Incredibly, I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for something like two years now. It’s not because it’s a damn long game (though it definitely can be.) Rather, it’s a game I decided to play almost exclusively while my partner watched along, owing largely to the fact that she played it a few years prior and absolutely loved it, and was stoked to watch me play through it. In the end, I think I put something like 160 hours into it, and that is with barely touching hunting, fishing, herb gathering, or crafting. Unfortunately, I don’t really think our particular approach to playing a game sort-of together is very compatible with a game so time-consuming. That is, it can be hard enough for one of us to be both in the mood and with the free time to play a game like this, but for that to align for us both? Lessons learned!
“Probably my favorite Read Dead Redemption 2 screenshot.”
Still, Red Dead Redemption 2 was lauded by critics and fans alike when it launched in 2018, winning various awards and topping Game of the Year lists, so it’s not like I didn’t want to play it myself. I did have a bit of a strange relationship with the first game though – a fan of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series, which of course RDR shares most of its non-Western genre related DNA with, it took me a while to finally get around to playing it, and when I did, I think I found it a bit slow to start, and a bit too mechanically similar to GTA IV. Still, like GTA IV itself, by the time it was over, it had fully won me over owing largely to its characters and its incredible virtual world, polished up with Rockstar’s usual massive production values and an attention to detail bordering on insanity.
Looking back at my impressions of Red Dead Redemption, it’s interesting just how many of my notes on RDR2 align with those of the first game. For instance, while I wouldn’t call RDR2 slow to start exactly, the introduction is still sometimes criticized as taking some effort to get through before the game really begins. I’d also say that, yes, RDR2 can still feel quite “clunky” with its priority for completing its incredible but often rather lengthy animations over player control, sometimes causing some odd object clipping or, more often in this game, characters to sort of slide to locations if they’re close to objects they need to interact with, but not quite close enough to do so. Perhaps necessary trade-offs, but this kind of thing can sometimes shatter the otherwise effective illusion. Just like the first game though, I’m sure most players will get used to the “feel” of the engine after a while, which largely alleviates those annoyances.
“The infamous Dutch and our boy Arthur”
One big difference this time around though, is that this animation priority combines with some serious control issues to occasionally result in outright rage inducing moments. The controls of RDR2 aren’t too dissimilar from the first game, or indeed GTA IV and GTA V, yet due to the additional level of simulation Rockstar was going for here, they’ve crammed quite a bit more complexity into them. A button tap versus a longer press here and there, sure, but the major culprit is context sensitivity. That is, having the same buttons do different things depending on the situation. As a relatively mundane example that happened to me right at the end of my playthrough, I’d just saved a “stranger” NPC from being attacked by a mountain lion. I approached him to talk to him, but forgot I still had my gun in my hand. It just so happens that the “focus on a character” and the “aim your gun” buttons are the same, depending on if you’re armed. Instead of having a friendly exchange, or maybe even getting rewarded for lending a helping hand, I pointed my pistol right at the poor bastard’s head and threatened to kill the man, resulting in him understandably fleeing in sheer terror. Whelp… This is far from the worst case of this happening to me, and wacky anecdotes of a similar nature abound all over the Internet. It’s less about not knowing how the controls work, and more about them not always doing what you want or expect them to do in the moment, and that perceived loss of agency over your character’s actions is far more aggravating. Couple that in with getting trapped in a long, unbreakable animation, and doing something you didn’t mean to do can be incredibly frustrating. There might have been some damn difficult moments in previous Rockstar games, but I don’t recall ever being as controller-throwingly angry as I was several times throughout my playthrough of RDR2.
“Dutch giving one of his speeches around the campfire.”
You know, with a lesser game, that could have killed it for me – rage quit, uninstall, move on, right? Thankfully, RDR2 is not a lesser game. RDR2 is a masterclass of building an incredibly immersive and detailed virtual world. With its enormous map representing huge swaths of the United States for a variety of beautiful and believable climates, flora, and fauna, plus towns and even a legitimate city this time around. As with my time in the first game, I rarely ever used its fast travel, preferring to ride between locations, which provided more opportunity to enjoy the amazing scenery, as well as organically experience its excellently implemented random encounters and side quests, helping the world feel a bit more alive than in previous games. When my parents stayed with us recently, it was the first game I whipped out to show them, and they just watched me travel around randomly, as enthralled as if they were watching a good movie. It’s one of those games. While nothing is perfect, RDR2 is a technical and artistic masterpiece, definitely snatching the crown from GTA V as the next evolution of Rockstar’s “RAGE” engine, if not the entire genre they helped create.
I also really enjoyed the narrative this time around. The way it tied in the characters and events from the first game was wonderfully effective. It might be one of the best prequels of any sort I’ve ever experienced, to the point where I had to wonder if a great deal of the context and backstory RDR2 provides to the first game wasn’t already written. In fact, it really makes me want to go back and play RDR again. Still, I suppose the fact that our protagonist, Arthur Morgan, wasn’t mentioned at all in the first game probably settles that though. Speaking of which, Roger Clark did a bang up job as Arthur, as did Rob Wiethoff and Benjamin Byron Davis as John Marston and Dutch van der Linde. Really, as a whole, the VA performances in this game were terrific, and the soundtrack, while a bit different than what we got in the first game, was also great. I mentioned the more serious tone in my RDR review, and I’m happy to say that with the exception of the occasional silly side mission, RDR2 is perhaps even more tonally consistent this time around, and while there may still be the odd Western movie stereotype here and there, the vast majority of its characters felt much more realistic to boot.
“Charge!”
So yeah, there are still some other gripes to be had, like the game save and the fast travel systems, the way the game always wants to put my weapons away, or force me to use certain ones, and the fact that missions still feel oddly derivative of the good old Grand Theft Auto formula (though they’re a bit better obfuscated this time around) plus it’s definitely a bummer that we never saw any DLC released for the game, and that Red Dead Online seems to have been something of a failure, but overall, despite all of these complaints, I think Red Dead Redemption 2 is a triumph, and its existence elevates the already brilliant first game. If there is ever another Red Dead game, I hope it’s with a whole new cast of characters rather than another prequel (maybe showing the Van der Linde Gang at an earlier stage) or a proper sequel following Jack Martson. I’m happy with this story where it is, personally.
(I just might make an exception for a Sadie Adler bounty hunting spin off, though… 😛)