I should have known better, as the whole cowboy genre is terrible as fuck. Westerns (as boomer Americans call the genre) have the slowest dialogue, the corniest patriarchal story-line, and are obviously filled with a heap ton of other problematic bits. Of course, I had to try as the game got great reviews. I thought I’d try it with the Steam summer sale.
Fuckkkkkkkk the long boring ass cut scenes. OMG pls talk faster and have dialogue that’s interesting. The beginning of the game is just 30 minutes of video and riding your horse so slowly through the snow. I thought that my TikTok brain couldn’t stand some old slow game from a bygone era, but I’m checking this shit and it was released in 2018!
If I was some prat who loved the mythology of the “settling of the west”, a game with a white dude on a horse on a mountain would get me hard. Why can’t more games be like Atomic Heart? I wanna defend the land of Stalin and have cut scenes with good dialogue a talking glove that debates theory and a sexy refrigerator that probably wants to murder me.
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It’s mid, yeah. Which is horrifying to say due to all the labor that went into it. The ultimate result is mid.
I bounced off it twice and eventually stuck with it by not trying to play it like MGSV. The game doesn’t actually give you any freedom. There is no connection between the missions and free-roam in the overworld. Once I stopped trying to struggle out of the shackles and just treated it like an on-rails movie it got a lot better, if you can handle that. But it is just so long.
The best time I had in the game was hunting to get all the camp & pelt upgrades. Being in some beautiful scenery hunting down particular animals is pleasant, even though the long animations and requirement to constantly bring your pelts back to camp irritated the shit out of me (even with fast travel).
The story just fuckin drags. I got to the end of the main story like a year ago and haven’t got around to playing the epilogue yet. The fact that you murder 100 random people every mission in the game but the story is about how you are trying to redeem yourself for beating a dude over some debt is just fucking stupid.
All I did was play as a pretty woman murdering people on isolated trails and taking their hats, or tying up people that were rude and putting them on train tracks. I couldn’t get into the story but I enjoyed the wildlife and nature aspect.
lol that’s unironically cool
The dialogue and voice acting are both pretty clearly good… claiming Atomic Heart has better dialogue makes me pretty confused as to where you’re come from. Agreed the intro is a punch to the gut to prepare you for how meanderingly slow the game is.
Ultimately though, never play videogames, they are trash, read a book.
You spend most of the game debating pseudo communist theory with your talking glove. And you’re still playing, it’s not a slow dialogue cutscene.
I enjoyed it a lot, and also saying that atomic heart has better dialogue made me chuckle, so thanks for that!
The opening chapter is really slow, I have a save that’s right after leaving the snowy area for replays. RD2 is fun and atomic heart is a
ass gamei liked it, but i didn’t even touch the previous games, so i lacked a lot of context. I wanted to like red dead online a lot better, being able to play as a lady was really cool - the character creator was robust enough that I made someone who looked like a genuine ancestor to me, and that was cool, if only because one side of my family genuinely went west in the 19th century but managed to be as unproblematic in deed as was possible for a white person, and it was cool to larp that experience.
but the main game is like… “i’m an old man now” subgenre of Thing, like the God of War games - that shit sucks - and it’s also like, broadly about the closing of the frontier, which could’ve been interesting, but because it’s such a direct parallel of the “i’m an old man now” subgenre, just for worldbuilding, it’s pretty much only cool if you have some kind of ability to relate to that, and are comfortable doing so.
personally i’m a really gay trans woman, so it’s hard to wanna pick that shit up and finish it because aside from the janky and micro-transaction-expensive online portion of the game, there’s nothing in this game for me.
“i’m an old man now” subgenre,
Good point. I’m really not into this boomer “why isn’t the world made for me anymore” trope.
I’m an old manThe first game doesn’t bear much on the second. Many of the characters show up against but they’re much shallower and you get vastly less time with them. Rdr2 has much better writing and much deeper characterization and much more focus on the characters. The very first game, read dead revenge, has nothing in common except being set in a fanatsy version of “the west”.
Re; i’m an old man now, totes agree, it’s got a lot of “white man’s boredom” going on. both games are about the closing of the west, and John and Arthur’s stories both parallel that as each of them is seeing their way of life end as America completes it’s conquest of the west. Arthur contemplating what his life has amounted to, and struggling to reconcile the violence he’s done with the ideals he wants to believe in, is a stand in for America struggling to reckon with the disconnect between it’s mythology and the actual horrors it committed. John, Dutch, and Josiah have a weird maiden mother crone thing going for Arthur in that they represent a better past, a destabilizing presence, and some kind of hope for a future.
You never get much perspective from the women in the group, and while the game does try to give perspective from various subaltern groups there can be a long time between those moments and a lot of Dutch ranting and Arthur being sad. Sadie is pretty cool, though. From “oh no my husband and my life” to “murder is cool and i like wearing pants”
series peaked with san andreas
4 but okay
Woah now.
Easy boy
You okay there?
Heh heh, that’s my boy. Yah! Yah!
Horse poop balls
Good
but the Atomic Heart praise makes it too obviousImagine unironically thinking Atomic Heart is better than RDR2
Mods can fix your problems I think
Three paragraphs!? How is anyone supposed to read all
I’ve given rdr2 two shots and I don’t get it. I don’t even hate the cut scenes that much, the gameplay just isn’t fun.
It’s not for everyone, but if you can get past the quirks it’s a game worth playing. Anytime I play once I get to horseshoe overlook I just go and do my own thing and explore the map and skip the missions until I feel like it.
OK the main game is definitely boring but it’s actually a good game to listen to a podcast in the background. Just vibing and hunting
HOWEVER
The online PVP fighting is the worst, absolute worst game experience in history.
- It has a form of auto aim that makes headshots incredibly easy
- It has 1-shot headshots
- The ONLY penalty for dying is respawning 100 meters away.
It’s SO BORING. SO BORING. I call it “Headshot Sysyphus” It’s absolutely fucking pointless. I got into multiple extended fights roughly 5v5 and it’s literally a contest to see who can get bored first.
The varmint rifle at the release of Red Dead Online was objectively the best weapon in the game. Cheapest ammo, one hit headshots, can take it into any game mode you want.
“One last score Arthur”
“Cough Cough I’m dead”
“It’s so dang hard being a straight white male.”
There. Now you don’t have to play the game.
Also there’s a part of the game where you’re forced to beat up a disabled man.
“It’s so dang hard being a straight white male.”
I gotta say, I don’t think you played the game tbh. There were many opportunities to sympathize or outright assist the marginalized. Unfortunately you do play as a white man, but if the player decides to be a white asshole that was a personal choice most of the time.
Ya it’s like Rockstar listened to all the “wokes are ruining games” suggestions and took all the ideas to heart.
this is absolutely the least charitable read of the game. it’s about a guy who realizes he’s a cog in a deeply exploitative system and doing his best to undo some of the damage he’s caused
We always talk about right wing media illiteracy, but this thread makes me realize maybe it’s not just a right wing problem.
the problem is almost definitely people not playing through the game enough to understand the actual themes
I would play through the game but that intro is just sooooo bad I can’t get through it
Like I got to town and I’m thinking “cool, now I can buy a new gun” I get to the gun shop and they have literally nothing
Let me buy a shotgun right away, then I’ll be able to get into this shit
maybe try the first one? alternatively if you’re on pc, there are mod menus that can spawn weapons on you
Yeah I would say it’s probably people not being able to connect with Arthur at first glance because IT IS just another grizzled white guy action shooter. Obviously that’s valid, but in this one instance I think people should look past it because is good game
It’s slop
I thought you were disengaging with me?
Sorry I was rude before.
oh absolutely, but that’s also the point of the series. both red dead redemption games are about grizzled white guys realizing they suck
Couldn’t have said it better.
RDR2 is about a man realizing he and his ilk were sent by the American bourgeoisie to colonize land only to then have it stolen again from them in turn. It’s about the remorse from realizing you’ve been wrong your entire life, and desperately wishing to undo it. Arthur is scum, he even vocalizes this - he hates himself. He then realizes he does in fact, have a soul but if only too late.
Most of this isn’t written explicitly which is why I would argue the writing is good, actually.
Also you get to kill Klan members.
RDR2 is about a man realizing he and his ilk were sent by the American bourgeoisie to colonize land
I disagree. The Van Der Linde gang was somewhat anarchistic before Dutch recruited Strauss and hit his head. And even then, they didn’t extract rent on the behalf of anyone except themselves.
They didn’t colonize any land, and in fact, the gang resisted the settlers in the form on being outlaws and grasping onto the last pieces of “wildness” as modernization creeped in. Arthur only realizes the gang’s struggle for freedom was shared with other marginalized groups at much more intense and existential levels, such as the Guarman slaves, the Indians, and even less “grander” groups such as the sex workers, and Arthur himself from the very gang he considered his whole identity.
I agree with everything else, but him being “wrong his entire life” isn’t necessarily about land or colonization, but him realizing that he’s one of the few people in the gang who still truly wants freedom whereas Dutch - his father figure - and his faction (who he considered much of them as family) are clinging onto a delusion of freedom and holding him back, no different than how the government’s colonization of land and people is a delusion of freedom and holding other people back.
tbh I didn’t mean the gang specifically, the cowboy mythos was created and perpetuated by the bourgeoisie to colonize land indirectly and Arthur’s story is kind of a recognition of the farse that it was
Oh yeah in terms of deconstruction it definitely recognizes the mythology.
You get to kill Klansmen, pinkertons, us army, sheriffs, italians, confederate dead enders, oil men, and a great variety of other late closing of the west scum.
italians
Damn, I’m in!
100%
You can surmise some of what Arthur’s values are by who he perceives as his enemies.
He also really hates debtors considering his relation to
Herr Muller.Strauss.Does the debtor thing change over the game? I remember that incident early on being what gets him really thinking about who he is. It’s a lot more personal than robbing banks and running cons, and it seems to be his shooting the albatross moment.
I think his antagonism towards mueller helps highlight Arthur’s hypocrisy in trying to think of himself as some kind of principled robber. Mueller robs people ruthlessly with less blood spilled, while Arthur shoots people left and right, while trying to consider himself noble or at least better.
Like, I think that’s a theme - they’re all crooks with various levels of pretension about it. Josiah and that card sharp are gentlemen thieves running clever cons. Arthur’s a simple thug. John’s kind of a dumbass brought up in the life. His wife is ujst kind of stuck with it all for lack of alternatives. The younger women have the freedom of a mostly egalitarian comrades at the cost of the violence and uncertainty of their lifestyle. Lenny and Charles get a place where they’re respected and valued they wouldn’t find in white society. Micah’s a stone psychopath who show’s all their pretension’s of better or worse thieves and killers to be empty. And Dutch is the what no theory does to a motherfuckers ideologe who brings all these lost souls together but whose hubris and lack of grounding drives them towards destruction.
They’re a mish-mash of all kinds of people alienated from mainline society for many different reasonns whose membership in the gang grants them a very precarious and temporary freedom from the violence of the world, at the cost of being predators who feed on the vulnerable people of that world despite whatever pretensions they might have about what they do.
There’s definitely something there about the cost of freedom being a life of war. You can be free from society, but that inevitably puts you outside of society as a criminal and an outlaw, and severely limits how you can earn your daily bread. You can be free and wild, but you’re gonna die young and die hard. And most people don’t choose that life, but are stuck there by circumstance and the violence of society. And then the “closing of the west” brings the violence and control of the state to the liminal space between the alleged wilderness and the alleged civilization, sort of reflecting how the cops have encroached in to every single moment of our lives.
Does the debtor thing change over the game? I remember that incident early on being what gets him really thinking about who he is.
Major spoilers for RDR2.
spoiler
The entirety of the debtor storyline pretty much sums up Arthur’s entire character arc. He loathes working for
MullerStrauss in the (first?) collection mission he contracts the illness that eventually wakes him the fuck up. Over the course of the game when you accept missions from Muller, Arthur snipes at him over the nature of his work and grouses about having to be his attack dog. When he finds out he is dying, he starts wrestling with his mortality and with it his morality. This culminates with him givingMullerStrauss the boot from the camp. (Or I think outright killing him? It might be a decision I can’t remember.)My biggest criticism of the games writing is it saying “Arthur doing these shakedowns is the thing that literally kills him” It’s a bit too on the nose but overall the writing is great.
spoiler
I don’t think you can kill him you just get the option to run him out of camp eventually
spoiler
he doesn’t kill him he basically runs him out the camp with a “GO ON GIT!” kinda thing
Sorry if I don’t get involved in this discussion as I don’t know the game enough. I just think that it’s cool that you two are really hashing this out.
This discussion shows one of the main reasons why it’s such a good game though. It has a depth that very few other games have achieved, not just in terms of the world and lore, but as a genuinely human kind of story that also manages not to turn all its social commentary into tepid, lib-friendly clichés.
However I don’t know why people in this thread keep calling the loan shark character “Muller.” His name is Strauss.
Yeah that’s on me.
deleted by creator
My biggest criticism of the games writing is it saying “Arthur doing these shakedowns is the thing that literally kills him” It’s a bit too on the nose but overall the writing is great.
There is literally nothing wrong with this? What exactly is the criticism?
Its a minor criticism, but my issue with it is it’s not subtle. Like working for a debtor was obviously killing Arthur spiritually and metaphorically, making it also literally killing him seemed unnecessary.
Oh I get you, but I don’t think that was because they couldn’t be subtle, that was because it was a prequel and there is absolutely no mention of Arther in the first game, so he kinda has to die.
Arthur sees himself as a simple thug, and in practice, is a simple thug. But when they’re not robbing he’s actually quite complex, but as OP points out, he hates himself.
There are several moments in the game where he talks with the women in the gang, and they all compliment him for being thoughtful, intelligent, and handsome compared to the other male members, but he dismisses them and says he doesn’t know anything about anything. He also talks about how much of a bad and ugly person he is in his journals.
Dutch, his “father,” and some of the other members such as Micah and Bill see Arthur as the enforcer and nothing more. They never ask him about his thoughts on plans or life and in fact tell him to shut up and shoot, so Arthur just goes along because father knows best. In addition to everything else mentioned in these threads, Arthur also has low self esteem. He’s aware of the harm he brings, but doesn’t believe he has any good in himself until he gives up his life for the gang.
Uncle sings both John Brown’s Body and Dixie at the campfire
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