Red Dead Redemption 2
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I’ve never been a colossal fan of the Red Dead series. Not to say that I don’t like the series, it just hasn’t meant a lot to me over the years. To this day I have never even played the first game in the series, Red Dead Revolver. I did play through Red Dead Redemption one time back in 2010, but honestly I remember very little about my time with the game. I recall it being similar to Grand Theft Auto, but with a western setting. I also remember lots of long and tedious horseback riding scenes. That’s about it.
When Red Dead 2 hit store shelves late last year, it was to great critical acclaim. Best game ever! A modern masterpiece! I was in no major rush to play the game, however. Unless it is a series I am absolutely nuts over, I am not the type of person to run out and play a game right away. I knew I would play it eventually, when the time was right. Well, the time was finally right here in the summer of 2019. What are my thoughts on Red Dead 2? Read on to find out.
Story:
This game is a prequel to the original Red Dead Redemption. The year is 1899 and the age of outlaws in the Wild West is dying. Cities are being built, civilizations are rising. Organized law enforcement is spreading across the United States. It’s not a good time to be an outlaw. Which of course, is exactly what you are in this game.
Dutch van der Linde is the leader of the appropriately named van der Linde Gang. This once feared group of outlaws used to be a force to be reckoned with in the Wild West. But things change. After a disastrous ferry heist in the town of Blackwater, the van der Linde Gang is forced to pack their bags and flee, leaving their accumulated wealth behind. Realizing that the age of outlaws is about to end, Dutch decides that his gang needs to save up enough money so that they can disband, shake the law, and retire from the life of crime.
You take control of a gang member named Arthur Morgan. Arthur is Dutch’s right-hand man and most trusted advisor. Your group sets up camp, and as Arthur, you head out to find work and take on missions that will help the gang out.
All right. So that is the basic setup of the game’s story. What about the rest of the game? Long story short, things don’t always go according to plan. Some missions are succesful, others go disastrously wrong. You’re forced to relocate your camp while evading the law several times throughout the course of the game. Dutch always seems to promise “just one more job, one more big score” but these turn out to be empty promises. As gang members die, plans go south, and money starts to dry up, things begin to fall apart within the van der Linde Gang. I don’t want to spoil too much of where the story goes, but it is very organic and natural feeling, and fascinating to watch and be a part of.
Once the story really gets rolling, you will see that there is more to it than just robbing banks and pulling off heists. The van der Linde gang is composed of twenty some members, all of which you can interact with, and all of which play a part in this story. One of them you will recognize as John Marston, protagonist of the first Red Dead Redemption. Getting to know these characters is a big part of the game’s appeal. You don’t just look at this group as a gang of evil thugs, you look at them as people.
And your character, Arthur Morgan. At first I wasn’t really sold on him and I just viewed him as a generic gruff cowboy type that was more of a player avatar than an actual interesting character. The longer I played, the more he began to grow on me. For being a criminal, he’s got a good heart and a pretty reasonable moral code (depending on how you decide to play him, I guess). By the time the game ended, I had become very attached to Arthur’s character.
This is definitely a well-written game with great, memorable characters and an engaging storyline. One of the best parts of playing was seeing what kind of trouble the gang was going to get themselves into next. Unlike many games, this one’s ending is very satisfying. The lengthy epilogue not only provides a sense of closure to this game’s storyline, but bridges things into the events of the first Red Dead. Like I said in my intro, I don’t really remember much about my time with that game. After playing Red Dead 2 and being introduced to several characters that I KNOW are in the other game, I can’t wait to give it another shot and see what happens to these characters in the future.
Gameplay:
This game has so much depth to it that I could write about its gameplay for hours on end, and still probably miss a lot of important things. I’m not that thorough, however, so I am just going to try to make this as basic as possible.
You control Arthur Morgan from a behind-the-back perspective. You can walk, run, jump, shoot, talk to people, all the kind of stuff you’d expect from a game like this. A basic day in the game consists of you waking up in your camp. You wander around camp, talk to people, get the overall mood of the group. You can do things in camp like donate items to the group, donate money you’ve earned, eat, shave, sleep, upgrade camp equipment, do chores, and take on “fetch” missions for people in the group. You can even go fishing and hunting and bring the spoils of your journey back to share with everyone.
Open up your map to check out missions or tasks in the area. Story missions are marked by a yellow indicator. Side missions and “stranger” missions (where you assist random strangers) are marked by white indicators. The white indicators may disappear after a while, so I always prioritized these over the story missions, which I knew would be around forever. Mark the misison on your map, hop on your horse, and head off to find the mission.
Something interesting about this game are the randomly generated events you encounter as you ride around the countryside. These are similar to stranger missions, but much shorter. For example, you’ll be riding through the woods when you’ll hear someone shouting for help. A small white dot appears on your map. Go to the dot, and you’ll encounter an individual in need of some kind of assistance. It could be someone getting robbed, someone looking to rob YOU, someone getting attacked by wolves, someone who needs a ride because their horse died, someone trying to escape from bounty hunters, the possibilities are endless. You can either help the person out, screw them over and rob them, or ignore them completely. These missions don’t add anything to the game’s main story, but they do add a lot of depth and authenticity to the world of the game. There is a LOT of lengthy traveling in this game, so I am glad they threw in these little events to help break up the monotony of traveling from place to place.
As far as actual missions go, there are a wide variety of mission types. Rob a train, rob a bank, rob a doctor’s office, rob a stagecoach, rob a mansion, rob a…. okay I am messing with you. You do rob a lot of stuff, but that isn’t all you do. Other missions include burning a tobacco field to help spark a war between two rival families, rescuing people in your group when they are kidnapped or captured by law enforcement, taking on actual legal jobs for people, delivering things, taking on bounties, escorting people from point to point, and attending a fancy party to make friends in high places. There are a bajillion other missions out there to take on, but none of them are immediately coming to mind. Take my word for it that the mission types are varied enough to keep your interest for hours on end.
When you aren’t taking on missions, it is up to you to do… well, whatever you want. Go to a saloon and have a drink. Go to a hotel and take a hot bath (for a little extra money, you can even pay to have an attractive woman scrub you clean). Go fishing. Go hunt for legendary creatures. Go door to door, meeting people and seeing who you can shake down for money. Collect furs, herbs, and other resources that you can either use for yourself, donate to the camp, or sell. Play poker. Play Five Finger Fillet. Play blackjack. Play dominoes. Just ride around on your horse and explore. There is SO much to see and do in this game.
Red Dead 2 pays very close attention to small details. Use your gun too many times, or fall off your horse into a pile of mud and it will make your weapons dirty and inefficient to use. Open up the in-game menu to clean and maintain your weapons. You also have to eat to keep your health and stamina up. You have to feed your horse for the same reason. You bond with your horse as you play, making it faster and more responsive to your commands. I found myself clicking L3, which is the button where you talk to your horse, quite often as I played. Eaaassssy boy. You can also brush and pet your horse to raise your bonding level with it. A lot was made of this horse bonding system in the previews I read, but really I found that it didn’t make too much of a difference what bonding level my horse was at. Same thing with maintaining my weapons too. I probably could have just ignored both of these aspects of the game and had a very similar (maybe slightly tougher) time playing as I did while being on top of maintaining things. The point I am trying to make – you can do these things but you don’t necessarily have to do them to get maximum enjoyment out of the game.
Now we segue into what I didn’t like about the gameplay. And there is a lot here to unpack. But you know what I am going to save that for my overall comments, which seems to have turned into the place where I do all my bitching whenever I write a game review. Stay tuned. This is gonna be good.
Graphics:
Undeniably, this game looks really good. Gorgeous landscapes, detailed characters, small personal details everywhere you look. The grass sways in the wind, the muddy ground splashes beneath your horse’s hooves, the weather changes in a realistic manner. You could just ride around looking at things, not even taking on any quests or missions. This game looks so dang good. Interestingly enough, the game’s good looks don’t really translate well to screenshots. I always think this game looks so dull whenever I see screenshots of it, even the ones I took myself. You almost have to see Red Dead 2 in motion to get an understanding of its full scope. Its graphics are magnificent.
Sound:
The game’s sound is also terrific. I love the voice acting in this game. Okay? I just love it. Arthur Morgan’s in particular. There is something very soothing and comforting about his voice that I just can’t put my finger on. When I am home alone and I talk to myself or to my cat, I do it in his voice. All the other voice work is really good too, and this voice work really adds a ton of personality to the characters of the game.
The world of Red Dead 2 sounds alive. Take a relaxing horse ride through a wooded area at night, and you can hear the wind blowing, the crickets chirping, and the distant sound of cows mooing in the background. All the little towns and cities sound alive with the voices of people and the clanking of machinery. Saloons are raucous, churches are appropriately quiet. The sound of water from the game’s various rivers and lakes is very realistic. The ambient music that plays from time to time always fits the mood of the game. You will notice a lot of really cool small details, like the way your gunshots sound different depending on where you are when you fire the gun. If you are inside a busy saloon, your gunshots crack and are really loud. When you are outside in a spacious area, the sounds of your shots echo and are carried by the wind.
There is literally nothing I can complain about when it comes to this game’s sound.
Overall:
Red Dead 2 gets a lot of hype from reviewers. So many people I know consider this to be an all-time classic and one of the greatest games ever made. Because of this, I came into Red Dead 2 expecting it to completely blow my mind and be a virtual lock for an A+ final score. So would this game live up to its lofty expectations?
Yes and no. To give credit where it is due, the scope of this game is amazing. The world of the game is massive, it is gorgeous, and it is SO realistic with its small details. The amount of work that went into creating such a giant and realistic world is impressive, even more so when you consider that I didn’t run into any technical glitches or crashes that wrecked the game for me, like I saw plenty of in Fallout and Skyrim.
There is so much to see and do in the world of Red Dead. The story of the main quest is great. The characters are great. The missions are fun and varied. There is a lot to love about this game.
But now we turn our attention to the negative.
The pace of the game is slow. It’s reaaalllllly freaking slow. I would always groan whenever I’d have to come to camp, because things slow down so much when you are in camp. You can’t ride your horse, so you have to get out and walk around on foot. That’s fine. But you can’t run in camp either, so you are stuck walking around at an absolute snail’s pace. Things slow down like this occasionally during missions as well, and it is just infuriating to me. I get trying to be realistic, but it often seems like they slow things down just to artificially make the game feel longer. I’m sure if you were to ask one of the designers of the game, they’d say something about immersion, but to me it did the exact opposite. It irritated the living crap out of me.
A lot of the things you do seem unnecessary and pointless. I already mentioned the horse bonding and the gun cleaning. You also have to feed your character and make sure he gets sleep. You have to do chores around camp, like chopping wood and carrying bales of hay around. There are several missions where you have to go out fishing for long periods of time. I get bored easily by fishing in real life. As you can imagine I wasn’t a huge fan of being forced to fish in a game that I play in order to try and escape from the real world.
My major complaint is all the lengthy travel time. Let’s say you just finished a mission on the very edge of the game map, and the next mission available to you is back at camp. You have to travel allll the way back to camp, hop off your horse, walk like a snail through the camp until you get to the mission marker, watch a custscene, slowly walk all the way back through camp to get to your horse, hop on the horse, mark where you need to go on your map, notice that it’s alllll the way on the other side of the map, and then ride to the next mission marker. It took you ten minutes to get to camp to begin with. Now you’re going to be riding another ten minutes until you get to where you need to get for the mission. A lot of times you can’t even travel at top speed. You’ll have companions traveling with you, and you need to go at their speed or risk leaving them behind and failing the mission. All the traveling is so obnoxious to me. It made things feel like an absolute chore at times.
The combat system seems outdated. The whole lock-on gunplay thing doesn’t seem to have evolved much since the days of Grand Theft Auto Vice City or San Andreas. You barely even have to aim at your enemies. Just look in their general direction and pull out your weapon and you will lock onto them. Now all you need to do is shoot. Most missions were a complete breeze to me, and the dead-eye slow motion mode made things even easier in my opinion. If you are looking for a challenge, this game doesn’t offer much in terms of difficulty.
That said, I did experience some moments of frustration. Often I would want to just talk to somebody, but if you have your weapon selected, you will point your gun at them and it will cause an issue. They could try to fight you, or run from you, or sic the police on you. So many times I ended up “Wanted” with a bounty on my head over some stupid mistake or wrong push of the button. One time I was in Saint Denis, and I was a few steps from a mission marker when I accidentally bumped into someone with my horse and knocked him down and trampled him. All of a sudden I am wanted for murder, the mission marker disappearing until I shook my wanted status. I tried to escape, but I ended up getting in a gunfight with the feds and racking up a massive bounty that I had to pay off at the post office. A 20 minute detour that cost me money and reputation points, when I was soooo close to the mission marker. Really, really annoying. I hated going through Saint Denis because I always seemed to get in some kind of trouble with the law that would sidetrack my progress through the story missions.
As you can see, I had a lot of issues with Read Dead 2. Overall I liked the game, however. Is it a perfect game, deserving of one of my rare A+ final scores? No. Too often this game felt like a chore. Too often things dragged on and on and on unnecessarily. Too many times something annoying would happen that would put a price on my head and hinder my ability to advance the game’s story. Too many long horse rides, fishing expeditions, and boring conversations that were almost enough to put me to sleep. This game definitely has its flaws.
That said, I still enjoyed it. The creative missions kept me interested. You bust a man out of prison in a hot air balloon, for cripe’s sake. But what really kept me going was the storyline. Watching the van der Linde gang fall apart after failed mission after failed mission. Watching Arthur’s reactions to the shit-show around him, and how much the tone of the game changes late in the game when you *spoiler alert* find out Arthur has something very wrong with him. Tuberculosis. His diagnosis adds an extra layer of desperation and finality to the journey of the gang.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a good game, maybe even a great game. I can’t argue with that. But is it a masterpiece? Is it one of those games that will go down as one of the best of all time? In my opinion, no. I do plan to play this game again sometime in the future, so maybe my mind will change on my second playthrough, knowing what to expect from the game this time around. But for now I simply consider this a really good, really detailed and well-made game with a great story and a memorable cast of characters. I REALLY want to play Red Dead 1 now and see how this journey ends because honestly, I don’t remember any of it. And I am invested now.
Final Score:
A
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