Red Dead Redemption 2

You’re never going to be able to sit and enjoy scenery in a gta online how it’s at least possible to in red dead online without serial murderers immediately coming to harass you despite being the exact same thing with different set dressing

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sign me the fuck up

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Can I cite this text in my pre-order

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One of those things where it’s like yeah, sure RDR is basically as perfect as a game can get, and there’s nothing I would improve; then I’d go listing off stupid shit that devs would never think of like growing and shrinking horse testicles, and R* comes along somehow managing to find more ways to innovate and perfect; meeting, surpassing and railing all expectations. Well, fingers crossed, anyway!

btw this is even more impressive if you assume, as i have, that this is not something that actual horse testicles actually do

just Rockstar tryin to think of ways to make the game world a bit better than real life

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I’m still having trouble understanding what people are taking from the marketing materials versus projecting themselves based on the (Red Dead Redemption 1 * Rockstar’s bottemless development budget). My read is that the pitch is almost identical to the pitch of any modern AAA open-world: live a life inside the bounds of our proscribed fantasy; they support this by showing small systems that were either present in the first game or other competitors: heists, card games, camping, hunting. Normally ‘epic scale’ is the primary beat hit in these, but Rockstar appears to be playing this one conservatively, although the language I hear people using implies they’re still viewing that as a takeaway.

They’re not selling this on a few standout features, or a high-concept like ‘your free bandit life’ or the first game’s ‘the end of the west’. In fact, the narrative thrust they’ve shown and the emphasis they’re putting on it implies to me that the narrative is downplayed within the game. This may reflect how important the multiplayer mode is to the game as a 5-year+ product.

It just feels so strange to me that Rockstar is hitting the same language everyone uses to market these things and getting a categorically different reaction. Was GTAV so strong people have upgraded their opinion of Rockstar?

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I had the same reaction but imo you’re overthinking it: it’s not that GTAV was incredible, it’s that the last red dead was easily the best GTA game, and this is the next red dead. I think we imagine it as downbeat by comparison to GTA but it was actually a fairly huge success, and it’s more memorable to its audience than anything else they’ve done except maybe vice city. I think the average person likes rockstar more than they liked GTA 4 or 5 specifically.

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a downbeat, mildly thoughtful version of a big brash popular thing is actually incredibly mainstream

The main thing I’ve taken away from the previews and that has me the most excited to play the game is the left trigger contextual menu you use to interact with the game world. Whatever you’re looking at you can press the left trigger to bring up a context-sensitive menu of face buttons that adjust in real time based on what’s happening. So when you greet someone you see your options change automatically when that person responds. It all sounds very organic.

When you have a weapon equipped you just aim it obviously but when weapons are holstered it sounds like the game becomes a lot more like the context-sensitive menus from Bully only more fleshed out and applicable to more than just person-to-person interactions. One preview mentioned pulling this menu up when looking at your horse and having the option to brush it among other things. Likewise when you look through the sales catalog in a store it’s an actual physical magazine you thumb through instead of just an abstract menu screen.

The promise from the preview material and from what they’ve shown so far in closed door play sessions is that they’re able to maintain that level of abstraction-free interaction across the board for the entire game. You interact with things seamlessly. Likewise the game seems to be promising more seamless transitions between gameplay and cutscenes (like the opening scenes with Franklin in GTA V) without fading to black or loading in and out. What counts as a main story mission versus a side mission is supposedly blurred as well with characters just existing in the world and as you go around talking with and interacting with people blips appear on the hud whenever you hear someone mention something that might be important or cutscenes trigger as you approach certain people and places.

At least these are the impressions I’ve been getting listening to people who’ve seen or played the game talk about it. That’s kind of how I’m hoping the game turns out. I can see Rockstar playing it low key and not hyping the game up as much because it’s already the most hyped game of the year and positive word of mouth from people sharing their water cooler conversation experiences with each other will do more to sell the game than anything. Though a few hours of uncut gameplay footage would be very nice and likely give a better impression of what the game actually is than just describing it or having other people describe it.

Anyway I just read this article and if this is true I will lose my shit.

https://rockstarintel.com/2018/10/02/spoilers-red-dead-redemption-2s-map-will-include-redacted/

It is also coming to PC which the original didnt and is crazy.

is it? I don’t think they’ve said that…

Yeah I don’t think they’ve announced a PC version yet. The general assumption is that they will eventually though.

Also you can get fat so you know Sam Houser has his hands in this.

Are you all buying/preordering the standard or special edition?

Just the regular version for me since I think all the DLC is likely to be multiplayer focused anyway. And because I’m still a bit salty about never getting any singleplayer store expansions for GTA V.