Red Dead Redemption 2 is fun but feels like an exercise in tedium and frustration

BigGuyCIA

BigGuyCIA

Yer fond of me Lobster!
I played give or take 3 hours last night (all spent on the prologue) and felt like I was about to fall asleep and it's not because of the story. It's painfully slow and all of the attached systems are clunky and the opposite of intuitive.

The character's are, as usual, likable and charming, and the premise of the story is good, but god damn I feel like I'm steering a tank when moving the protagonist around.

Hold Triangle to open a drawer, hold Triangle to open the middle one, and hold it again to open the top drawer. Finally hold square to loot a single item. Oh you shifted a little to the left? Spend the next 5 seconds re-adjusting your character so that you can get the prompt to loot the item from the drawer. What the fuck?

Shooting suffers from the same issue. When I shoot the gun I have to hit the trigger again to cock the hammer back or cock the lever on the repeater. You can fan the hammer and hip-fire it faster but god damn does it feel slow compared to RDR1.

There are so many systems in play here, but they're mostly dedicated to pointless details and minutiae like shrinking horse testicles in cold weather, picking up your hat when it falls off during a gun fight, or taking a bath because your character is drenched in mud and blood and people might react differently.

For those of you playing, what are your thoughts and feelings to this game so far? Overhyped?
 
I only very veeery recently started to pay attention to what the hell RDR2 was all about and I instantly picked up on all the realism they wanted out of the game. One video I saw was of the dude riding a horse off of a rock and because the horse was airbound the horse wobbled in the air and the player and the horse ragdollized and when the horse hit the ground it layed there painfully kicking its legs and I thought "wow, that looks like it won't be FUN at all".

It's a game. It's supposed to be fun and sometimes realism needs to take a backseat even if it means the game turns, and prepare your anus for this: Gamey.

From what I've seen, from what I've read and from what you've described to me it flabbergasts me that this will be a smash hit of the century for some godforsaken reason.
 
It takes a lot of cues from Breath of the Wild, but Zelda wisely gameified lots of basic things. Inventory, cooking, collection, etc. I do like the hunting in Red Dead, though. I make it a specific goal to hit the animals in such a way that they die instantly or quickly. Otherwise, I have to put them out of their misery and endure their cries of pain. Rough stuff.

Oh and each time you get on your horse it un-equips your rifles (you can carry 2 at a time) if you ride for ~15 seconds. For some reason, Rockstar thought it would be cool to animate Arthur un-equipping and stowing his rifles on his horse for long rides. Each time I get off the horse I have to access the horse's inventory and re-equip the gear I just had. I'd run instead of ride everywhere but Arthur is as slow as molasses.
 
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BigGuyCIA said:
For some reason, Rockstar thought it would be cool to animate Arthur un-equipping and stowing his rifles on his horse for long rides. Each time I get off the horse I have to access the horse's inventory and re-equip the gear I just had. I'd run instead of ride everywhere but Arthur is as slow as molasses.
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Seems like a widespread criticism from what I've seen. If it's possible, they might patch that out if enough folks hate it.
 
Lal, I'm more and more intrigued the more I read about painfully realistic realism, slowness, boringness, 3 hours on a tutorial?? Oh boy! Seriously! That shit is right down my alley! In fact, one of my game rules is that a game should let me turn away, roll a joint, and get high, without needing to pause.
If I hadn't - to this degree - kind of left game-enthusiasm behind, I'd actually be quite hyped!

I'll probably give it a shot at some point. After all, I did get the silly gold revolver from GTAO
 
I've gotten into the swing of things and it's a lot better. I had to just grind through and get used to the controls (I also adjusted the dead zone so that the camera is more responsive). Arthur still controls like an erratic tank and more granular movement to loot items is rough.

Some notes:

- I still have not seen everything there is. There is a form of emergent gameplay with tip offs of places to burgle and people to rob. I saved a lady on her way to the hangman's noose and she tipped me off about a homestead with valuables north of a lumber town (Strawberry). I haven't done a proper heist outside of two train robberies, the second of which was painful because I had to flee from lawmen on horseback and fight the controls so that I could shoot back.

- Shootouts on horseback while fleeing are just not enjoyable because the horse doesn't have fluid movement for weaving between obstacles. Often times I found myself looking behind me to shoot at chasing enemies only to abruptly hit a rock and fly off my horse.

- There are so many hidden interactions and functions that I'm continuing to find as I play around. In duels in particular you hold down the right trigger to slowly to fill it up and then draw (into dead eye slow-mo mode) to quickly catch your opponent off guard. This mechanic also translates into basic interaction that aren't just duels. For example, a rival gang member (O'Driscoll) near the town post-office was antagonizing/taunting me and I used this same mechanic to quickly gun him down. It's nice to see mechanics that aren't compartmentalized.

- The interaction between gang members is extremely fluid and "lived". Some gang members will request unique items you'll find in the world and you can bring it to them. For example, one character wanted a harmonica which I found later as I was burglarizing a ranch. I haven't seen her use it yet but I haven't stuck around camp long enough.

- You can tell there's rich history between gang members, and you can tell which character's Arthur (you) likes and dislikes. Regardless of his personal feelings he defers to Dutch who he looks up to as a Dad. It's nice to see all of the cast from RDR1 as this big, happy (somewhat) family, and that makes the story of RDR1 that much more tragic because you ultimately know everything ends for most everybody. Funny enough in this Western action simulation game, the most fun and memorable moment I had was literally just fishing with Dutch and Hosea at the end of a mission. You learn a great deal about how deep the connection is between these three during the fishing trip.

- There's an honor/dishonor system which I have ignored. If you're super honorable you get a store discount but I'm not sure what dishonorable weighting does for the character. I'm stuck around the morally gray area and don't find it too difficult to find cash to upgrade my camp or items.

- Robbing trains on your own is fun but there's a time factor before lawmen respond to the robbery and investigate the area you're holding the train (you have to just move quick, force passengers to hand over goods, and book it before lawmen can identify you. The crime/witness system is actually handled quite well and there's a graph which explains it here. There was an incredibly tense moment where I had a $300 bounty in one of the regions, and a posse of 12 bounty hunters showed up looking for me. I managed to de-escalate the situation and they told me to get out of the area because they couldn't positively identify me (I had grown out Arthur's beard, hair, and changed his clothes). I was pretty happy to see that this kind of interaction was possible.

- Upgrading the camp provides various amenities (medicine, food, and ammunition). Medicine and food are especially helpful for long hauls where you need to keep your Health, Energy, and Deadeye cores filled up. The core system is similar to Zelda's stamina system, but you have this central core that acts as a "last chance" before running out of either health, energy, or deadeye. It feels like the cores will drain overtime the longer you're out (3 - 4 ingame days) and you can refresh this by simply sleeping. So far I've found that you can put off sleeping by just slamming down various canned goods to restore each core.
 
Hmm, interesting. I also like games that aren't so 'hyper' and fast. If this comes for the PC I might get it, maybe. By then the chinks might be ironed out.
 
Wow, you guys are making me really not want this game now. I didn't have interest before but it sounds meh. I don't mind it being a slower paced game but the detail stuff sounds a bit much at points.
 
It's one of those games you'll play for several weeks, but once it's over you'll never want to play it again because of how tedious it gets. Replayability is going to suffer with this game.
 
Hulk'O'Saurus said:
More out of curiosity, would you consider the good old Oni to be 'hyper?'
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Haven't played it but looks pretty hyper. Not really into the whole Japanese-style 'Final Fantasy XIVZ' whatever stuff. I do like most of Nintendo's stuff like Mario Kart etc. on consoles because they nicely fit that format.
 
MutantScalper said:
Haven't played it but looks pretty hyper. Not really into the whole Japanese-style 'Final Fantasy XIVZ' whatever stuff. I do like most of Nintendo's stuff like Mario Kart etc. on consoles because they nicely fit that format.
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I see... Oni is a rather well paced game in this regard. It's much more like Onimusha than Devil May Cry, albeit melee combat can be a bit iffy in this regard as some combinations can be difficult... the gun fights are very good, though.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
It's one of those games you'll play for several weeks, but once it's over you'll never want to play it again because of how tedious it gets. Replayability is going to suffer with this game.
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Every single Rockstar game then

I always considered GTA a "must have", I'm a sucker for it, but I never replayed a single one of them

--

Anyway, just finished the tutorial, and yeah - there's a certain degree of clunkyness with all the controls, a lot of micromanaging, but! I'm expecting there to be an emerging pattern with all the complex controller commands, and for all these commands to kind of weave into each others in a bit of an intuitive manner.
That said, I'm also expecting a lot of mis-clicking and cursing at the TV
 
zegh8578 said:
In fact, one of my game rules is that a game should let me turn away, roll a joint, and get high, without needing to pause.
GTAO
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Couldn't abide to it. Even in solo turn-based games, i *usually* pause and go back to the main menu when i am going to take a cigaret.
(few time i didn't, i ended discovering some *features*)
 
WELL that didn't last long
Upon loading a previous save, my revolver was gone, and many people are reporting the same. I shut the game down without allowing it to auto-save, then started it up again, and I got my gun back :I

I am also missing some sort of visual cue that the game is saving. By now I've no idea which of my actions are indeed saved, and which are not. My character appears in a spot I haven't exactly been, but in the rough vicinity of where I'm assuming the game last auto-saved

There's also the over aggressive civilian AI, seemingly copied right over from GTA V. I stood no longer than 5 seconds next to another NPC, before he went on an all-out attack (which is when I noticed my gun was missing)
 
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Sounds like a typical case of skewed priorities and not thinking of the limits of the plataform before implementing stuff, One would think UX (user experience) would be a bigger priority on a Game Development studio than Testicle animations, specially on a AAA game.

BotW and Mario Odyssey managed to pull off their unprecedented level of ambition because Nintendo made sure the core mechanics were fun to use from the get go and then built from there, but with this game it feels like the ego trip of "Let's make a game where Horse balls shrink, and where every single thing gets a unique animation" came first.
 
I think too many reviewers gave this game a high score because of some pre-conceived bias where Rockstar games are good 'just because.' I'm a ways into Chapter 3 and I'm already feeling fatigued. There's little in the way of abstraction and I don't feel like I'm playing a game.

I hope CDPR ignores that subset of their fanbase that wants animation heavy interactions in cyberpunk.

4. In the demo you see V go to her wardrobe and take the high-tech jacket, but we ACTUALLY didn't see it. What if we see V physically extend her arms out to remove it from her closet.
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Not even Rockstar went that far when changing outfits.
 
BigGuyCIA said:
I think too many reviewers gave this game a high score because of some pre-conceived bias where Rockstar games are good 'just because.'
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That tends to be the case most of the time. Rockstar games are are pretty high quality for sure, but whenever the flaws are brought out they're handwaved away since so much work went into the game.

GTAF has a couple fanboys who go out of their way to trash talk GTA IV whenever GTA V is stated to be flawed. The IV fanbase on GTAF are pretty fair and they knowledge IV's shortcomings yet love it nonetheless. But V has some sort of "sacred cow" status to these V fanboys where even a simple criticism like "peds going aggro from standing next to them" is like an attack on the game as a whole. They've gone to the point they've nicknamed IV as GTA Snore out of spite.
 
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