Finally finished the game for real last night. This game was so damn long and uneven that I flip-flopped on it like six times over the course of it. I think I went through:
- Hated the game for the first twenty-ish hours because of the baroque controls and terribly restrictive mission design
+ Loved exploring the world at my own pace once I was set loose in Chapter 2, finding every interesting spot on the map and drinking in the environmental storytelling and random encounters
- Started getting really tired of the rote "ten minutes of horse riding then a shootout" mission design once I got back on the critical path in Chapter 2/3/4
+ Late Chapter 3/early Chapter 4 the story started picking up, some really memorable moments
- Chapter 5 was ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. Like, holy shit, 99% of it should have stayed on the cutting room floor.
+ Chapter 6 is a goddamn masterpiece from start to finish. What an incredible game. 10/10.
- "There's an epilogue? And it's John? And it's more slow-walking and talking? Oh boy..."
+ *RDR theme kicks in during the first big shootout of the epilogue and I struggle to shoot guys through my tears*
So I don't know what to say about this game overall. You have to play it, if only for the spectacle of what must be the most expensive game ever made. A new musical composition for seemingly every mission, an unending supply of bespoke content it just keeps throwing at you, a giant AAA open world that pulls the Pokemon Gold/Silver trick of, "Oh, by the way, the entire previous game was here the whole time, too". I think this is Rockstar's best story, without a doubt, and Arthur is one of the best characters in this entire medium. What kind of maniacs write a video game story where the strong, unstoppable player character gets tuberculosis and then just slowly, inevitably, dies? This game is going to stick with me for years.
And at the same time, the mission design is just so rote, so repetitive, so goddamn dull, and more often than not it feels like your presence as the player is just a nuisance and Rockstar would have preferred to just show you a 60 hour movie. I can't count the number of times I failed a mission instantly for not following the white text at the bottom of the screen to the letter, something that happened to me literally all the way through the game. I failed the final fight against Micah because I had the temerity to try and run out of cover and shoot him; silly me for assuming I was playing a video game bossfight, right? And that's to say nothing of certain ridiculous design decisions, like the automatic un-equipping of your weapons, the arcane fast-travel rules, and the straight up terrible character and combat controls.
Yeah, I don't know. It is undoubtedly one of the defining games of this generation while at the same time feeling like a dinosaur from the generation before, if not earlier. Nobody else makes games like this, for better and for worse. And Rockstar's culture seems to be so insular that I fully expect whatever their next game is in another ten years to be just as out of touch, but just as unmissable.
