I have a question: What's wrong with me?
For some reason I want to ask this to other people, in hopes that they'll have the insight I need.
Here's the thing, I buy video games twice a year: the summer and winter Steam sales. It's a way of making sure I don't overindulge on games and that I keep my spending in check. Usually I get one big game and a fistful of smaller indie releases, and it gets me through six months. Variety and all that stuff.
After chugging my way through Red Dead Redemption the other month and binging on some Stardew Valley, I've found myself looking for something to play. I cruised through some old favourites - Black Flag is two steps away from greatness, Zen Drift is fun but gets old after a half hour, and I've burnt myself out on Civilization 5. A couple races on Forza are nice, but I'm not as hooked as I used to be.
And now with the whole COVID-pocolypse, my self discipline seems to be withering away. No joke, I kept cruising through the Steam store, adding and reviewing and adding to my wishlist. Once a week. Twice a week. Every other day, cruising what's out there and adding games to my list that I ordinarily would never give a second glance. I needed something to play to unwind every now and then. So I figured, hey, I'll try Warframe! It's free, so that's not breaking the rules, right?
I installed it last Sunday. I've since played 32 hours. The real kicker? I don't even enjoy it that much.
The gameplay is spastic at best. The art direction is ugly and the story is barely there. The UI, while gorgeous, can't obscure the fact that the UX is horrid. I needed to look up beginner guides just to figure out what I should be doing beyond the game's introduction tutorial. And what's with the unwritten rule that says all free to play titles must have an economy that with a minimum of 27 currencies and resources? Yeesh.
But play it I must. Some dark corner in my brain is telling me THIS IS YOUR LIFE NOW. But why? What's wrong with me?
Is a crappy distraction better than no distraction? Is it all because I don't let myself buy games regularly? Or that I'm desperate to occupy my mind from the current circumstances? A couple years ago I told myself I wouldn't get in this cycle of playing (or replaying) games I don't enjoy. I'm at a point in my life where, god damnit, I can afford to buy something worth playing. Life's too short, and all that.
I don't even know any more. Yes, there are definitely more important things I should be doing. But I need to get back to jumping around like a crack rabbit and spamming my flame sword into whoever the bad guys are supposed to be. Obviously that's what's important here.
-Cril
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Dead Dead Redemption 2 - Riding Down a Beautiful, Long, Beautiful Road
I went to see a show. A cabaret, or whatever it's called. The only reason I was there was because it was part of a side mission. The lack of story and action left me feeling pretty bored, until the curtains closed after the second act. And this is where things started clicking into place, because oh my god, the curtains closed with the smooth jerkiness that betrayed a set of hands pulling on ropes behind stage. Yes, they also had simulated fabric physics and the flickering lights around the stage cast dynamic shadows. But for the movement of opening/closing the curtains themselves, a lesser game would have done a simple linear movement with some brief acceleration at the start and end. But in Red Dead Redemption 2, they put extra effort into the stage curtains in order to convince you that there's a some poor schlep slaving away backstage that you'd never really care to see in the first place.
And this, really, is indicative of the rest of the game. Stunningly stupid attention to detail across every axis of the experience. Side missions and chance encounters feature unique dialogue pared to appropriately unique motion capture, with enough writing and quality voice acting make it just half a step from being a core experience of the main story. In most games, it definitely would have passed for being part of the core campaign.
Have you ever zoomed with your sniper rifle to watch the birds? It most games the immersion is immediately broken - the birds are low polygon models rigged with chunky animations. In Red Dead 2, you can see the individual feathers on an eagle's wing flutter about in the wind. Stunning.
I started with these small touches because they are executed so well and there are so many of them that permeate the experience. It's truly mind boggling, and I have never seen another game that's so dense in this regard. GTAV is child's play in comparison, so much so that it feels like these games were two generations apart.
If I'm not careful I'm going to ramble my way through this whole COVID thing. Let me try fit all the fat lady folds of my impressions on this game into a corset of structure and coherency.
Characters & Story
Let me just pause here to say that the rest of this review will have more spoilers than a 2008 Honda forum meetup.
One of the main things that stood out to me in this game was how much I fell in love with the main character. I don't know if I've ever done that before in such an authentic way. It wasn't super witty dialogue or sheer badassery, but a slow, steady burn of little moments that hooked me.
A guilty pleasure of mine was the journal. It really fleshed out Arthur and endeared me to him as a character. On the outside he's a rough, no-nonsense gunslinger. Within his journal were his private thoughts that showed his anxieties, punctuated with sketches of the things you come across in the game. And then once John picks up the journal, of course he writes with a different style of cursive, and of course he sketches in a totally different style. That means that for however many hundred animals and plants and vistas there are, they were all drawn twice so that the journal was authentic to your path through the world and story. All for just a bit of unnecessary character development which irreversibly endeared the cast to me.
The rest of the story was incredible too - there was a great variety of other people in the story, and it was a pleasure to watch them all interact. The way that they served the plot felt genuine and integrated, building a social atmosphere that blanketed the entire tale.
Scattered throughout the game are a fistful of parties that the whole gang attends. And you can roam around and talk to each person and interact. At one point I sat down at the fire to listen to people chat. Javier started playing something on the guitar that everyone started to sing along to, and I received a prompt to join in. I started singing, and it was just so slightly off tune and rhythm that you really felt that these were a bunch of imperfect people making the best of what they had.
Have you heard about the bar scene? You know, 'LENNNNNYYY?!'. It takes place early on in the game, and basically you go out for a night of drinking with the aforementioned young man. The entire thing was goofy as all hell and put a smile on my face. No serious objectives or dialogue, just stumbling around the bar and singing and drinking and goofing around. A wonderful sense of play. It helped to ground and contrast the events later on in the game. It hurt that much more when Lenny was killed. And those gang parties helped to make it hurt that much more when the group began to splinter off at the very end of Arthur's time with the gang.
The antagonists, Dutch and Micah, were wonderfully written and portrayed. It was kind of tragic to watch Dutch slowly succumb to Micah's way of thinking. And you just hated Micah so much.
Maybe it's obvious to everyone already, but I felt clever when I realized that the camp locations match the mental state of Dutch. The first real camp was a beautiful locale that no one had been to before. The next location was taken over by some thugs shaking down a guy for ransom money. Following that was a huge mansion run by rascist ex-confederates, and the final camp took over the home of cannibalistic savages. As you progress through each of those, Dutch keeps bending his moral code from noble optimism to outright taking advantage of and killing people that inconvenience him.
I like that the game was never about OMG WE HAVE TO SAVE THE WORLDDD!!! or even just trying to beat one consistent baddie. It was one long scene about a group of people pulling together to slowly fall apart.
Amusing anecdote: I'd been excited for the game ever since it was first announced, and carefully navigated the slew of reviews and articles following the console launch to avoid spoilers. The PC version hadn't even been announced, but just in case it would be, I wanted to go into it blind.
At work part of my job includes creating profiles of a bunch of individuals with various disAbilities (ugh, that capital A kills me every time, but that's a discussion for later). One guy I talked to was named Matt. He has an intellectual/developmental delay, but one of the things he was really passionate about was Red Dead 2. I ran into him some time in late November - I had begun purchasing parts for a new PC (I was that excited about the game) and was about a week or two from the launch on Steam. I wade an offhand comment to Matt, saying how excited I was to play. Then he said, "Oh, just wait for when Arthur dies and then you start playing as..."
I cut him off and told him I didn't want to know. He kept trying to finish the sentence. I told him to stop, and then had to change the subject to derail his determination to completely spoil the biggest twist of the game. Years of suspense ruined in a casual attempt to make small talk. It was hard to blame Matt, really. It was funny, but I wish I hadn't have been expecting this spoiler the enter time I played.
But there was something I still didn't know: Arther dies of tuberculosis. Well, the death itself changes depending on arbitrary honour choices made along the way (more on that later), but TB leads him to the grave at the very least. How ballsy is that, kill the main character by a common disease that's later totally curable?
Here's the thing, I remember back in Call of Duty Modern Warfare where they killed the US protagonist in a nuclear explosion. That stuck with me as a fantastic gaming memory. Wait, they can't just KILL my character, can they? And it was a well executed, beautifully horrific moment to stumble out of that helicopter and into a radioactive horrorscape. Definitely a pioneering moment for the genre.
But that character? I don't remember his name. White Bread American Soldier Protagonist Template #47, if I recall correctly. I had no emotional attachment to the guy. But Arthur? Losing him hurt. And it was so drawn out, too. A masterclass in writing, character development, and plot. I don't think I've played any game that had storytelling and atmosphere like this in such a large, dense world.
The World
I think I've already given you the idea of how immersive this place is. So much so that it's hard to separate the world from the stories and characters and everything else.
The other thing Rockstar executed flawlessly was the size and variety. They nailed it to absolute perfection; the different biomes are all charming in their own way. Settlements range from small hick-ish towns, to the big bustling city, large raches, and small work camps. These are found in dense forests, rolling plains, the desert, the snowy mountain passes, an oil field, dirty swamp... It's all there, and it's all lovingly crafted.
A big gripe I often see about Grand Theft Auto V is that the map was too small. This is something I never understood, because most players spend 60% of their time downtown, 35% spread between 4-5 other locations, and 5% for the entire rest of the map. Quality > Quantity, people. Making anything larger would've just been a waste of space. I would take a tighter environment with variety any day over huge areas that are so big that you get bored trying to travel from one place to the next.
Red Dead has the right size with the right frequency of new scenery. Yes, as boring as it was to always be riding your horse to and fro, that extra bit of environmental spice kept me impressed with the world I was passing through.
Of course it was dotted with little easter eggs and strange encounters and little vignettes hinting at a greater story. You kinda enjoy peeling back the wrapper of the world one layer at a time. I didn't get quite as addicted to sheer exploration as I did in Breath of the Wild, but it nonetheless captivated and amazed me along the way.
In the final chapter of the game you're running the farm you just built. If you follow some of the icons on the map, you can feed your animals, collect eggs, chop wood, milk the cows. All the standard farm stuff. But because this is in your home territory, you have to walk everywhere. It's slow and tedius. And once your tasks all done you can drop your new goods off on the wagon to sell. And you make a whopping $8. The pittance you get for all that slow effort really highlights what you were bringing in as an outlaw. It's a nice intersection of character development and world-building not through crafting a pretty environment, but the small details that help you connect with the context of the time and place.
Gamplay
Red Dead Redemption 2, though, is still that: a game. It's a champion of the genre in many ways, but falters in some. The thing is that it's a slow game. Sure, the action is alright, but there is so much surrounding it that requires your attention. You have to travel to/from everything you need to do. You can only walk through your camp. Guns need to be cleaned, supplies purchased, animals hunted, horse brushed, stamina filled, health bar to feed, bullet time charged. Looting a dresser? Arthur has to open each dresser, on at a time, in an accurate animation. It's all very meticulous.
And for a long time, I loved it. Pouring over the details, really immersing myself in the world. I think the title is about day to day life just as much as shootin' dudes. I had a blast planning these little excursions half way across the map, stopping to camp along the way, hunting for critters, talking to strangers. I'd feel some tangible relief once I roamed back into camp several days later, excited to sleep in a bed and have someone take care of my horse after I unloaded all the game I had killed for camp supply and furs. I'd set out again a day or two later. Seems silly, but having this home base in a huge beautiful world really made me feel like an expolorer. I loved it.
But I'm not sure if I loved it (checks Steam library) 100 hours much. By about two thirds of the way through, I just kinda wanted to get things over with. The world is stunning and I loved the exploration, but damn that was a lot of sitting back watching my horse on autopilot between destinations. Why can't I just loot an entire desk at once? Is there a way I could just eat food I scavenge right away? How come I can't fast travel on my way back from a destination? Do I really need to travel for 5 minutes for a 2 minute shootout and another 5 minute trip back? Yeesh.
I finished the game because the story had me freaking hooked. I wanted to know how it all unfurled. Here's the catch; I was engaged and enjoyed all the parts of the story. How would you cut it down? I'm not sure, exactly. The epic length and scope brought the story and cast to life. But the gameplay itself was boring the hell out of me.
Part of me was okay with that, in a way. Maybe the designers meant it to be a slow, immersive experience. And yet to get the only way to get a gold rating on most missions was to complete them within a tight time limit. Seems antithetical to all the other design choices they've made.
Other gameplay things: The gunplay itself was satisfying most of the times. There are so many complex actions you need to do that the controls got pretty convoluted. If you buggered up one interaction outside a main mission, you can't just reload and try it again - the world 'resets' after loading a save. On the surface it made it hard to understand how to do things properly. Under the surface, my inner gaming perfectionist was infuriated that I couldn't redo an encounter until I was happy with the results.
Speaking of bad controls, the UI was a mess, especially when it came to quick time events. Do I rapidly tap the button? Hold it down, press it once, click in time? All those interactions were used, and it never really gave you a clear indication of what you were supposed to do. It really broke the immersion, failing a few vital encounters because I was pressing the right button in the wrong way.
The honour system was just weird. I get the point, and I like how it tied into the characters trying to do and be better. Implementation, though, was something that missed the mark. Killing a random stranger? Bad. Looting him? Also bad. Looting a random body you find mauled by a wolf? Bad. Looting a corpse that unlocks a little bit of extra story content? Oh, that's okay. Holding up a store? Bad, obviously. Murdering a whole family because some guy said they had a treasure hidden on their farm? No problem! Yeesh. Rather than feeling like it was an integrated part of the story it was a set of hidden landmines scattered throughout the experience.
Did you know that you can't mail an item that you're currently holding in your hands? Nope, that obviously needs to be stowed on your horse before the postal agent will touch it. Arthur isn't a good swimmer, and drowns after 60s or so of flailing around. Unless you're in a cutscene, where he has no problem swimming a mile back to shore. Back at camp, he has a bench set up by his bed for servicing weapons. Even shows a disassembled pistol and gun oil. But you can't use it, of course - you can only access your arsenal outside the bounds of the camp.
I mean, I get it. The game is massive and requires complex systems to make everything work and serve the story and atmosphere. It sucks to stumble on these weird, small quality of life things jutting out from the pavement. You're walking along totally engrossed in what you're doing, and then something seemingly stupid and inconsequential throws you off stride.
Visuals & Audio
It's gorgeous. You know it's gorgeous. It's probably the prettiest game with a realistic art style you've ever seen. Detailed geometry draped in crisp textures. Fabric dynamics. A masterful use of lighting (like that lamp-lit cabaret I mentioned). Did you know that ear and nose cartilage glows pink when backlit? Another one of those stunning details.
Sound is great too. I ain't no audio engineer, but everything felt... Complete. Footsteps were different based on the surface you were walking on. Opening a dresser drawer sounded like wood-on-wood, and not the same door noise you always hear. Guns and a punch.
The music was expertly crafted, and matched by how effectively it was employeed. A great score and theme music, and a select few haunting conventional songs placed at just the right moment. It would've been so easy to be too heavy-handed with it, but the restraint is what made is impactful.
Again, this game is a masterclass for the genre.
Conclusion
I've written enough, methinks. And I'm pretty sure that, like Red Dead 2, the duration of the experience does not necessarily increase the quality of the experience. And I'm pretty sure that my efforts are no where even close to having a comparable level of finesse and detail.
It's an amazing experience. It's rich in every facet of the experience, and so comprehensively so that it boggles the mind. They through the kitchen sink at every single part of the game, and not a corner was cut. It makes for an intimidatingly high bar for open world games, and I don't know if or when it'll ever be surpassed let alone met.
I just wish things could've been condensed a bit. Even though it was so dense and rich, lingering on slow mechanics and stretching the story out over such a long frame made tedious what could've been satisfyingly captivating.
I've put 105 hours into Red Dead Redemption 2, and feel like it was worth quite a bit more than I paid. It's the defining pinnacle of a generation in the biggest entertainment industry. I just wish I still had the desire get back into the world now that the main story had drawn to a close.
And this, really, is indicative of the rest of the game. Stunningly stupid attention to detail across every axis of the experience. Side missions and chance encounters feature unique dialogue pared to appropriately unique motion capture, with enough writing and quality voice acting make it just half a step from being a core experience of the main story. In most games, it definitely would have passed for being part of the core campaign.
Have you ever zoomed with your sniper rifle to watch the birds? It most games the immersion is immediately broken - the birds are low polygon models rigged with chunky animations. In Red Dead 2, you can see the individual feathers on an eagle's wing flutter about in the wind. Stunning.
I started with these small touches because they are executed so well and there are so many of them that permeate the experience. It's truly mind boggling, and I have never seen another game that's so dense in this regard. GTAV is child's play in comparison, so much so that it feels like these games were two generations apart.
If I'm not careful I'm going to ramble my way through this whole COVID thing. Let me try fit all the fat lady folds of my impressions on this game into a corset of structure and coherency.
Characters & Story
Let me just pause here to say that the rest of this review will have more spoilers than a 2008 Honda forum meetup.
One of the main things that stood out to me in this game was how much I fell in love with the main character. I don't know if I've ever done that before in such an authentic way. It wasn't super witty dialogue or sheer badassery, but a slow, steady burn of little moments that hooked me.
A guilty pleasure of mine was the journal. It really fleshed out Arthur and endeared me to him as a character. On the outside he's a rough, no-nonsense gunslinger. Within his journal were his private thoughts that showed his anxieties, punctuated with sketches of the things you come across in the game. And then once John picks up the journal, of course he writes with a different style of cursive, and of course he sketches in a totally different style. That means that for however many hundred animals and plants and vistas there are, they were all drawn twice so that the journal was authentic to your path through the world and story. All for just a bit of unnecessary character development which irreversibly endeared the cast to me.
The rest of the story was incredible too - there was a great variety of other people in the story, and it was a pleasure to watch them all interact. The way that they served the plot felt genuine and integrated, building a social atmosphere that blanketed the entire tale.
Scattered throughout the game are a fistful of parties that the whole gang attends. And you can roam around and talk to each person and interact. At one point I sat down at the fire to listen to people chat. Javier started playing something on the guitar that everyone started to sing along to, and I received a prompt to join in. I started singing, and it was just so slightly off tune and rhythm that you really felt that these were a bunch of imperfect people making the best of what they had.
Have you heard about the bar scene? You know, 'LENNNNNYYY?!'. It takes place early on in the game, and basically you go out for a night of drinking with the aforementioned young man. The entire thing was goofy as all hell and put a smile on my face. No serious objectives or dialogue, just stumbling around the bar and singing and drinking and goofing around. A wonderful sense of play. It helped to ground and contrast the events later on in the game. It hurt that much more when Lenny was killed. And those gang parties helped to make it hurt that much more when the group began to splinter off at the very end of Arthur's time with the gang.
The antagonists, Dutch and Micah, were wonderfully written and portrayed. It was kind of tragic to watch Dutch slowly succumb to Micah's way of thinking. And you just hated Micah so much.
Maybe it's obvious to everyone already, but I felt clever when I realized that the camp locations match the mental state of Dutch. The first real camp was a beautiful locale that no one had been to before. The next location was taken over by some thugs shaking down a guy for ransom money. Following that was a huge mansion run by rascist ex-confederates, and the final camp took over the home of cannibalistic savages. As you progress through each of those, Dutch keeps bending his moral code from noble optimism to outright taking advantage of and killing people that inconvenience him.
I like that the game was never about OMG WE HAVE TO SAVE THE WORLDDD!!! or even just trying to beat one consistent baddie. It was one long scene about a group of people pulling together to slowly fall apart.
Amusing anecdote: I'd been excited for the game ever since it was first announced, and carefully navigated the slew of reviews and articles following the console launch to avoid spoilers. The PC version hadn't even been announced, but just in case it would be, I wanted to go into it blind.
At work part of my job includes creating profiles of a bunch of individuals with various disAbilities (ugh, that capital A kills me every time, but that's a discussion for later). One guy I talked to was named Matt. He has an intellectual/developmental delay, but one of the things he was really passionate about was Red Dead 2. I ran into him some time in late November - I had begun purchasing parts for a new PC (I was that excited about the game) and was about a week or two from the launch on Steam. I wade an offhand comment to Matt, saying how excited I was to play. Then he said, "Oh, just wait for when Arthur dies and then you start playing as..."
I cut him off and told him I didn't want to know. He kept trying to finish the sentence. I told him to stop, and then had to change the subject to derail his determination to completely spoil the biggest twist of the game. Years of suspense ruined in a casual attempt to make small talk. It was hard to blame Matt, really. It was funny, but I wish I hadn't have been expecting this spoiler the enter time I played.
But there was something I still didn't know: Arther dies of tuberculosis. Well, the death itself changes depending on arbitrary honour choices made along the way (more on that later), but TB leads him to the grave at the very least. How ballsy is that, kill the main character by a common disease that's later totally curable?
Here's the thing, I remember back in Call of Duty Modern Warfare where they killed the US protagonist in a nuclear explosion. That stuck with me as a fantastic gaming memory. Wait, they can't just KILL my character, can they? And it was a well executed, beautifully horrific moment to stumble out of that helicopter and into a radioactive horrorscape. Definitely a pioneering moment for the genre.
But that character? I don't remember his name. White Bread American Soldier Protagonist Template #47, if I recall correctly. I had no emotional attachment to the guy. But Arthur? Losing him hurt. And it was so drawn out, too. A masterclass in writing, character development, and plot. I don't think I've played any game that had storytelling and atmosphere like this in such a large, dense world.
The World
I think I've already given you the idea of how immersive this place is. So much so that it's hard to separate the world from the stories and characters and everything else.
The other thing Rockstar executed flawlessly was the size and variety. They nailed it to absolute perfection; the different biomes are all charming in their own way. Settlements range from small hick-ish towns, to the big bustling city, large raches, and small work camps. These are found in dense forests, rolling plains, the desert, the snowy mountain passes, an oil field, dirty swamp... It's all there, and it's all lovingly crafted.
A big gripe I often see about Grand Theft Auto V is that the map was too small. This is something I never understood, because most players spend 60% of their time downtown, 35% spread between 4-5 other locations, and 5% for the entire rest of the map. Quality > Quantity, people. Making anything larger would've just been a waste of space. I would take a tighter environment with variety any day over huge areas that are so big that you get bored trying to travel from one place to the next.
Red Dead has the right size with the right frequency of new scenery. Yes, as boring as it was to always be riding your horse to and fro, that extra bit of environmental spice kept me impressed with the world I was passing through.
Of course it was dotted with little easter eggs and strange encounters and little vignettes hinting at a greater story. You kinda enjoy peeling back the wrapper of the world one layer at a time. I didn't get quite as addicted to sheer exploration as I did in Breath of the Wild, but it nonetheless captivated and amazed me along the way.
In the final chapter of the game you're running the farm you just built. If you follow some of the icons on the map, you can feed your animals, collect eggs, chop wood, milk the cows. All the standard farm stuff. But because this is in your home territory, you have to walk everywhere. It's slow and tedius. And once your tasks all done you can drop your new goods off on the wagon to sell. And you make a whopping $8. The pittance you get for all that slow effort really highlights what you were bringing in as an outlaw. It's a nice intersection of character development and world-building not through crafting a pretty environment, but the small details that help you connect with the context of the time and place.
Gamplay
Red Dead Redemption 2, though, is still that: a game. It's a champion of the genre in many ways, but falters in some. The thing is that it's a slow game. Sure, the action is alright, but there is so much surrounding it that requires your attention. You have to travel to/from everything you need to do. You can only walk through your camp. Guns need to be cleaned, supplies purchased, animals hunted, horse brushed, stamina filled, health bar to feed, bullet time charged. Looting a dresser? Arthur has to open each dresser, on at a time, in an accurate animation. It's all very meticulous.
And for a long time, I loved it. Pouring over the details, really immersing myself in the world. I think the title is about day to day life just as much as shootin' dudes. I had a blast planning these little excursions half way across the map, stopping to camp along the way, hunting for critters, talking to strangers. I'd feel some tangible relief once I roamed back into camp several days later, excited to sleep in a bed and have someone take care of my horse after I unloaded all the game I had killed for camp supply and furs. I'd set out again a day or two later. Seems silly, but having this home base in a huge beautiful world really made me feel like an expolorer. I loved it.
But I'm not sure if I loved it (checks Steam library) 100 hours much. By about two thirds of the way through, I just kinda wanted to get things over with. The world is stunning and I loved the exploration, but damn that was a lot of sitting back watching my horse on autopilot between destinations. Why can't I just loot an entire desk at once? Is there a way I could just eat food I scavenge right away? How come I can't fast travel on my way back from a destination? Do I really need to travel for 5 minutes for a 2 minute shootout and another 5 minute trip back? Yeesh.
I finished the game because the story had me freaking hooked. I wanted to know how it all unfurled. Here's the catch; I was engaged and enjoyed all the parts of the story. How would you cut it down? I'm not sure, exactly. The epic length and scope brought the story and cast to life. But the gameplay itself was boring the hell out of me.
Part of me was okay with that, in a way. Maybe the designers meant it to be a slow, immersive experience. And yet to get the only way to get a gold rating on most missions was to complete them within a tight time limit. Seems antithetical to all the other design choices they've made.
Other gameplay things: The gunplay itself was satisfying most of the times. There are so many complex actions you need to do that the controls got pretty convoluted. If you buggered up one interaction outside a main mission, you can't just reload and try it again - the world 'resets' after loading a save. On the surface it made it hard to understand how to do things properly. Under the surface, my inner gaming perfectionist was infuriated that I couldn't redo an encounter until I was happy with the results.
Speaking of bad controls, the UI was a mess, especially when it came to quick time events. Do I rapidly tap the button? Hold it down, press it once, click in time? All those interactions were used, and it never really gave you a clear indication of what you were supposed to do. It really broke the immersion, failing a few vital encounters because I was pressing the right button in the wrong way.
The honour system was just weird. I get the point, and I like how it tied into the characters trying to do and be better. Implementation, though, was something that missed the mark. Killing a random stranger? Bad. Looting him? Also bad. Looting a random body you find mauled by a wolf? Bad. Looting a corpse that unlocks a little bit of extra story content? Oh, that's okay. Holding up a store? Bad, obviously. Murdering a whole family because some guy said they had a treasure hidden on their farm? No problem! Yeesh. Rather than feeling like it was an integrated part of the story it was a set of hidden landmines scattered throughout the experience.
Did you know that you can't mail an item that you're currently holding in your hands? Nope, that obviously needs to be stowed on your horse before the postal agent will touch it. Arthur isn't a good swimmer, and drowns after 60s or so of flailing around. Unless you're in a cutscene, where he has no problem swimming a mile back to shore. Back at camp, he has a bench set up by his bed for servicing weapons. Even shows a disassembled pistol and gun oil. But you can't use it, of course - you can only access your arsenal outside the bounds of the camp.
I mean, I get it. The game is massive and requires complex systems to make everything work and serve the story and atmosphere. It sucks to stumble on these weird, small quality of life things jutting out from the pavement. You're walking along totally engrossed in what you're doing, and then something seemingly stupid and inconsequential throws you off stride.
Visuals & Audio
It's gorgeous. You know it's gorgeous. It's probably the prettiest game with a realistic art style you've ever seen. Detailed geometry draped in crisp textures. Fabric dynamics. A masterful use of lighting (like that lamp-lit cabaret I mentioned). Did you know that ear and nose cartilage glows pink when backlit? Another one of those stunning details.
Sound is great too. I ain't no audio engineer, but everything felt... Complete. Footsteps were different based on the surface you were walking on. Opening a dresser drawer sounded like wood-on-wood, and not the same door noise you always hear. Guns and a punch.
The music was expertly crafted, and matched by how effectively it was employeed. A great score and theme music, and a select few haunting conventional songs placed at just the right moment. It would've been so easy to be too heavy-handed with it, but the restraint is what made is impactful.
Again, this game is a masterclass for the genre.
Conclusion
I've written enough, methinks. And I'm pretty sure that, like Red Dead 2, the duration of the experience does not necessarily increase the quality of the experience. And I'm pretty sure that my efforts are no where even close to having a comparable level of finesse and detail.
It's an amazing experience. It's rich in every facet of the experience, and so comprehensively so that it boggles the mind. They through the kitchen sink at every single part of the game, and not a corner was cut. It makes for an intimidatingly high bar for open world games, and I don't know if or when it'll ever be surpassed let alone met.
I just wish things could've been condensed a bit. Even though it was so dense and rich, lingering on slow mechanics and stretching the story out over such a long frame made tedious what could've been satisfyingly captivating.
I've put 105 hours into Red Dead Redemption 2, and feel like it was worth quite a bit more than I paid. It's the defining pinnacle of a generation in the biggest entertainment industry. I just wish I still had the desire get back into the world now that the main story had drawn to a close.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)