough. After I won, the lady I raced shot her horse and killed mine through it. I haven't bothered accepting another race proposal. With my current horse (the black Arabian), people just comment on what a nice looking horse it is. One person said "that horse looks better than my wife," which seems untoward.I noticed when you have a fast horse, you'll get challenges from people looking to race you. I had a fast horse from Saint Denis for a while and routinely got challenged to ad hoc races, which I stupidly declined at the time because I'd be in the middle of something. But after going back to a slower horse, I haven't had that challenge again yet.
One more point about this article (again, good read, but lots of spoilers, so don't read it unless you've finished the game). The author talks about how the quest for immersion ultimately ends up reducing our immersion because humans don't think through actions the way the game wants us to. Why isn't there a single button press to search a wardrobe as opposed to pressing a button to open each drawer individually? It's not immersive to be continually pressing a button to perform single actions that make up part of a larger action. But I think the author misses an opportunity; in a game that is striving for realism and immersion to the extent that RDR2 is (and the interminable unskippable animations that accompany EVERYTHING), why do we merely need to run near a gun to automatically collect its ammo? The designers intentionally made it so looting bodies has a lengthy animation associated with it every single time; you could say that this forces you to prioritize looting versus fleeing the scene, but it really just serves as padding the length of mundane tasks. But why doesn't this realism extend to needing to pick up the dropped weapons from the ground, remove the bullets and manually put them in your satchel? They skipped that part because it would be cumbersome and terrible in the heat of battle (I actually think it would be cool to run out of ammo and struggle with trying to pull bullets out of another gun - good dramatic tension - but whatever), and it's just not fun. So why, in God's holy name, could they not extend that same philosophy to things like looting furniture or playing blackjack or purchasing items at the store? They knew it wasn't fun to sit through an animation when they didn't include one for gathering ammo, but Lord help you if you want to skip to your hand in a game of poker (after being treated to the SINGLE WINNING ANIMATION THAT EVERY CHARACTER PERFORMS IDENTICALLY).Article on the game from Film Crit Hulk here. Well, I say article but small novella might be more accurate!
Finally started RDR2. It looks amazing and production value is so good, but gameplay is too slow and it's more like a simulator or David Cage games, not an open world game! Is it going like this until the end or it's getting faster in next chapters?
I don't hate this type of gameplay, but in a game like RDR2... don't know.
Yeah, I played more and now it's so better than the first part and I'm enjoying it a lot.Maybe you're still in chapter 1? Chapter 1 is slow and isn't really 'open world'. When chapter 2 begins is when it becomes more 'open world'.
The intro to the game (Chapter 1 specifically, but well into Chapter 2 as well) moves at a very deliberate (slow) pace. It's essentially a glorified tutorial. The game has a lot of different mechanics and it tries to introduce you to them slowly, the practical upshot of which is that it feels like a slog at the beginning. Once the world opens up in Chapter 2 and you start unlocking more abilities by proceeding in the story, the full depth of the game becomes more apparent and more engaging. But the pace stays slow for most of the game, so that's something you'll either get used to or end up hating.Yeah, I played more and now it's so better than the first part and I'm enjoying it a lot.
How is the online currently? I 100% the single player at launch and never touched online.
Did you play GTA Online? Similar mechanics, mostly worse. If you loved GTA Online you might like RD Online. If you hated GTA Online, there's not much to like in Red Dead Online. It's still a 'beta' but I sort of doubt it'll ever take off, IMO.