Man, I feel so spoiled by the likes of the Elder Scrolls mega-reviews/in-depth content that I see this 30 minute review and go "aww man ONLY half an hour..."
It's honestly a real issue for me cuz I feel like I never wanna click on any videos under 45 minutes lol, I bet I'm missing out on some really good vids
The only point of relevance in the Caribbean part imo is when Arthur and Dutch are with that old lady Dutch kills about to climb the ladder and that's when Arthur finally sees what Dutch has become. That's the only reason that part exists imo.
It's clear that Guarma was supposed to be this game's version of Mexico, but it was not fully realized because of development constraints, so the devs salvaged what they could.
you see this is the one part where I really dont understand the reasoning the story tries to impart. Of all the murders Dutch committed this was arguably one of the more understandable ones - if you're chased by a bunch of torturers who literally cut prisoners arms off and stuff off that sort and then a person youve entrusted your safety and confidentiality on suddenly starts going against the original terms you agreed to (demanding more money and implicitely threatening to rat you out) then I would have absolutely no faith that they wouldnt just go back on their word again afterwards by selling your secret to the troops for another extra paycheck. Him taking out the old woman was legitimately 100% understandable after she did that. Why should Dutch and Arthur take any chance at all that they'll be gruesomly executed on a woman who has given them every reason to think she isn't reliable or trustworthy. If she had kept with the original agreement then yes it would have been wrong to do it to her, but she entirely invited this upon herself
08:47 chapters are broken up by camp location - but my theory as to why there are 6 chapters and 2 epilogues is that this is a direct nod to Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", which has 6 parts and 2 epilogues. Not to mention that an important character has TB and some other similarities. Never seen this theory anywhere, actually.
Shame that facetiousness is the first thing people jump to when someone else that "games" is an avid reader. That's a great observation, never thought about it before, never really connected Dostoyevsky and RDR2 in general but I have with other literary figures. Primarily Steinbeck, and John Milton's Paradise Lost (and yes I did first make that consideration because of the John Marston/Jim Milton thing).
The reason the movement feels clunky at time is that Rockstar decided putting ragdoll physics on the player character was a good idea for "immersive realism". They did this in GTA4 as well and toned it way back in RDR and GTA5, both of which feel way better. But some genius decided to bring it back for RDR2.
It’s weird too because they culled most of the euphoria parameters in the physics. Someone just put it there, left it empty, so you get all the bloat with none of the fun. Biggest flaw in the game, easily.
I played through this game the winter it came out, during time period of some deeply personal social fracturing and a really intense case of pneumonia. What a wild way to experience that game. Great video.
I know you were sick so that must have been awful as well. I also experienced the game in winter and the opening in the cold mountains immersed me completely. I was cold myself and I could just feel that desperation for someplace warm. I want to know if you relate even though you were sick?
I think Guarma serves as a parallel to whatever Island the Gang wanted to retire to once they have their money. It shows that they would encounter the same problems anywhere else, plus the additional language barrier. Also you see Dutch slipping and murdering that women, which is a major turning point in the story (but they could have done this anywhere else tbf).
I managed to go fishing before you do the fishing mission with Jack. When I noticed the fish in the water, I just shot them with a small game arrow. Perfect, three-star fish every time, and it's a lot quicker. The most annoying thing about the honor system in this game to me, was that killing bounty hunters who come after you does not lose you honor. But if you kill the dogs they use to track you, dogs that will attack you when they catch up to you, does lose you honor. It's just so silly. Anyway, great video over all.
In my playthrough I noticed someone fishing in a canyon. A bit of bad karma later, the fishing rod he was using completely disappeared. 😔 _Some big bad outlaw, can't even steal a stick._
I’m pretty sure Sadie and Charles were written for the purpose of sequel baiting- The way they nearly die but then miraculously survive and leave seamed like the writers really want them to be used in potential sequels. I’ll also mention that I disagree that Sadie’s revenge was portrayed as good thing; she doesn’t seem to find resolution in the end and is still a very angry broken person who “ain’t afraid of dying” (which she says again in the epilogue if i remember correctly), far from the happy wife she says she used to be.
Charles and Sadie would be perfect for a theoretical RDR3 starring Jack. Though how the heck one would set a wild west game in the mid-late 1910's is beyond me... Set it in the Yukon/Alaska maybe? Plenty of old west left in the later gold rushes. Might even be able to shoehorn in a WW1 prologue/epilogue. However I imagine any RDR3 would likely star a new character unrelated to these guys. As RDR1 and RDR2 are kinda written into a corner.
Yes you are right, she is a lonely bounty hunter and she seems just as jaded as ever. I think saying she gets a pass though isn't just in the context of the game but more how the gang seems to treat her with respect and grace despite of her venomous and dangerous outbursts. We are running from the Pinkertons and Cornwall's men and now you want to bring the O'Driscoll's back in?
there's a slim to none chance they are going to make a sequel and spend another decade working on one, they have to do other games, but if that was true that would be pretty cool
@@johnnyquantum8125 Just because a sequel probably isn’t coming doesn’t mean the writers wouldn’t put potential sequel threads in the game. The people writing and developing the game most definitely are *not* the same people funding and greenlighting what gets made over at Rockstar.
@@planescaped Surely a RDR3 would be another prequel right? The events that transpired in Blackwater would be the end of that game? Like you said its a proper stretch to be going further into the 1910s...
The characters, and acting for that matter, are so fucking good that I've honestly found no flaws in all my time playing, until I finished it a few times, and am now here, at this review years later. I still stand by that it's probably my favorite game, full stop. But if it was an animated or live action series with the same equalities then it would be my favorite show instead. I really do love it that much.
I disagree with a couple things. First being that honour doesn't matter. It clearly does. Sure, Arthur dies either way. But to say that people aren't going to be massively invested in how our protagonist goes out is just kinda wrong. I think a more apt criticism is how he goes out should be way more context based than it is. At the end of the fight Micah either decides to shoot you or leaves you to die in peace. There's very little explanation as to why either choice is made. If I was to fix the problem I'd take the major choice of helping John or going after the money away from the player. It would make way more sense. If you've shaped Arthur to be an honorable character he would obviously want to help John. If you've refused to reform him as a man he will keep to his old ways and chase after the money. But then of course Rockstar would've been making the hard decision to let players really feel the consequences of their actions. Most people would've bitched about not having the choice at the end. Either way, its not a perfect fix but I feel like this would've helped the honour system alot. The second being I don't agree that Javier and Bill should've gotten more attention than John. I think they definitely should've been more fleshed out, absolutely. But not at the expense of ignoring John. At the beginning of RDR1 John is a mostly honorable cow poke with a wife and child. We knew he was a blood thirsty outlaw before but the only context were given as to why he's not anymore is that he was abandoned by the gang. The story of RDR1 revolves around John's quest for redemption, but he's already changed as a man. RDR2 is much more about whether or not a man can change at all. Whether Arthurs change throughout the story was his inner goodness finally coming out or a long fought battle to put down his inner demons is left up to you to decide. We needed to see the same from John. We needed to see him start as a selfish, violent asshole and then grapple with that throughout the course of the story so that his character would make sense in RDR1. And frankly, Arthurs redemption at the end of the game wouldn't have felt as impactful if the game had not gone through the process of developing their brother like relationship. But, other than that, great video.
I spent the entire game with one horse. A massive black work horse I named Brick. Brick was tough as nails. Maybe not the fastest horse, but by God, he took bullets, falls and trains like they were just nuisances. When I got to the end and they killed Brick, I yelled. The vocalization came before I could register the emotion. I stayed there, over the body of my constant friend and fired every round I could. I stood there, filled with sorrow and anger, bullets riddling my body, corpses piling around me, until I finally collapsed next to the body of Brick. Most emotional shit I've been through in a game...idk...maybe in my whole life? 10/10. Would cry over a virtual horse again.
My now wife sobbed openly in front of me and her parents when she got to the end and the cut scene where Arthur says thank you to the horse started playing. I've never seen that happen with any game she's ever played before. Or any piece of media she's ever consumed for that matter. I think that moment comes at the perfect time both in the story and with your investment in the story
Reminds me of playing Shadow of the Colossus on the ps2. Being forced to rely upon the horse through the entire game, all while it fought you due to its terrible controls, only for the thing to buck you off at the very end, saving your life while it fell to its death, was a rollercoaster of emotions.
I would disagree with the idea that they didn't characterise Javier and Bill enough 8f you take into account all of the camp conversations and interactions you can see. I spent a day or two in game hanging around camp at each sight just to get as many of said interactions as I could and IMO you get really good characterisations of a lot of the characters.
I think they set up why Bill becomes so hateful in the first game so well, considering how he’s treated by the rest of the gang in a condescending way; Javier is a little weird though, because they built him up to be a somewhat principled guy who understandably becomes loyal to Dutch for staying true to his word, but in RDR1 he was a emotionally manipulative jerk and there was no buildup to how he got that way.
@@Ebiscuses Bill's character was, while very different, believably similar to how he's depicted in RDR1 Javier was just completely retconned from a Cheech & Chong esque bandito, to basically Zorro. I don't know how I feel about it, while on one hand I wouldn't have minded having a comic-relief Javier character, the Javier we got was fairly compelling. I imagine the character change was done due to those cultural concerns alluded to during Charles portion in the video... Really they just traded one stereotype for another if that's the issue, though the Zorro one is perhaps more positive. Still, Zorro-Javier was fine, but I'd have been just as happy with a Latino Heat Eddie Guerrero-Javier, and it would've fit better with the first game. :P
@@Ebiscuses it's to show Javier's character is a shadow of his former self, the gang's breakup as stated in both RDR1 and shown in RDR2 took more of a toll on Javier than pretty much everyone else (aside from Dutch himself and Karen) he went from optimistic, loyal revolutionary in the first 5 chapters to delusional, angry, blindly following gang member when Dutch's sanity cracks to a sleazy, cowardly, manipulative hitman for his government, complete opposite from his RDR2 self and considering all the dialogue about him in the gang in RDR1 and the fact John sheds tears over him but not Bill if you kill them shows that his bond with John and his degeneration in character development between games was probably planned far ahead by Rockstar and not at all a retcon.
@@Ebiscuses Yeah... I think he might be misremembering RDR1 a tad. That said, I have a hunch that Rockstar is secretly working on a RDR1 remake in RDR2's engine, and that if they do, do that then I imagine they'll rework the characters and story a bit too.
26:30 Honestly knowing you are the guy that made those videos really drives the point home about the length of the story. I don't know if it was intentional but you neglected to describe RDR2's story as pedantic-and I totally get why. It's not that it wasted time but rather the scope was so massive that any more time spent on the finer details would have actually been a good thing-the player choice, the linearity, the focus on other characters-a bit more of that and more. 9/10 video, main problem is that it's too short.
I loved the game, but it also left a bitter taste in my mouth and it was mostly because of the story. One of those games I loved, am surprised I didn't love more, and have no desire to play again. I think Patrician put it well when he said it plays more like a television show, for better and for worse. Specifically it has that same epic and unpleasant feel as The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones. While I admit that they were great and well made, I got sick of both of those shows after the first couple seasons. Guess I get the same kinda doldrums from RDR2.
I also think the game is a 9/10, but I wouldn’t mind if the game was a bit shorter. It’s pretty clear that they were out of steam/ideas towards the end. They ran out of a ways to make gun fights interesting fairly early on in the game in my opinion.
The fact that the side stranger missions were my favourite part of the game really cements for me that the story was too chaotic, i didn’t want to do it, not because it didn’t seem pressing, but that i didn’t know if i’d be locked out of certain missions after if i did. made 100%-ing the game a bit of a mess but ah well
I really didn’t like the story my first play through. There was far too many set pieces and I just wanted to be able to control a bit of what would happen but you literally can’t. The only thing that really affects the player is the honor system and wanted level. The first time I played I didn’t even bother gathering herbs and crafting it wasn’t even necessary. I just downed cans of food and tonics id looted. They added so much stuff into the game that you don’t use unless you’re a player going for 100%
@@emmak2849 That's AAA open world for the mass common denominator in general. So laden with crutch features even the target audience see no points in it.
19:22 THIS, holy crap yes to this, dude. The movement controls were easily the worst part of this game, sometimes they were downright painful. There's too many instances I can think of where I found myself fumbling with the movement controls in the middle of gunfights or in exploration, and when I'm playing a veteran gunslinging cowboy, I don't wanna feel like I'm a fumbling, bumbling old man with severe arthritis trying to get into proper cover or clamber up a ledge.
I wholeheartedly agreed with your review. It sucks that the two big open world games of the last couple years (RDR2 and Cyberpunk) are so terrified to LET THE PLAYERS MAKE THEIR OWN WAY IN AN OPEN FUCKING WORLD. It's beyond frustrating. There are so many opportunities for clever storytelling that can only really be achieved in an open world but they always punt them aside in favor of archaic broken nonsense. At this point, the tiniest allowance of expression from the player is a design "innovation."
I think one thing that people don't bring up much about this game was the feat it had in acting. And not voice acting, acting. No video game, not even a Naughty Dog title (probably because they only ever hire Laura and Troy) gets such a diverse cast of actors. All unknowns, that had to audition for their parts (well there is obvious exceptions). As a drama student myself I really read into Roger Clark's performance as Arthur as I find it the single best acting performance in any media. He put so, SO much into it. They way he spits, clears his throat, the accent transformation (I even come from the same part of Ireland he studied in). I find the character writing of the game too perfect. To the point where I would genuinely change nothing. The game was such a life-changer for me. I get that people don't like it for the linearity, fair enough I guess but I think the criticism of character building when it came to the gang members is pretty null. You can decide to spend more time with Bill or Javier. You can rob a coach with them, you can go fishing or even rob a house. If you don't do that, well that's just how you played Arthur, You made him not care. It's a game that honestly, even 4 days isn't enough to see everything. It wants you to have days where you do nothing but sit in camp maybe hunt a little bit. I remember hearing they recorded more than 35 hours worth of performance capture for just all the camp scenes and I agree with that, I've played the main story several hours and I always discover something new. In my 2021 playthrough I had a strange symbol show up right where you can sit at a fire with the guys, only for Arthur to for once get one of those monologues you hear from so many other characters. And it was even a one that Uncle and Lenny chimed in. That shit blew my mind. Most video games don't go for that level at all. Not even try for that matter. All the characters have such a lived in sense to them. The directors must've been a pain to work with and Uncle's actor passing away mid-development I could also imagine caused severe difficulty. Just changing for a voice actor for the scenes that were shot isn't as easy as it sounds. The story isn't one you can just go through. And it is far, FAR from a mess. The game itself demands you take your time with it. Honestly I remember Dunkey re-evaluating the game and he actually completely shifted his opinion of the game entirely. Because he didn't just rush it out for a review. He let himself live in the world. It's not really a game for everyone and I am aware of that, but it is a game that asks you to be patient and let yourself take it all in. And hell, the final chapters that have no Arthur are actually my favourite in the entire game.
I personally found the gang members very dull. I have played games such as Dragon Age Origins that offers far more interesting characters and dialogue options to actually learn about them, in RDR2 it's pretty superficial. Some of the voice actors did a fantastic job I can agree with that (I love Dutch's voice) but the voice recordings sounded a bit off if you ask me. I agree with this video, it's like a 7/10 game, it has tons of flaws but some aspects are brilliant.
@@Skumtomten1 I found quite a bit of the character in dragon age to be dull aside from alstar or morgan (and maybe sten just because he is such a unique no nonsense I don't care about your feelings character). I think what allows dragon age's character to become more than their story is their role in a sudo crpg game. Each character brings something to the table in the game play department (aside from alstar he just sucks in combat). However most crpg game with text and lite voice acting can cram in so much more character development than just strictly VAing it. I find in rdr2 you need to meet it on it's terms to inorder to see the gangmembers in a better light (ie spending so much time in the camp, which is very counter intuitive for a openworld game) .
>it is far, FAR from a mess I feel like Dutch has turned from a potent, charismatic and sympathetic leader into a mumbling psycopath, abandoning his loyalties, only because R* had to make him into a bad guy (as he already was a bad guy in RDR 1). Also if not for the sake of drama, that dissapointing ending with Arthur's death and gang's dissolution wasn't required at all. Dutch himself got a new gang soon and succesfully waged a guerilla war.
One of the biggest problems with the story is that the gang can't go back to Blackwater to get the money because of the botched heist, but there's nothing stopping the gang from returning to St Dennis in Chapter 6 after they botched that heist. This oversight makes that whole chapter feel extremely pointless. GTA5's mission design was similarly restrictive, but it did contain a decent amount of scripted nonlinearity via heist planning and unique interacts that are entirely absent in RDR2. Also, the restrictive mission design was generally in service of creating some truly impressive open world set peices, which are much more few and far between in RDR2. Neither game's mission embrace the open world sandbox as much as they could, but RDR2 is definitely worse. I'm surprised you didn't have much to say about the gunplay. I along with most people tend to find it far too repetitive, with the constant wave-based hordes of human enemies that all die from a head-shot from any weapon. Also, Dead Eye has been drastically slowed down from the first game, which makes it much more of a chore to use. I'm thinking about making a video going through every mission of RDR2 similar to a video I made on Cyberpunk a while back.
I do recall thinking while shooting everyone in -strawberry- valentine after the bank heist that it seemed a bit... much... How tf is the gang supposed to come back from this? Oh the game doesn't really mention it despite making such a huge deal about the same thing happening in Blackwater? Okay...
Hit the nail on the head. You commit several massacres all over the land yet Blackwater is the one place you can't go back to? Must have been on the level of a genocide.
I know this is a perspective no one will care about but everyone criticizes rockstar missions for being linear and can be only played one way but the way they write dialog and narratives to be "like a TV show" actually gets me in the mindset of being an actor. I try my best to play each mission to the script but also as smooth and as flawlessly as possible. This actually gives me ample reason to do repeat playthroughs. Even going through the "boring" parts again, because on my first playthrough of RDR2 I was a mess. I missed a lot of shots, I failed several times, I "went off script," but I get inspired to play it again. This time knowing how to play better and make the scene play out like Im just another character instead of a player not knowing what to do. Thats what appeals to me the most about these games honestly. Just playing the role as in character as possible.
everyone who shares your perspective and Takes role playing seriously probably does Care and playing those Games for role playing purposes is as far as I know Not uncommon I actually think that Most of the Player base plays These Games for that reason, Most people Just do it more casually than you do
But that's why I watch movies. I play games so I can be a movie character and do different things. Playing a game just to act like a movie character is like going to the movie, but blindfolding yourself so you pretend it's an audiobook. If you want to enjoy media like that, that's fine, you enjoy media however you want. But it feels like you aren't taking advantage of the media you're consuming.
For better and for worse, RDR2 is a game that demands you play it at its own pace, which is antithetical to open-world design. Sometimes I appreciate the game slowing me down to look at the world my short attention span often robs me of appreciating. Other times I just want my fucking pump-action shotgun and don't want to be forced to progress the story just to get a new tool to make my own fun with. I enjoyed my time with RDR2 a lot, but I'm still a little mixed on my overall feelings. This is a game I need to sink 200+ hours into before I will come to some final conclusion.
Would be nice if you could, I dunno... put in a cheat? Or mod the fucking game to let the player get them early if they really want them? But I forgot that shit costs money now. >__>
Tbf you can get the pump action shotgun right after you get to Valentine, in the hillbily farm. theres is even a side quest with Javier where you go there. But i get what your saying
3:35 First hunting tutorial teaches to hunt medium sized animals with a bow, second one teaches how to hunt small animals and large legendary animals with different types of firearms. Medium sized animals you can see from a distance and snipe in one shot. Small animals are less visible. you read their tracks first, and you need a weaker weapon to not destroy them while shooting. Legendary animals have a completely different tracking system, and they're way tougher than regular animals, so you need to blast them with all you got.
You're overcomplicating a very simple system. The game doesn't tutorilise hunting smaller animals any differently than it tutorialises hunting bigger animals. Hosea just asks you to shoot a rabbit and you can pass by just shooting it with a revolver or a rifle. Charles just asks you to shoot a deer. These are not special or different from one another.
@@Pedro_Le_Chef Yeah, it's a simple system if 1 star animals are good enough for you. And the game tutorilialises nothing about it if you have some kind of tunnel vision and ignore popups that teach you how to hunt.
19:07 I have some serious PTSD after this exact moment trying to get up that cliff face and Arthur, who normally does things without prompt contextually to help with control, suddenly becomes an absolute muppet.
Discovered your channel a week ago, already watched half your vids and loved them! Very thorough analysis putting accurate words on how I felt playing these games, so here's a sub!
There's a great moment with Sister Calderon from St. Denis late in the game where you can bump into her at a train station. She and Arthur have a really incredible conversation about guilt and forgiveness and Arthur's sickness and what it all may mean. It comes when he's deathly ill and on the run and everything has fallen apart and he's spent the game murdering countless people. It's a little masterpiece in writing, and in performance from both the actors and the digital artists/animators. Arthur's expression at one particular moment in the conversation is how I most remember him. And if I understand it correctly you can only get this moment if you have high honor. Yes, the honor system is regularly illogical and in turn easily gamed and needed a complete rework to function in a truly effective and representative manner (as does the criminal/disguise/witness systems). But it does provide at least what is in my estimation a truly tangible reward and my favorite moment from the game.
I'd like to add to your bit about honor. The last chapter you play Arthur in it's so easy to get honor as most good choices will catapult your honor and take little more than 10-15 mins to complete such as helping Mrs. Downes and her son. It really deflates a 2nd playthrough a bit to know that I can just wipe my slate clean in the final chapter in an hour or 2 after potentially being as big a dickhead as I want with little to no consequences. I love this game so much but my Lord is the honor system so unrefined. Loved the video as always man. Can't wait to see what you cover next.
I feel like a thought criminal for this but I really like the online for this game. It feels like you really get to experience what you were supposed to experience in the singleplayer, minus the story. You get a lot of freedom, though money is a bit more of a hustle. Which I think is interesting because you don't get to experience being "poor" in a lot of games, it's kinda nice to not own the world for once.
I go back and play RDR2 for another 20 hours every 6 months or so. This time instead of single player I’m trying online. You’re absolutely right. Online has me actually bonding with my horse, hunting for food when I get hungry, and toiling over every purchase decision from fishing pole to rifle scope. Feels like a survival game haha. I stayed away from online because the world felt less alive but the gameplay has me completely immersed.
This video video really expressed the inner feeling I had about RDR2 but didn't really know how to express it. Thanks for this analysis it gives me a little more closure about my feelings toward the game.
I think the best way to play rdr2 is to basically pretend to be an actor playing the role of Arthur. When I played the game I deliberately acted more violent and heartless during the first parts and had Arthur slowly become more hesitant to just whip his pistol out as the story progressed and violence routinely worked out badly for the gang. I had the most fun when I didn't even bother trying to play the missions my own way and instead treated their linearity like I was following a script. Instead of trying to complete the missions faster or better I instead aimed to complete them more cinematically, moving Arthur around in emotive ways and trying to control the flow of action in order to create a fight that was more dynamic and interesting to watch. This also allowed me to better engage with the games mechanics. In a normal fight you would never tackle an enemy or pull out your knife instead of reloading because in any situation shooting from behind a single piece of cover is simply the most effective means of fighting.
17:19 yeah this was pretty annoying. When Molly had a marker on her, I thought, “oh a mission about Molly could be interesting. She’s telling us about her and Dutch. Maybe this is the mission where we get to learn more about their relationship, why she’s into him. Is Dutch just against women after his loved died?” Nope. It’s someone else’s mission. Yey
@@alekisighl7599 not everyone stays at the camp. Why bother? Upgrading the camp is a waste of time outside of the fast travel upgrade. So people don’t really have an incentive to stay. You only do it for the sake of it. Incentive is key.
@@alekisighl7599 How about the game include key character moments in main missions and not leave them to missable, time sensitive random camp interactions that 90% of the players will just watch on youtube?
The classic Rockstar busywork and shooting gallery missions gating progress are the main reasons I didn't and probably never will beat this game. I put about 60 hours in just exploring and hunting and buying clothes and shit, which was fun, but every time I had to do another heist gone wrong or whatever I got so tired of it.
Exactly! Thank you! 7/10 game not 10/10. The free roaming in the open world and the story are at odds with each other. They always are in Rockstar games. Even though it was hilarious to see Arthur preach Dutch about killing innocent people in some of the cut scenes when you have had Arthur kill more innocent people in one play session than the whole gang combined, rockstar should still choose one approach to these games. It seems now more than ever after GTA 5 and RDR 2 that Rockstar wants to make these interactive movies with a clearly defined story path but dont want to let go the thing that made the old GTA games famous. The mayhem!
>why introduce hunting and then introduce hunting again? because the second tutorial was about camping and introducing legendary animals, not the mechanics of hunting itself. >regarding Saadie and Black Tonto Saadie doesn't get spared. She winds up childless and alone. She's a bounty hunter and she hates her job, but hunting men is the only thing she's good at so she does it. In her pursuit of vengeance she has wasted the second chance she was given and will die unloved and unmourned. She's a spinster by the time the three amigos hustle up that mountain in the Epilogue's Epilogue. Black Tonto on the other hand is, eh, he doesn't get away scot-free but he does get away cleaner than most. And maybe that's because he was black but then again Lenny got his shit pushed in. I think Charles was just a good sidekick but he didn't serve much function in the narrative outside of that role nor was he interesting enough to really deserve a solid conclusion, so he just wanders off stage at the end.
Does Sadie ever lament that she is "childless and alone" ? I recently replayed the game and don't recall that being mentioned. Sure, you can interpret that for yourself, since she's clearly not too happy with her life in the epilogue. But there was no moment where she really regrets the path she's gone down, and wishes she dealt with losing her home and husband in a different way.
@@uxie6177 that's a different topic entirely, but Sadie in rdr2 by conversations in game was happy with being married and would give anything to go back to that. Because when you're covering the themes of "revenge" and "redemption" there's usually some tragic incident entirely out of the control of the character. Sadie had no culpability in what the o'driscolls did to her, but she is responsible for how she reacts to it. So while I'd agree her having no family in the end (in spite of multiple offers by John to stay at beechers hope) is a sad state, its not really something explicitly stated. The character is employed by the state doing something she's good at, and suffers no consequences due to her vengeful actions earlier in the story.
@@uxie6177 Women in 1899 were not sexually emancipated princesses who could do as they pleased and have it all. Most often they wanted a family and they wanted to do the women's work. We can argue about the finer details about women's lib at some other point if you like, but for the purposes of the story, Sadie was happy with her husband and wanted children. Assuming that she's unhappy she lost her husband and has aged out of possibly having children of her own is not some great leap of logic for Sadie's character of the time period the story takes place in. And dying completely and utterly alone is a horrible fate for anyone, man or woman. Sadie happens to have a pussy so I'm assuming it'll suck for her, too.
this is not a game for everyone but GODDAMN was it for me. never been more immersed in a world and invested in characters like i was with this title. i fucking loved every moment.
i bought this game day one and i notice the first big flaw few hours in. i take a wanted : dead or alive request, i ride my horse for 20 min to get to the criminal, she shoot at me, i shoot back, she die, mission failed, i must load the last save, 20min away and must do everything again. not a single time was there an indication that this request was a alive only request, they imply that it was better to capture the suspect so i imagine that it had 2 reward for 2 way of playing : a frontal approach to kill and a sneak approach to capture, but no. it really disapointed me and show that we don't have a say in a lot of thing.
I just think it's funny how if John never found Sadie in the epilogue or if she wasn't looking for Micah none of the events of the first game would've ever happened. Thanks Sadie
The funny thing is, the best parts of the game are probably the prologue and the first chapter... when you first experience them. They're made worse in retrospect by the realization of how much open world content was gated, pointlessly, behind story progression. I don't know how many hours I spent on expeditions back to the north because I loved the aesthetic and felt like there was so much to explore, only to repeatedly discover that I had to set up more expeditions for magically unlocked content. Feels like the game wasted a lot of my time and, were I to revisit it, I would feel the need to mainline the main story up to a point before going about my open world adventure. The downside to this, and something highlighted by the video and other comments, is that you completely miss a gold mine of interactions if you don't neurotically check in at the camp for a day after every mission. I have such a love-hate relationship with this game. Gah. If only these resources and this phenomenal talent could have been put toward a more cohesive vision.
Rockstar has always had the issue of total freedom in open world and yet 100% hand holding during missions, but RDR 2 so far magnified that more than any other Rockstar game I have played.
27:55 another point on the oil wagon mission, you can even actually sort of fail it if you go and do Micahs stagecoach robbery before getting the wagonand John goes and sets up the wagon for you, which I thought was a pretty cool thing to happen, no clue why this sort of style never rly came up again
I kinda wish there'd been less main story and more "side" missions and stranger stories. More excuses to immerse myself and "live" in the world Rockstar made.
@@sthamansinha243 I got involved with a lot of those when I was actually in camp. But while enjoyable I really want the excuse to go out and do cowboy stuff.
@@sthamansinha243 It's one thing to go off exploring to discover stuff, and another to sit for hours at camp, waiting for some character information and exposition.
The most charitable reading I could offer for the Guarma chapter is maybe it's setting the seeds of Dutch's infatuation with helping other groups of people fight authority for their freedom, regardless of how little Dutch should actually be involved with cultures outside of his own. Problem with that reading is that Dutch does it again later with the plight of the Native Americans, and that better sets up part of his plot for RDR1, so Guarma still felt kinda hollow and pointless.
I think a 7 is a great score, the game does open world very well, and the atmosphere it creates while you wander the world, but the missions still suffer from the rockstar railroading
B, Right, B, Right, Left, X, Y, Up. Locks Wanted Level at 0 in GTA: San Andreas, allowing players the ability to travel over to Las Venturas/San Fierro whenever they wanted. That's the closest Rockstar has come to "not barring large areas of the game behind story progression" and boy do you have to make a lot of progress to open Las Venturas up... Agreed that the company should have been able to deliver a 9/10 minimum but a lack of communication seems to have undone the narrative.
I sat and watched the full half an hour in one go, I cannot help but feel like the 'limited' run of this video has a bit to do with how this game talks a lot but doesn't really say much of anything. That aside, I played this game for the first time last year and your critique got an audible "Yeah, that sounds about right" out of me. I loved parts of it, and it left me wanting more, but ultimately the grind of trying to work up money only to be blocked from buying anything interesting with said money (firearms) because of the 1885 Individual Progression Act which limited any federally recognized protagonist from purchasing a pre-decided list of firearms until an omniscient court of psychic Appalachian hillbillies found them to be necessary to that recognized protagonist and therefor legally allowed to purchase and/or make physical contact with that firearm, wore me down. If memory serves, I believe it was the assault on that cabin in the woods in which you find a new shotgun and get a whole hell of a lot of cash that was stowed away in there, which really reinforced just how much of a pauper I had been by choosing to play the game how I wanted to play it. For as neat as it might have been, and as lovely as it might have been, the game didn't seem to respect me, insisting that I do the stuff it was interested in, and as a result I lost respect for it. Still have yet to beat it, and I'm unlikely to ever do so.
i've played through the game four-ish times, and among the many things that i've grown to not like, the game economy has been one of those. treasure hunts and story missions can easily net you 6k by chapter 3 as long as you save up that money. i also agree with the guns being locked up to a certain point is dumb. the honor and law system are extremely lackluster as well, and it's caused me tons of frustration. i also have issues with the epilogue, like the story and how the endgame is extremely lackluster, but it is a 60+ hour game so its not too much of an issue for me personally. however, there's so much more to RDR2 than its flaws, though i totally respect it if you don't finish it, it is a lot to go through. the story is not perfect and is not linear, and i feel that's 100% the point. it's a downfall of a gang, full of human errors and the characters making realistic decisions, with the threat of the government hunting them and each mistake they make sending them one step closer to the sun. i'll admit, it's sometimes sloppily done, but i feel it's worth trying to get through. but, if the negatives outweigh the positives for you, that's understandable. i won't force you to play something you don't respect or enjoy.
A brave and honest review. You were critical of a game that it's almost illegal to be critical of. I'd say the fact that you're playing with mouse and keyboard hid the worst aspect of the game imo: The aiming/shooting mechanics, which much like other things was done better in RDR1. Finally someone mentions how making bounty hunting into story based, finite missions limits a very fun activity that we used to be able to do in RDR1. Great points about the honor system too. I don't get negative honor for killing bounty hunters but I get negative honor for killing their horse and bloodhounds? Playing free aim means that horses are the prime target to take down a rider. Especially so with the trash aiming controls of this game. Nevermind the fact that It's nigh on impossible to kill the riders without accidentally killing horses either. 19:26 I really wish you had gone into detail because every other reviewer is either too oblivious or too afraid to even mention the fact that RDR1 did a lot of things better, especially gameplay related stuff. Just to mention a few things that RDR1 does substantially better: -Free aiming with a controller -Health and difficulty -Ragdoll physics I do wish you talked about the complete lack of challenge from a game that tries so hard to be realistic, turning you into wild west captain america. You're given an insane amount of damage resistance and you get hundreds of health tonics you can drink one after the other with no side effects or limitations. I'd love to see an RDR1 review if you ever get around to it. The fact that you have the guts to give RDR2 a 7/10, criticize the story mistakes and mention how, in some aspects, it regresses from RDR1 proves that you are an honest and perceptive reviewer. Subbed.
Another gem from one of the best out there at game analysis. He doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and he always takes the time to make sustained arguments backed with relevant examples.
Not gonna lie this is one of my favourite games of all time it really just works for me the story music physics there is some minor issues I have but tbh since playing it there hasn't been any games that I have rated in the same category whatsoever
Please do Kingdom Come Deliverance, minus the obvious problem with saving it really is a great game. It could be fixed if the made a auto-save system and only allowed hard saving for Saviour schnapps, so the item doesn’t lose utter relevance. The bugs are mostly gone and is one of the most in depth roleplaying experiences iv ever had.
Sadie and Charles are kinda hard to say. Because your point does make it seem like they got off scott free but at the same time, why shouldn't they? Why should everyone befall a horrible fate? Why can't a few characters you got to play with make it to the end and then just go their separate ways? Do you remember Pearson? Depending on how much you interacted with him he could be a major character to you and he's still around in the end, scott free. Its just one of those things that if you choose to believe there's some underlying intentions then there will be. But to others, like me, I just think they're cool and happy that they got to move on after a roller-coaster of death.
Sadie and Charles, being actual main characters who were actively involved in the violent crimes of the gang, are much more deserving of hardship and a need for redemption than the camp cook for a bandit gang. Sadie and Charles are given too much emphasis as sympathetic characters for being a widow and an outcast that the writers forgot that these are still bad people. That's honestly the case with most of the gang's characters, it feels rather forced that anyone besides Micah becomes an antagonist and Arthur seems like a weirdo being the only one bothered by his evil lifestyle until John gets his arch in the first game.
For me, the biggest problem with the railroaded prequel story is that you cannot, at any point, make enough money to just leave. You can ONLY work toward getting the Blackwater cache. I ended the game with $20,000 which basically makes at least Arthur a millionaire and the rest of them comfortable.
100% right. If only the game had a choice to have a better ending if you grinded enough money, there finally would be an incentive to do all that open world stuff
Judging by your stance on the topic of '' hollywood action story in open world games '' i guess you hated this aspect of the game. You are also on point about the weapons being locked until advancing the story , i really do not understand why they designed the system like that.
@1:20 that's when I noticed the music in the background and them feelings started overflowing. My god, what a game this is....a masterpiece of storytelling and some of the best gaming has ever delivered. The setting of the game, the dying days of the true kind of outlaws, is just the most perfect period choice for having a character that is intrinsically bad yet somehow so relatable. It's not perfect, ofc, but by the end you'll be left speechless at how a game can make you feel a myriad of ways at the same time.
I agree. The game, despite it's flaws, is an accomplishment and did a lot of things very right. The immersive feeling it imparts is honestly unrivaled, and the world is one of the most vibrant and alive settings a game has ever seen. Just because the story is messy and bloated does take away from RDR2 being a masterpiece. Deus Ex has flaws. Planescape Torment has flaws. Half Life 2 has flaws. Fallout New Vegas has flaws. Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Stardew Valley and Morrowind all have flaws. Nothing is perfect and no game is ever going to be perfect.
>dying days of the true kind of outlaws This message falls really short considering that years later Dutch has a new gang and is succesfully waging a guerilla war. And in 1920 a Prohibition era starts, with John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde etc
You put into words pretty well what i felt about this game. Its a really fun game but also one of the most disappointing games. Every time i play it i feel like i am handcuffed by rockstars arbitrary rules. Supposedly arthur is some outlaw, bandit who is the gangs top earner and as he says himself “shoots people in the back.” Yet at no point in the game does he set up a heist instead always being told to go on one, and if you do try to do your own robbing the game reminds you thats a no no, with a sound and a honor loss tick. So much for being some experienced outlaw.
For me, it was the social progressiveness of the gang. We will rob and kill, but those those other outlaws, they discriminate, which makes them truly worse than us!
One of the core themes of the game is putting trust into the wrong figures in your life. We are powerless, because Arthur is a follower. He listens to Dutch vehemently and is loyal to the point of narrowing his view of the world
Ohh boy, this video's gonna get some knee jerk auto-dislikes from some people. I mean, everyone agrees RDR2 is a masterpiece... doesn't mean it isn't without issues. Nothing's perfect.
@@nagger8216 Oh give it time, they'll be by eventually. The video's only got 4k views. The vast majority of people who will have seen it at this point are likely to be the fans who follow Patrician more closely. And I know RDR2 has a rather zealous fandom who don't take kindly to criticism. @axelord4ever Knew that one was coming :P
Arthur death didn't hit me so hard since I saw a spoiler of it before I finish the game but damn that scene where your horse got killed and Arthur saying "Thank you", that hit right into my heart (Since I didn't see any spoiler of it and I'm thankful for it).
I stopped playing the game when I got to grab 2 things from a drawer in a house I shot up in the middle of the fucking woods because 7 million cops showed up.
One weird thing about Red Dead 2 is that its a mix of like this crazy sim and the robo tank controls from GTA combined with the weird requirement to wait for animations to finish a la dark souls but with shooting. It almost plays like a tech demo or something. I played it on PC and its honestly, as a whole one of the most amazing looking games if you run it at 4k high with hdr on an oled blah blah, but that coat of sheen with the slowish gameplay makes it almost like fine china, its pretty but you're afraid to touch it, and you get penalized for touching too hard. Its just weird, not bad but like weird (weird that they went that direction with red dead 2 of all their franchises instead of like some high fidelity midnight club or something)
Good news, the reason it felt like the game was made by two different people was because it was! Angel Studios(Rockstar San Diego) made every red dead game prior to this one. They were asked(sic:forced) to make a prequel to RDR despite specifically stating they didn't want to touch the other games period. So Rockstar proper forced them to make this game....and then kept adding other studios....and changing the parameters....and forcing them to make changes to basically everything...and then taking control away from Angel Studios and having other dev teams in the rockstar umbrella(sic: Take Two Slave camps) work on parts they wanted changed or done their way. So yes, this game is terrible because it's a hodgepodge, and it is exactly that because Rockstar is a terrible company run by douchebags from england that I honestly believe are trying to one up their parent company Take Two Interactive in being as terrible as humanly possible. But it's also thanks to the work by Angel Studios that makes the game so enjoyable. Imo if RDO was a standalone it'd be great to play
Honestly a lot of the problems you have with the gameplay or storytelling date at least to GTA:SA or GTA:4. GTA:4 in particular adores setting up major characters early and having 'dead end' story branches that seemed like they were going to become central, but didn't. I do enjoy the character aspects of their writing, though the overall narrative arcs can be lumpy or gel poorly with the actual gameplay experience.
Also, I'd opine the whole island side-quest is meant to underline that Dutch's fairytale ending for the gang in some land of milk and honey is so much BS, and people are people anywhere they're found. You can't escape the world as it is and in compromising yourself to try you're doing nothing but degrading yourself and making others miserable.
I agree about the criticisms of the honour system, but I'd say that there are still some big differences between low and high honour at the end of the game. Honour level changes the dialogue interactions with the gang and other characters. The one that stuck in my mind is when Arthur kicks out Strauss, with low honour Arthur does it because he thinks Strauss is useless and can't get any real money, with high honour Arthur does it because he despises Strauss for collecting debts from people, who can't pay it, and at that point, high honour Arthur doesn't care about money at all. And the ending itself does hit different, being a lone wolf and dying for greed versus dying to help your friend escape, while being betrayed by your father figure. But I think it brings another problem, the low honour Arthur just doesn't really fit with the story they've written. With low honour, there is no character development, no story of saving John, who gets to live a life Arthur never had, no redemption. The Dutch, Hosea, Arthur trio doesn't make sense if Arthur is a murdering psychopath, neither does the story of John, Charles and Sadie avenging Arthur. So many things in the story fall apart with low honour playthrough. When it comes to the story overall, I think some of the problems get "fixed" if you spend a lot of time hanging around the camp and doing side stuff, looking at the first 3-4 chapters as a story about a group of outlaws just trying to survive. But, unfortunately, with the way the game is designed not everyone will have that experience, and obviously, not everyone will want to have that experience. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch of a comparison, but it reminds me of Cowboy Bebop, where for the first dozen or so episodes it was mostly just various adventures with no overarching narrative, and the real story with goals and stakes only hit at the very end. Great video though! I loved the game, but I agree about the problems and I found myself thinking similar things after I finished it.
Easy fix to the story integration with fishing, the character just says "Damn, I am rusty" at some point. Now if the player fishes before the tutorial, the character is shaking off the rust, and when they get to the tutorial of showing someone else how to fish, they say "Well, Ima teach you exactly like how I was taught."-- doesn't necessarily betray that the character is an expert or learned really well or had a good teacher, etc. Something along those lines.
Yeah I definitely agree that this game has an exceptional open world that is constrained heavily by its mediocre and forced storyline. I'm glad you mentioned Bill and Javier's characterization in comparison to rdr1. I find it very interesting that both bill and Javier in redemption 1 are basically shown as these scumbag outlaws, but in 2, only Bill is characterized as being a bad person, whereas Javier is shown to be a pretty good guy, and is praised often by Arthur and Dutch. "Phenotype" as you allude to, almost certainly has something to do with it, and I think if you look into the head writers for Rockstar, the Housers (similar to your research in Emil Pagliarulo/ken Rolston in TES) you will find information as to why that is.
The thing that makes the law enforcement system so bad, and the reason they haven't developed it at all is because it's designed for the multiplayer mode. They didn't bother to make a separate system for single player, and it's so repetitive and shitty because they make so much money from the online stuff they focused it on being consistent for multiplayer
For a lot of the reasons you mentioned I didnt really look at this as an open world game, but more a campaign with a lot of extra frosting on the cake. also having played red dead one and having payed pretty good attention I feel like I knew the characters well and they went through some good development. was there missed opportunities? yes, but also when isnt there, it is extremely hard to find a game in which you can play it all the way through and not think of at least one way to make the game better. I agree this game shouldnt prized as some incredible masterpiece brough unto us by the gods, yet still we should enjoy what it is, a game about being cowboys at the end of the west. I mean spaghetti westerns weren't exactly known for there writing
While I generally like this game it has some of the worst controls I've played in the last 8 or so years. I found this weird feature-bug where about 20% - 30% of the time after holstering a weapon when you go to redraw your weapon Arthur will draw a random weapon. This results in things like holstering a rifle and accidentally drawing your bow (even though you may not have used your bow for hours) and then getting mauled by a predator or shot by a bounty hunter. I immediately played RDR1 after playing RDR2 and RDR1 actually had better controls.
I have played this game for hundreds of hours and agree with you on everything EXCEPT mocking the death of Arthur's horse. He was a good boah.
Man, I feel so spoiled by the likes of the Elder Scrolls mega-reviews/in-depth content that I see this 30 minute review and go "aww man ONLY half an hour..."
It's honestly a real issue for me cuz I feel like I never wanna click on any videos under 45 minutes lol, I bet I'm missing out on some really good vids
Rdr2 isnt a deep enough lake to fish in there that long, so to say
The only point of relevance in the Caribbean part imo is when Arthur and Dutch are with that old lady Dutch kills about to climb the ladder and that's when Arthur finally sees what Dutch has become. That's the only reason that part exists imo.
It's clear that Guarma was supposed to be this game's version of Mexico, but it was not fully realized because of development constraints, so the devs salvaged what they could.
I would say it also showed Arthur that the paradise Dutch was promising the gang wasn't really all that great
you see this is the one part where I really dont understand the reasoning the story tries to impart. Of all the murders Dutch committed this was arguably one of the more understandable ones - if you're chased by a bunch of torturers who literally cut prisoners arms off and stuff off that sort and then a person youve entrusted your safety and confidentiality on suddenly starts going against the original terms you agreed to (demanding more money and implicitely threatening to rat you out) then I would have absolutely no faith that they wouldnt just go back on their word again afterwards by selling your secret to the troops for another extra paycheck. Him taking out the old woman was legitimately 100% understandable after she did that. Why should Dutch and Arthur take any chance at all that they'll be gruesomly executed on a woman who has given them every reason to think she isn't reliable or trustworthy. If she had kept with the original agreement then yes it would have been wrong to do it to her, but she entirely invited this upon herself
@@Breaker242 she never stated that but dutch said she would get half the money now and half later he didn't have the other half.
@@Breaker242 do your fucking research
“What is it about this character, the only female charachter, that makes revenge different?”
Good Subtle jab
08:47 chapters are broken up by camp location - but my theory as to why there are 6 chapters and 2 epilogues is that this is a direct nod to Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", which has 6 parts and 2 epilogues.
Not to mention that an important character has TB and some other similarities.
Never seen this theory anywhere, actually.
it's because you're so smart and cool bro
I don't see many gamers reading Dostoyevsky. Me included.
Dude will you like, do my math homework for me? Pleaaaase?!
Shame that facetiousness is the first thing people jump to when someone else that "games" is an avid reader. That's a great observation, never thought about it before, never really connected Dostoyevsky and RDR2 in general but I have with other literary figures. Primarily Steinbeck, and John Milton's Paradise Lost (and yes I did first make that consideration because of the John Marston/Jim Milton thing).
Yeah the whole game is structured just like C&P. That said, it doesn't really serve the game imo
I would give it a 10/10 for the NPC horse crash. He really meant he wasn't stoppin' for no one.
The reason the movement feels clunky at time is that Rockstar decided putting ragdoll physics on the player character was a good idea for "immersive realism". They did this in GTA4 as well and toned it way back in RDR and GTA5, both of which feel way better. But some genius decided to bring it back for RDR2.
It’s weird too because they culled most of the euphoria parameters in the physics. Someone just put it there, left it empty, so you get all the bloat with none of the fun. Biggest flaw in the game, easily.
“The karma can be fixed really quick just by being a TB super spreader in New Orleans”
Lmfao. Killed me.
I played through this game the winter it came out, during time period of some deeply personal social fracturing and a really intense case of pneumonia.
What a wild way to experience that game.
Great video.
I know you were sick so that must have been awful as well. I also experienced the game in winter and the opening in the cold mountains immersed me completely. I was cold myself and I could just feel that desperation for someplace warm. I want to know if you relate even though you were sick?
Very cool
@@annointedbytalos5673 being sick and with bad pneumonia must be really immersive considering Arthur's state of health.
Getting COVID while playing this game probably wasn't the most pleasant of experiences
I think Guarma serves as a parallel to whatever Island the Gang wanted to retire to once they have their money.
It shows that they would encounter the same problems anywhere else, plus the additional language barrier.
Also you see Dutch slipping and murdering that women, which is a major turning point in the story (but they could have done this anywhere else tbf).
Dutch's actions were absolutely excusable
I managed to go fishing before you do the fishing mission with Jack. When I noticed the fish in the water, I just shot them with a small game arrow. Perfect, three-star fish every time, and it's a lot quicker.
The most annoying thing about the honor system in this game to me, was that killing bounty hunters who come after you does not lose you honor. But if you kill the dogs they use to track you, dogs that will attack you when they catch up to you, does lose you honor. It's just so silly.
Anyway, great video over all.
In my playthrough I noticed someone fishing in a canyon. A bit of bad karma later, the fishing rod he was using completely disappeared. 😔 _Some big bad outlaw, can't even steal a stick._
noooo not the heckin wholesome doggarinos
Because we all know that killing dogs is a worst war crime than killing people./s
if you kick each one twice, they will flee, but its such a hinderance
I think it's annoying that killing people doesn't always give you dishonor, but looting their bodies does lmao.
Another problem of saving the side quests and the like for John is that he LARPs as Arthur during them, being far more violent than his usual self.
I’m pretty sure Sadie and Charles were written for the purpose of sequel baiting- The way they nearly die but then miraculously survive and leave seamed like the writers really want them to be used in potential sequels.
I’ll also mention that I disagree that Sadie’s revenge was portrayed as good thing; she doesn’t seem to find resolution in the end and is still a very angry broken person who “ain’t afraid of dying” (which she says again in the epilogue if i remember correctly), far from the happy wife she says she used to be.
Charles and Sadie would be perfect for a theoretical RDR3 starring Jack.
Though how the heck one would set a wild west game in the mid-late 1910's is beyond me... Set it in the Yukon/Alaska maybe? Plenty of old west left in the later gold rushes. Might even be able to shoehorn in a WW1 prologue/epilogue.
However I imagine any RDR3 would likely star a new character unrelated to these guys. As RDR1 and RDR2 are kinda written into a corner.
Yes you are right, she is a lonely bounty hunter and she seems just as jaded as ever. I think saying she gets a pass though isn't just in the context of the game but more how the gang seems to treat her with respect and grace despite of her venomous and dangerous outbursts. We are running from the Pinkertons and Cornwall's men and now you want to bring the O'Driscoll's back in?
there's a slim to none chance they are going to make a sequel and spend another decade working on one, they have to do other games, but if that was true that would be pretty cool
@@johnnyquantum8125 Just because a sequel probably isn’t coming doesn’t mean the writers wouldn’t put potential sequel threads in the game. The people writing and developing the game most definitely are *not* the same people funding and greenlighting what gets made over at Rockstar.
@@planescaped Surely a RDR3 would be another prequel right? The events that transpired in Blackwater would be the end of that game? Like you said its a proper stretch to be going further into the 1910s...
The characters, and acting for that matter, are so fucking good that I've honestly found no flaws in all my time playing, until I finished it a few times, and am now here, at this review years later. I still stand by that it's probably my favorite game, full stop. But if it was an animated or live action series with the same equalities then it would be my favorite show instead. I really do love it that much.
I disagree with a couple things.
First being that honour doesn't matter. It clearly does. Sure, Arthur dies either way. But to say that people aren't going to be massively invested in how our protagonist goes out is just kinda wrong. I think a more apt criticism is how he goes out should be way more context based than it is. At the end of the fight Micah either decides to shoot you or leaves you to die in peace. There's very little explanation as to why either choice is made. If I was to fix the problem I'd take the major choice of helping John or going after the money away from the player. It would make way more sense. If you've shaped Arthur to be an honorable character he would obviously want to help John. If you've refused to reform him as a man he will keep to his old ways and chase after the money. But then of course Rockstar would've been making the hard decision to let players really feel the consequences of their actions. Most people would've bitched about not having the choice at the end. Either way, its not a perfect fix but I feel like this would've helped the honour system alot.
The second being I don't agree that Javier and Bill should've gotten more attention than John. I think they definitely should've been more fleshed out, absolutely. But not at the expense of ignoring John. At the beginning of RDR1 John is a mostly honorable cow poke with a wife and child. We knew he was a blood thirsty outlaw before but the only context were given as to why he's not anymore is that he was abandoned by the gang. The story of RDR1 revolves around John's quest for redemption, but he's already changed as a man. RDR2 is much more about whether or not a man can change at all. Whether Arthurs change throughout the story was his inner goodness finally coming out or a long fought battle to put down his inner demons is left up to you to decide. We needed to see the same from John. We needed to see him start as a selfish, violent asshole and then grapple with that throughout the course of the story so that his character would make sense in RDR1. And frankly, Arthurs redemption at the end of the game wouldn't have felt as impactful if the game had not gone through the process of developing their brother like relationship.
But, other than that, great video.
I feel that they got enough depth honestly. Compared to 1 ofc where we knew barely shit about them we could see a lot about their personality in 2.
I spent the entire game with one horse. A massive black work horse I named Brick. Brick was tough as nails. Maybe not the fastest horse, but by God, he took bullets, falls and trains like they were just nuisances. When I got to the end and they killed Brick, I yelled. The vocalization came before I could register the emotion. I stayed there, over the body of my constant friend and fired every round I could. I stood there, filled with sorrow and anger, bullets riddling my body, corpses piling around me, until I finally collapsed next to the body of Brick. Most emotional shit I've been through in a game...idk...maybe in my whole life? 10/10. Would cry over a virtual horse again.
My now wife sobbed openly in front of me and her parents when she got to the end and the cut scene where Arthur says thank you to the horse started playing. I've never seen that happen with any game she's ever played before. Or any piece of media she's ever consumed for that matter. I think that moment comes at the perfect time both in the story and with your investment in the story
Reminds me of playing Shadow of the Colossus on the ps2. Being forced to rely upon the horse through the entire game, all while it fought you due to its terrible controls, only for the thing to buck you off at the very end, saving your life while it fell to its death, was a rollercoaster of emotions.
Ah, the raven black shire, I love that horse.
Yeah nah, for me, by that point I’d had at least
3 or 4 horses
This is why it's the best character in all of media
I would disagree with the idea that they didn't characterise Javier and Bill enough 8f you take into account all of the camp conversations and interactions you can see. I spent a day or two in game hanging around camp at each sight just to get as many of said interactions as I could and IMO you get really good characterisations of a lot of the characters.
I think they set up why Bill becomes so hateful in the first game so well, considering how he’s treated by the rest of the gang in a condescending way; Javier is a little weird though, because they built him up to be a somewhat principled guy who understandably becomes loyal to Dutch for staying true to his word, but in RDR1 he was a emotionally manipulative jerk and there was no buildup to how he got that way.
@@Ebiscuses Bill's character was, while very different, believably similar to how he's depicted in RDR1
Javier was just completely retconned from a Cheech & Chong esque bandito, to basically Zorro. I don't know how I feel about it, while on one hand I wouldn't have minded having a comic-relief Javier character, the Javier we got was fairly compelling. I imagine the character change was done due to those cultural concerns alluded to during Charles portion in the video...
Really they just traded one stereotype for another if that's the issue, though the Zorro one is perhaps more positive. Still, Zorro-Javier was fine, but I'd have been just as happy with a Latino Heat Eddie Guerrero-Javier, and it would've fit better with the first game. :P
@@Ebiscuses it's to show Javier's character is a shadow of his former self, the gang's breakup as stated in both RDR1 and shown in RDR2 took more of a toll on Javier than pretty much everyone else (aside from Dutch himself and Karen) he went from optimistic, loyal revolutionary in the first 5 chapters to delusional, angry, blindly following gang member when Dutch's sanity cracks to a sleazy, cowardly, manipulative hitman for his government, complete opposite from his RDR2 self and considering all the dialogue about him in the gang in RDR1 and the fact John sheds tears over him but not Bill if you kill them shows that his bond with John and his degeneration in character development between games was probably planned far ahead by Rockstar and not at all a retcon.
@@JazzyRiot79 Never heard spitting on someone’s corpse described as “shedding a tear” before
@@Ebiscuses Yeah... I think he might be misremembering RDR1 a tad.
That said, I have a hunch that Rockstar is secretly working on a RDR1 remake in RDR2's engine, and that if they do, do that then I imagine they'll rework the characters and story a bit too.
26:30 Honestly knowing you are the guy that made those videos really drives the point home about the length of the story.
I don't know if it was intentional but you neglected to describe RDR2's story as pedantic-and I totally get why.
It's not that it wasted time but rather the scope was so massive that any more time spent on the finer details would have actually been a good thing-the player choice, the linearity, the focus on other characters-a bit more of that and more.
9/10 video, main problem is that it's too short.
I loved the game, but it also left a bitter taste in my mouth and it was mostly because of the story.
One of those games I loved, am surprised I didn't love more, and have no desire to play again. I think Patrician put it well when he said it plays more like a television show, for better and for worse. Specifically it has that same epic and unpleasant feel as The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones. While I admit that they were great and well made, I got sick of both of those shows after the first couple seasons. Guess I get the same kinda doldrums from RDR2.
I also think the game is a 9/10, but I wouldn’t mind if the game was a bit shorter. It’s pretty clear that they were out of steam/ideas towards the end. They ran out of a ways to make gun fights interesting fairly early on in the game in my opinion.
The fact that the side stranger missions were my favourite part of the game really cements for me that the story was too chaotic, i didn’t want to do it, not because it didn’t seem pressing, but that i didn’t know if i’d be locked out of certain missions after if i did. made 100%-ing the game a bit of a mess but ah well
I really didn’t like the story my first play through. There was far too many set pieces and I just wanted to be able to control a bit of what would happen but you literally can’t. The only thing that really affects the player is the honor system and wanted level. The first time I played I didn’t even bother gathering herbs and crafting it wasn’t even necessary. I just downed cans of food and tonics id looted. They added so much stuff into the game that you don’t use unless you’re a player going for 100%
@@emmak2849 That's AAA open world for the mass common denominator in general. So laden with crutch features even the target audience see no points in it.
19:22 THIS, holy crap yes to this, dude. The movement controls were easily the worst part of this game, sometimes they were downright painful. There's too many instances I can think of where I found myself fumbling with the movement controls in the middle of gunfights or in exploration, and when I'm playing a veteran gunslinging cowboy, I don't wanna feel like I'm a fumbling, bumbling old man with severe arthritis trying to get into proper cover or clamber up a ledge.
I wholeheartedly agreed with your review. It sucks that the two big open world games of the last couple years (RDR2 and Cyberpunk) are so terrified to LET THE PLAYERS MAKE THEIR OWN WAY IN AN OPEN FUCKING WORLD. It's beyond frustrating.
There are so many opportunities for clever storytelling that can only really be achieved in an open world but they always punt them aside in favor of archaic broken nonsense. At this point, the tiniest allowance of expression from the player is a design "innovation."
I think one thing that people don't bring up much about this game was the feat it had in acting. And not voice acting, acting. No video game, not even a Naughty Dog title (probably because they only ever hire Laura and Troy) gets such a diverse cast of actors. All unknowns, that had to audition for their parts (well there is obvious exceptions). As a drama student myself I really read into Roger Clark's performance as Arthur as I find it the single best acting performance in any media. He put so, SO much into it. They way he spits, clears his throat, the accent transformation (I even come from the same part of Ireland he studied in). I find the character writing of the game too perfect. To the point where I would genuinely change nothing. The game was such a life-changer for me. I get that people don't like it for the linearity, fair enough I guess but I think the criticism of character building when it came to the gang members is pretty null. You can decide to spend more time with Bill or Javier. You can rob a coach with them, you can go fishing or even rob a house. If you don't do that, well that's just how you played Arthur, You made him not care. It's a game that honestly, even 4 days isn't enough to see everything. It wants you to have days where you do nothing but sit in camp maybe hunt a little bit. I remember hearing they recorded more than 35 hours worth of performance capture for just all the camp scenes and I agree with that, I've played the main story several hours and I always discover something new. In my 2021 playthrough I had a strange symbol show up right where you can sit at a fire with the guys, only for Arthur to for once get one of those monologues you hear from so many other characters. And it was even a one that Uncle and Lenny chimed in. That shit blew my mind. Most video games don't go for that level at all. Not even try for that matter. All the characters have such a lived in sense to them. The directors must've been a pain to work with and Uncle's actor passing away mid-development I could also imagine caused severe difficulty. Just changing for a voice actor for the scenes that were shot isn't as easy as it sounds.
The story isn't one you can just go through. And it is far, FAR from a mess. The game itself demands you take your time with it. Honestly I remember Dunkey re-evaluating the game and he actually completely shifted his opinion of the game entirely. Because he didn't just rush it out for a review. He let himself live in the world. It's not really a game for everyone and I am aware of that, but it is a game that asks you to be patient and let yourself take it all in. And hell, the final chapters that have no Arthur are actually my favourite in the entire game.
Took the words right out of my mouth. I need to do another play through
I personally found the gang members very dull. I have played games such as Dragon Age Origins that offers far more interesting characters and dialogue options to actually learn about them, in RDR2 it's pretty superficial. Some of the voice actors did a fantastic job I can agree with that (I love Dutch's voice) but the voice recordings sounded a bit off if you ask me. I agree with this video, it's like a 7/10 game, it has tons of flaws but some aspects are brilliant.
@@Skumtomten1 I found quite a bit of the character in dragon age to be dull aside from alstar or morgan (and maybe sten just because he is such a unique no nonsense I don't care about your feelings character). I think what allows dragon age's character to become more than their story is their role in a sudo crpg game. Each character brings something to the table in the game play department (aside from alstar he just sucks in combat). However most crpg game with text and lite voice acting can cram in so much more character development than just strictly VAing it.
I find in rdr2 you need to meet it on it's terms to inorder to see the gangmembers in a better light (ie spending so much time in the camp, which is very counter intuitive for a openworld game) .
I always make sure a video game I want to play has good acting. video game stories are usually good and pretty much never boring or cookie cutter
>it is far, FAR from a mess
I feel like Dutch has turned from a potent, charismatic and sympathetic leader into a mumbling psycopath, abandoning his loyalties, only because R* had to make him into a bad guy (as he already was a bad guy in RDR 1). Also if not for the sake of drama, that dissapointing ending with Arthur's death and gang's dissolution wasn't required at all. Dutch himself got a new gang soon and succesfully waged a guerilla war.
One of the biggest problems with the story is that the gang can't go back to Blackwater to get the money because of the botched heist, but there's nothing stopping the gang from returning to St Dennis in Chapter 6 after they botched that heist. This oversight makes that whole chapter feel extremely pointless.
GTA5's mission design was similarly restrictive, but it did contain a decent amount of scripted nonlinearity via heist planning and unique interacts that are entirely absent in RDR2. Also, the restrictive mission design was generally in service of creating some truly impressive open world set peices, which are much more few and far between in RDR2. Neither game's mission embrace the open world sandbox as much as they could, but RDR2 is definitely worse.
I'm surprised you didn't have much to say about the gunplay. I along with most people tend to find it far too repetitive, with the constant wave-based hordes of human enemies that all die from a head-shot from any weapon. Also, Dead Eye has been drastically slowed down from the first game, which makes it much more of a chore to use.
I'm thinking about making a video going through every mission of RDR2 similar to a video I made on Cyberpunk a while back.
I do recall thinking while shooting everyone in -strawberry- valentine after the bank heist that it seemed a bit... much...
How tf is the gang supposed to come back from this? Oh the game doesn't really mention it despite making such a huge deal about the same thing happening in Blackwater? Okay...
100% agreed
Hit the nail on the head. You commit several massacres all over the land yet Blackwater is the one place you can't go back to? Must have been on the level of a genocide.
I know this is a perspective no one will care about but everyone criticizes rockstar missions for being linear and can be only played one way but the way they write dialog and narratives to be "like a TV show" actually gets me in the mindset of being an actor. I try my best to play each mission to the script but also as smooth and as flawlessly as possible.
This actually gives me ample reason to do repeat playthroughs. Even going through the "boring" parts again, because on my first playthrough of RDR2 I was a mess. I missed a lot of shots, I failed several times, I "went off script," but I get inspired to play it again. This time knowing how to play better and make the scene play out like Im just another character instead of a player not knowing what to do.
Thats what appeals to me the most about these games honestly. Just playing the role as in character as possible.
everyone who shares your perspective and Takes role playing seriously probably does Care
and playing those Games for role playing purposes is as far as I know Not uncommon
I actually think that Most of the Player base plays These Games for that reason, Most people Just do it more casually than you do
@@connyschulze8074
where in the games description define rdr 2 as an rpg?.😂
But that's why I watch movies. I play games so I can be a movie character and do different things. Playing a game just to act like a movie character is like going to the movie, but blindfolding yourself so you pretend it's an audiobook. If you want to enjoy media like that, that's fine, you enjoy media however you want. But it feels like you aren't taking advantage of the media you're consuming.
For better and for worse, RDR2 is a game that demands you play it at its own pace, which is antithetical to open-world design. Sometimes I appreciate the game slowing me down to look at the world my short attention span often robs me of appreciating. Other times I just want my fucking pump-action shotgun and don't want to be forced to progress the story just to get a new tool to make my own fun with.
I enjoyed my time with RDR2 a lot, but I'm still a little mixed on my overall feelings. This is a game I need to sink 200+ hours into before I will come to some final conclusion.
Would be nice if you could, I dunno... put in a cheat? Or mod the fucking game to let the player get them early if they really want them?
But I forgot that shit costs money now. >__>
@@planescaped Rockstar used to have some great cheats in their games.
Agreed. A game that strongly encourages you to play at your own pace I wouldn’t say is antithetical but there are conflicts of interest for sure
Tbf you can get the pump action shotgun right after you get to Valentine, in the hillbily farm. theres is even a side quest with Javier where you go there. But i get what your saying
Rockstar's game designs has always been too childproof for me. It gets on my nerves to the point I can't play them.
I love RDR2 but you’re absolutely right. Rockstar’s mission design fucks the story over heavily.
3:35 First hunting tutorial teaches to hunt medium sized animals with a bow, second one teaches how to hunt small animals and large legendary animals with different types of firearms.
Medium sized animals you can see from a distance and snipe in one shot.
Small animals are less visible. you read their tracks first, and you need a weaker weapon to not destroy them while shooting.
Legendary animals have a completely different tracking system, and they're way tougher than regular animals, so you need to blast them with all you got.
You're overcomplicating a very simple system.
The game doesn't tutorilise hunting smaller animals any differently than it tutorialises hunting bigger animals. Hosea just asks you to shoot a rabbit and you can pass by just shooting it with a revolver or a rifle.
Charles just asks you to shoot a deer.
These are not special or different from one another.
@@Pedro_Le_Chef Yeah, it's a simple system if 1 star animals are good enough for you.
And the game tutorilialises nothing about it if you have some kind of tunnel vision and ignore popups that teach you how to hunt.
19:07 I have some serious PTSD after this exact moment trying to get up that cliff face and Arthur, who normally does things without prompt contextually to help with control, suddenly becomes an absolute muppet.
Discovered your channel a week ago, already watched half your vids and loved them! Very thorough analysis putting accurate words on how I felt playing these games, so here's a sub!
There's a great moment with Sister Calderon from St. Denis late in the game where you can bump into her at a train station. She and Arthur have a really incredible conversation about guilt and forgiveness and Arthur's sickness and what it all may mean. It comes when he's deathly ill and on the run and everything has fallen apart and he's spent the game murdering countless people. It's a little masterpiece in writing, and in performance from both the actors and the digital artists/animators. Arthur's expression at one particular moment in the conversation is how I most remember him. And if I understand it correctly you can only get this moment if you have high honor.
Yes, the honor system is regularly illogical and in turn easily gamed and needed a complete rework to function in a truly effective and representative manner (as does the criminal/disguise/witness systems). But it does provide at least what is in my estimation a truly tangible reward and my favorite moment from the game.
I'd like to add to your bit about honor. The last chapter you play Arthur in it's so easy to get honor as most good choices will catapult your honor and take little more than 10-15 mins to complete such as helping Mrs. Downes and her son. It really deflates a 2nd playthrough a bit to know that I can just wipe my slate clean in the final chapter in an hour or 2 after potentially being as big a dickhead as I want with little to no consequences. I love this game so much but my Lord is the honor system so unrefined.
Loved the video as always man. Can't wait to see what you cover next.
I feel like a thought criminal for this but I really like the online for this game. It feels like you really get to experience what you were supposed to experience in the singleplayer, minus the story. You get a lot of freedom, though money is a bit more of a hustle. Which I think is interesting because you don't get to experience being "poor" in a lot of games, it's kinda nice to not own the world for once.
I go back and play RDR2 for another 20 hours every 6 months or so. This time instead of single player I’m trying online. You’re absolutely right. Online has me actually bonding with my horse, hunting for food when I get hungry, and toiling over every purchase decision from fishing pole to rifle scope. Feels like a survival game haha. I stayed away from online because the world felt less alive but the gameplay has me completely immersed.
You like online? You must be amazing at double think
@@AshVsEvilFred you are on the wrong side of this dialectic, a slave barking at a slave
@@AshVsEvilFred
😂😂
This video video really expressed the inner feeling I had about RDR2 but didn't really know how to express it. Thanks for this analysis it gives me a little more closure about my feelings toward the game.
I think the best way to play rdr2 is to basically pretend to be an actor playing the role of Arthur. When I played the game I deliberately acted more violent and heartless during the first parts and had Arthur slowly become more hesitant to just whip his pistol out as the story progressed and violence routinely worked out badly for the gang. I had the most fun when I didn't even bother trying to play the missions my own way and instead treated their linearity like I was following a script. Instead of trying to complete the missions faster or better I instead aimed to complete them more cinematically, moving Arthur around in emotive ways and trying to control the flow of action in order to create a fight that was more dynamic and interesting to watch. This also allowed me to better engage with the games mechanics. In a normal fight you would never tackle an enemy or pull out your knife instead of reloading because in any situation shooting from behind a single piece of cover is simply the most effective means of fighting.
17:19 yeah this was pretty annoying. When Molly had a marker on her, I thought, “oh a mission about Molly could be interesting. She’s telling us about her and Dutch. Maybe this is the mission where we get to learn more about their relationship, why she’s into him. Is Dutch just against women after his loved died?” Nope. It’s someone else’s mission. Yey
Just stick around for the camp interactions you idiot.
Did you listen to any of the interactions Dutch and Molly had in Chapters 3 and 4?
@@alekisighl7599 Good job missing the point by a mile. If it's not a mission about Molly, then don't mark it as a Molly mission
@@alekisighl7599 not everyone stays at the camp. Why bother? Upgrading the camp is a waste of time outside of the fast travel upgrade. So people don’t really have an incentive to stay. You only do it for the sake of it. Incentive is key.
@@alekisighl7599 How about the game include key character moments in main missions and not leave them to missable, time sensitive random camp interactions that 90% of the players will just watch on youtube?
The classic Rockstar busywork and shooting gallery missions gating progress are the main reasons I didn't and probably never will beat this game. I put about 60 hours in just exploring and hunting and buying clothes and shit, which was fun, but every time I had to do another heist gone wrong or whatever I got so tired of it.
Exactly! Thank you! 7/10 game not 10/10.
The free roaming in the open world and the story are at odds with each other. They always are in Rockstar games. Even though it was hilarious to see Arthur preach Dutch about killing innocent people in some of the cut scenes when you have had Arthur kill more innocent people in one play session than the whole gang combined, rockstar should still choose one approach to these games. It seems now more than ever after GTA 5 and RDR 2 that Rockstar wants to make these interactive movies with a clearly defined story path but dont want to let go the thing that made the old GTA games famous. The mayhem!
Fantastic video as always man, great job!
Love to see an upload Pat. Great video!
>why introduce hunting and then introduce hunting again?
because the second tutorial was about camping and introducing legendary animals, not the mechanics of hunting itself.
>regarding Saadie and Black Tonto
Saadie doesn't get spared. She winds up childless and alone. She's a bounty hunter and she hates her job, but hunting men is the only thing she's good at so she does it. In her pursuit of vengeance she has wasted the second chance she was given and will die unloved and unmourned. She's a spinster by the time the three amigos hustle up that mountain in the Epilogue's Epilogue.
Black Tonto on the other hand is, eh, he doesn't get away scot-free but he does get away cleaner than most. And maybe that's because he was black but then again Lenny got his shit pushed in. I think Charles was just a good sidekick but he didn't serve much function in the narrative outside of that role nor was he interesting enough to really deserve a solid conclusion, so he just wanders off stage at the end.
Does Sadie ever lament that she is "childless and alone" ? I recently replayed the game and don't recall that being mentioned. Sure, you can interpret that for yourself, since she's clearly not too happy with her life in the epilogue. But there was no moment where she really regrets the path she's gone down, and wishes she dealt with losing her home and husband in a different way.
@@jamesm7324 Some people seem to automatically assume 'doesn't have kids' is one of the worst fates possible for a woman.
No idea why.
@@uxie6177 that's a different topic entirely, but Sadie in rdr2 by conversations in game was happy with being married and would give anything to go back to that. Because when you're covering the themes of "revenge" and "redemption" there's usually some tragic incident entirely out of the control of the character. Sadie had no culpability in what the o'driscolls did to her, but she is responsible for how she reacts to it. So while I'd agree her having no family in the end (in spite of multiple offers by John to stay at beechers hope) is a sad state, its not really something explicitly stated. The character is employed by the state doing something she's good at, and suffers no consequences due to her vengeful actions earlier in the story.
@@uxie6177 Women in 1899 were not sexually emancipated princesses who could do as they pleased and have it all. Most often they wanted a family and they wanted to do the women's work. We can argue about the finer details about women's lib at some other point if you like, but for the purposes of the story, Sadie was happy with her husband and wanted children. Assuming that she's unhappy she lost her husband and has aged out of possibly having children of her own is not some great leap of logic for Sadie's character of the time period the story takes place in.
And dying completely and utterly alone is a horrible fate for anyone, man or woman. Sadie happens to have a pussy so I'm assuming it'll suck for her, too.
@@uxie6177 because it is the worst fate for a woman
Also
>female bounty hunter
Lmao I get that rdr is a fiction but even this is too much
this is not a game for everyone but GODDAMN was it for me. never been more immersed in a world and invested in characters like i was with this title. i fucking loved every moment.
i bought this game day one and i notice the first big flaw few hours in. i take a wanted : dead or alive request, i ride my horse for 20 min to get to the criminal, she shoot at me, i shoot back, she die, mission failed, i must load the last save, 20min away and must do everything again. not a single time was there an indication that this request was a alive only request, they imply that it was better to capture the suspect so i imagine that it had 2 reward for 2 way of playing : a frontal approach to kill and a sneak approach to capture, but no. it really disapointed me and show that we don't have a say in a lot of thing.
We need the 12 hour version of this
I just think it's funny how if John never found Sadie in the epilogue or if she wasn't looking for Micah none of the events of the first game would've ever happened. Thanks Sadie
your points on the wastes of characters and the conflicts between the gameplay and narrative are on point
The funny thing is, the best parts of the game are probably the prologue and the first chapter... when you first experience them. They're made worse in retrospect by the realization of how much open world content was gated, pointlessly, behind story progression. I don't know how many hours I spent on expeditions back to the north because I loved the aesthetic and felt like there was so much to explore, only to repeatedly discover that I had to set up more expeditions for magically unlocked content.
Feels like the game wasted a lot of my time and, were I to revisit it, I would feel the need to mainline the main story up to a point before going about my open world adventure. The downside to this, and something highlighted by the video and other comments, is that you completely miss a gold mine of interactions if you don't neurotically check in at the camp for a day after every mission.
I have such a love-hate relationship with this game. Gah. If only these resources and this phenomenal talent could have been put toward a more cohesive vision.
Rockstar has always had the issue of total freedom in open world and yet 100% hand holding during missions, but RDR 2 so far magnified that more than any other Rockstar game I have played.
The Rockstar formula of introducing new gameplay elements in the story missions only to have them never be seen again.
Like herding sheep during that one mission.
And never ever anywhere else in game. At least RDR1 had multiple herding missions.
27:55 another point on the oil wagon mission, you can even actually sort of fail it if you go and do Micahs stagecoach robbery before getting the wagonand John goes and sets up the wagon for you, which I thought was a pretty cool thing to happen, no clue why this sort of style never rly came up again
I kinda wish there'd been less main story and more "side" missions and stranger stories. More excuses to immerse myself and "live" in the world Rockstar made.
Do you partake in the camp interactions? The campfire stories every night?
I guess they think people will just play RDR Online for that.
To thank I say "fuck no!"
@@sthamansinha243 I got involved with a lot of those when I was actually in camp. But while enjoyable I really want the excuse to go out and do cowboy stuff.
@@sthamansinha243 It's one thing to go off exploring to discover stuff, and another to sit for hours at camp, waiting for some character information and exposition.
The most charitable reading I could offer for the Guarma chapter is maybe it's setting the seeds of Dutch's infatuation with helping other groups of people fight authority for their freedom, regardless of how little Dutch should actually be involved with cultures outside of his own. Problem with that reading is that Dutch does it again later with the plight of the Native Americans, and that better sets up part of his plot for RDR1, so Guarma still felt kinda hollow and pointless.
Is this that here 'Brokeback Mountain' all the kids are yappin' about?
I think a 7 is a great score, the game does open world very well, and the atmosphere it creates while you wander the world, but the missions still suffer from the rockstar railroading
Without context a numerical score doesn’t mean anything.
B, Right, B, Right, Left, X, Y, Up. Locks Wanted Level at 0 in GTA: San Andreas, allowing players the ability to travel over to Las Venturas/San Fierro whenever they wanted. That's the closest Rockstar has come to "not barring large areas of the game behind story progression" and boy do you have to make a lot of progress to open Las Venturas up... Agreed that the company should have been able to deliver a 9/10 minimum but a lack of communication seems to have undone the narrative.
I sat and watched the full half an hour in one go, I cannot help but feel like the 'limited' run of this video has a bit to do with how this game talks a lot but doesn't really say much of anything. That aside, I played this game for the first time last year and your critique got an audible "Yeah, that sounds about right" out of me. I loved parts of it, and it left me wanting more, but ultimately the grind of trying to work up money only to be blocked from buying anything interesting with said money (firearms) because of the 1885 Individual Progression Act which limited any federally recognized protagonist from purchasing a pre-decided list of firearms until an omniscient court of psychic Appalachian hillbillies found them to be necessary to that recognized protagonist and therefor legally allowed to purchase and/or make physical contact with that firearm, wore me down.
If memory serves, I believe it was the assault on that cabin in the woods in which you find a new shotgun and get a whole hell of a lot of cash that was stowed away in there, which really reinforced just how much of a pauper I had been by choosing to play the game how I wanted to play it. For as neat as it might have been, and as lovely as it might have been, the game didn't seem to respect me, insisting that I do the stuff it was interested in, and as a result I lost respect for it. Still have yet to beat it, and I'm unlikely to ever do so.
i've played through the game four-ish times, and among the many things that i've grown to not like, the game economy has been one of those. treasure hunts and story missions can easily net you 6k by chapter 3 as long as you save up that money. i also agree with the guns being locked up to a certain point is dumb. the honor and law system are extremely lackluster as well, and it's caused me tons of frustration.
i also have issues with the epilogue, like the story and how the endgame is extremely lackluster, but it is a 60+ hour game so its not too much of an issue for me personally.
however, there's so much more to RDR2 than its flaws, though i totally respect it if you don't finish it, it is a lot to go through. the story is not perfect and is not linear, and i feel that's 100% the point. it's a downfall of a gang, full of human errors and the characters making realistic decisions, with the threat of the government hunting them and each mistake they make sending them one step closer to the sun. i'll admit, it's sometimes sloppily done, but i feel it's worth trying to get through.
but, if the negatives outweigh the positives for you, that's understandable. i won't force you to play something you don't respect or enjoy.
A brave and honest review. You were critical of a game that it's almost illegal to be critical of. I'd say the fact that you're playing with mouse and keyboard hid the worst aspect of the game imo: The aiming/shooting mechanics, which much like other things was done better in RDR1.
Finally someone mentions how making bounty hunting into story based, finite missions limits a very fun activity that we used to be able to do in RDR1.
Great points about the honor system too. I don't get negative honor for killing bounty hunters but I get negative honor for killing their horse and bloodhounds? Playing free aim means that horses are the prime target to take down a rider. Especially so with the trash aiming controls of this game. Nevermind the fact that It's nigh on impossible to kill the riders without accidentally killing horses either.
19:26 I really wish you had gone into detail because every other reviewer is either too oblivious or too afraid to even mention the fact that RDR1 did a lot of things better, especially gameplay related stuff.
Just to mention a few things that RDR1 does substantially better:
-Free aiming with a controller
-Health and difficulty
-Ragdoll physics
I do wish you talked about the complete lack of challenge from a game that tries so hard to be realistic, turning you into wild west captain america.
You're given an insane amount of damage resistance and you get hundreds of health tonics you can drink one after the other with no side effects or limitations.
I'd love to see an RDR1 review if you ever get around to it.
The fact that you have the guts to give RDR2 a 7/10, criticize the story mistakes and mention how, in some aspects, it regresses from RDR1 proves that you are an honest and perceptive reviewer.
Subbed.
Enemies used throwing weapons in RDR1. I was very surprised to see it after playing RDR 2.
Another gem from one of the best out there at game analysis. He doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and he always takes the time to make sustained arguments backed with relevant examples.
Not gonna lie this is one of my favourite games of all time it really just works for me the story music physics there is some minor issues I have but tbh since playing it there hasn't been any games that I have rated in the same category whatsoever
Please do Kingdom Come Deliverance, minus the obvious problem with saving it really is a great game. It could be fixed if the made a auto-save system and only allowed hard saving for Saviour schnapps, so the item doesn’t lose utter relevance. The bugs are mostly gone and is one of the most in depth roleplaying experiences iv ever had.
Sadie and Charles are kinda hard to say. Because your point does make it seem like they got off scott free but at the same time, why shouldn't they? Why should everyone befall a horrible fate? Why can't a few characters you got to play with make it to the end and then just go their separate ways? Do you remember Pearson? Depending on how much you interacted with him he could be a major character to you and he's still around in the end, scott free.
Its just one of those things that if you choose to believe there's some underlying intentions then there will be. But to others, like me, I just think they're cool and happy that they got to move on after a roller-coaster of death.
Sadie and Charles, being actual main characters who were actively involved in the violent crimes of the gang, are much more deserving of hardship and a need for redemption than the camp cook for a bandit gang. Sadie and Charles are given too much emphasis as sympathetic characters for being a widow and an outcast that the writers forgot that these are still bad people. That's honestly the case with most of the gang's characters, it feels rather forced that anyone besides Micah becomes an antagonist and Arthur seems like a weirdo being the only one bothered by his evil lifestyle until John gets his arch in the first game.
For me, the biggest problem with the railroaded prequel story is that you cannot, at any point, make enough money to just leave. You can ONLY work toward getting the Blackwater cache. I ended the game with $20,000 which basically makes at least Arthur a millionaire and the rest of them comfortable.
100% right. If only the game had a choice to have a better ending if you grinded enough money, there finally would be an incentive to do all that open world stuff
It's fairly ironic that everyone has the same issue with rockstar's linear approach in their open ended worlds good video btw
Judging by your stance on the topic of '' hollywood action story in open world games '' i guess you hated this aspect of the game. You are also on point about the weapons being locked until advancing the story , i really do not understand why they designed the system like that.
A new Patrician RUclips Short!!!
Was so excited to see another pat video and on red dead of everything. Not disappointed as the video is amazing as always but it was short
Also that Calvin candie drip is my exact outfit for the game lol
@1:20 that's when I noticed the music in the background and them feelings started overflowing. My god, what a game this is....a masterpiece of storytelling and some of the best gaming has ever delivered. The setting of the game, the dying days of the true kind of outlaws, is just the most perfect period choice for having a character that is intrinsically bad yet somehow so relatable. It's not perfect, ofc, but by the end you'll be left speechless at how a game can make you feel a myriad of ways at the same time.
I agree. The game, despite it's flaws, is an accomplishment and did a lot of things very right. The immersive feeling it imparts is honestly unrivaled, and the world is one of the most vibrant and alive settings a game has ever seen.
Just because the story is messy and bloated does take away from RDR2 being a masterpiece. Deus Ex has flaws. Planescape Torment has flaws. Half Life 2 has flaws. Fallout New Vegas has flaws. Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Stardew Valley and Morrowind all have flaws. Nothing is perfect and no game is ever going to be perfect.
>dying days of the true kind of outlaws
This message falls really short considering that years later Dutch has a new gang and is succesfully waging a guerilla war. And in 1920 a Prohibition era starts, with John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde etc
So... Upcoming video on what RD1 did better?
wow, this is the first time that i dont agree a single word of this video!
You put into words pretty well what i felt about this game. Its a really fun game but also one of the most disappointing games. Every time i play it i feel like i am handcuffed by rockstars arbitrary rules. Supposedly arthur is some outlaw, bandit who is the gangs top earner and as he says himself “shoots people in the back.” Yet at no point in the game does he set up a heist instead always being told to go on one, and if you do try to do your own robbing the game reminds you thats a no no, with a sound and a honor loss tick. So much for being some experienced outlaw.
For me, it was the social progressiveness of the gang. We will rob and kill, but those those other outlaws, they discriminate, which makes them truly worse than us!
One of the core themes of the game is putting trust into the wrong figures in your life. We are powerless, because Arthur is a follower. He listens to Dutch vehemently and is loyal to the point of narrowing his view of the world
The title deserves so much more appreciation. Song reference
Ohh boy, this video's gonna get some knee jerk auto-dislikes from some people.
I mean, everyone agrees RDR2 is a masterpiece... doesn't mean it isn't without issues.
Nothing's perfect.
Or this video will appeal to the converted.
Well, I don't agree.
lmfao I love these types of comments that try to call out the 15 people that disliked it compared to the 600 people that did like it
@@nagger8216 Oh give it time, they'll be by eventually.
The video's only got 4k views. The vast majority of people who will have seen it at this point are likely to be the fans who follow Patrician more closely.
And I know RDR2 has a rather zealous fandom who don't take kindly to criticism.
@axelord4ever Knew that one was coming :P
I do not know how you do these quality videos consistently and lengthey but you are a real master of your craft.
So Charles is in the game cause of his race and also not killed because of his race?
RIP Lenny
But drip.
Arthur death didn't hit me so hard since I saw a spoiler of it before I finish the game but damn that scene where your horse got killed and Arthur saying "Thank you", that hit right into my heart (Since I didn't see any spoiler of it and I'm thankful for it).
I stopped playing the game when I got to grab 2 things from a drawer in a house I shot up in the middle of the fucking woods because 7 million cops showed up.
No witnesses, nobody around but the moment the home owner dies, the cops are alerted. Fuck off
@@donutmaster0 even Bethesda games handle law enforcement, witnesses, bounties, etc etc etc better than the game about RUNNING FROM THE LAW
One weird thing about Red Dead 2 is that its a mix of like this crazy sim and the robo tank controls from GTA combined with the weird requirement to wait for animations to finish a la dark souls but with shooting. It almost plays like a tech demo or something. I played it on PC and its honestly, as a whole one of the most amazing looking games if you run it at 4k high with hdr on an oled blah blah, but that coat of sheen with the slowish gameplay makes it almost like fine china, its pretty but you're afraid to touch it, and you get penalized for touching too hard. Its just weird, not bad but like weird (weird that they went that direction with red dead 2 of all their franchises instead of like some high fidelity midnight club or something)
Good news, the reason it felt like the game was made by two different people was because it was!
Angel Studios(Rockstar San Diego) made every red dead game prior to this one.
They were asked(sic:forced) to make a prequel to RDR despite specifically stating they didn't want to touch the other games period. So Rockstar proper forced them to make this game....and then kept adding other studios....and changing the parameters....and forcing them to make changes to basically everything...and then taking control away from Angel Studios and having other dev teams in the rockstar umbrella(sic: Take Two Slave camps) work on parts they wanted changed or done their way.
So yes, this game is terrible because it's a hodgepodge, and it is exactly that because Rockstar is a terrible company run by douchebags from england that I honestly believe are trying to one up their parent company Take Two Interactive in being as terrible as humanly possible. But it's also thanks to the work by Angel Studios that makes the game so enjoyable.
Imo if RDO was a standalone it'd be great to play
Honestly a lot of the problems you have with the gameplay or storytelling date at least to GTA:SA or GTA:4. GTA:4 in particular adores setting up major characters early and having 'dead end' story branches that seemed like they were going to become central, but didn't. I do enjoy the character aspects of their writing, though the overall narrative arcs can be lumpy or gel poorly with the actual gameplay experience.
Also, I'd opine the whole island side-quest is meant to underline that Dutch's fairytale ending for the gang in some land of milk and honey is so much BS, and people are people anywhere they're found. You can't escape the world as it is and in compromising yourself to try you're doing nothing but degrading yourself and making others miserable.
You have the greatest channel ever. Please keep uploading
Good review. I found it hard to disagree with most of your criticisms but I still think it's one of the most amazing games I've ever played
I agree about the criticisms of the honour system, but I'd say that there are still some big differences between low and high honour at the end of the game.
Honour level changes the dialogue interactions with the gang and other characters.
The one that stuck in my mind is when Arthur kicks out Strauss, with low honour Arthur does it because he thinks Strauss is useless and can't get any real money, with high honour Arthur does it because he despises Strauss for collecting debts from people, who can't pay it, and at that point, high honour Arthur doesn't care about money at all.
And the ending itself does hit different, being a lone wolf and dying for greed versus dying to help your friend escape, while being betrayed by your father figure.
But I think it brings another problem, the low honour Arthur just doesn't really fit with the story they've written.
With low honour, there is no character development, no story of saving John, who gets to live a life Arthur never had, no redemption. The Dutch, Hosea, Arthur trio doesn't make sense if Arthur is a murdering psychopath, neither does the story of John, Charles and Sadie avenging Arthur. So many things in the story fall apart with low honour playthrough.
When it comes to the story overall, I think some of the problems get "fixed" if you spend a lot of time hanging around the camp and doing side stuff, looking at the first 3-4 chapters as a story about a group of outlaws just trying to survive.
But, unfortunately, with the way the game is designed not everyone will have that experience, and obviously, not everyone will want to have that experience.
Maybe it's a bit of a stretch of a comparison, but it reminds me of Cowboy Bebop, where for the first dozen or so episodes it was mostly just various adventures with no overarching narrative, and the real story with goals and stakes only hit at the very end.
Great video though! I loved the game, but I agree about the problems and I found myself thinking similar things after I finished it.
Easy fix to the story integration with fishing, the character just says "Damn, I am rusty" at some point. Now if the player fishes before the tutorial, the character is shaking off the rust, and when they get to the tutorial of showing someone else how to fish, they say "Well, Ima teach you exactly like how I was taught."-- doesn't necessarily betray that the character is an expert or learned really well or had a good teacher, etc.
Something along those lines.
Goodbye Horses, I'm flying over you.
Goodbye Horses, I'm Flying, flying, flying over youuu.
Even though I have no interest in Rockstar games, it's great to see this video up. Love your content!
Your videos are excellent. Would prefer it if you didn't throw out spoilers for other games without any warnings.
I disagree - I’ll stick to your elder scroll videos. Rdr2 is a masterpiece :)
Three Endings:
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Pat, how did you know I was deep into this game right exactly at this moment?
Yeah I definitely agree that this game has an exceptional open world that is constrained heavily by its mediocre and forced storyline.
I'm glad you mentioned Bill and Javier's characterization in comparison to rdr1. I find it very interesting that both bill and Javier in redemption 1 are basically shown as these scumbag outlaws, but in 2, only Bill is characterized as being a bad person, whereas Javier is shown to be a pretty good guy, and is praised often by Arthur and Dutch. "Phenotype" as you allude to, almost certainly has something to do with it, and I think if you look into the head writers for Rockstar, the Housers (similar to your research in Emil Pagliarulo/ken Rolston in TES) you will find information as to why that is.
The thing that makes the law enforcement system so bad, and the reason they haven't developed it at all is because it's designed for the multiplayer mode. They didn't bother to make a separate system for single player, and it's so repetitive and shitty because they make so much money from the online stuff they focused it on being consistent for multiplayer
Never really got into red dead, but watching to support you 🙏🏻
For a lot of the reasons you mentioned I didnt really look at this as an open world game, but more a campaign with a lot of extra frosting on the cake. also having played red dead one and having payed pretty good attention I feel like I knew the characters well and they went through some good development. was there missed opportunities? yes, but also when isnt there, it is extremely hard to find a game in which you can play it all the way through and not think of at least one way to make the game better. I agree this game shouldnt prized as some incredible masterpiece brough unto us by the gods, yet still we should enjoy what it is, a game about being cowboys at the end of the west. I mean spaghetti westerns weren't exactly known for there writing
While I generally like this game it has some of the worst controls I've played in the last 8 or so years. I found this weird feature-bug where about 20% - 30% of the time after holstering a weapon when you go to redraw your weapon Arthur will draw a random weapon. This results in things like holstering a rifle and accidentally drawing your bow (even though you may not have used your bow for hours) and then getting mauled by a predator or shot by a bounty hunter.
I immediately played RDR1 after playing RDR2 and RDR1 actually had better controls.
My biggest complaint with this game is the music isn’t as good as the first rdr
i love hearing “Housebuilding Theme” while watching arthur slowly die
The open world in this game fells like you are in Wild West amusement park. Way too much stuff happening.
Hell yeah! Glad to see a new video from you my dude. Looking forward to seeing what you have to say about this one!
0:50 you better tell me 'bout them balls, son
25:12 I don't think that was why lol