Red Dead Redemption 2 Critique: On The Frontier of Simulation

[@slei4676]

The video is a little old by now but I feel a strong need to make a comment at least as an appreciation for your excellent work. Everything you said here is pretty much 1 to 1 what I hated about the game aswell and that hate is more in the "you could've been so much more" kind of way. The formula for story missions that Rockstar has created and have been using for almost 2 decades now (like what the actual fuck?) is the thing that destroys any enjoyment I would get from their games. When you look at the open world and mechanics in RDR 2, every little detail and way to immerse the player in it's world and then play a story mission it presents itself as if the game was made by 2 directors that wanted to make completely different games. My assumption that seems pretty obvious is that they just don't want to even try to make those two worlds coexist naturally because it would be too hard to do especially considering how complicated the making of that game was already. It makes me extra sad to think that we probably won't see any change in that regard for years to come especially since 99% of Rockstar fans don't even see a problem here and crown their every game as a 10/10 masterpiece. So much wasted potential.

[@Edax_Royeaux]

31:17 Uh John does pay a price for his revenge, Abigail and Arthur's warning was well founded as the credits makes it clear taking the Blackwater stash and killing Micah put the Feds on John Marston's trail.

[@ardillachica9037]

Great video, definitely underrated and deserving of more views tbh. Personally, I still love the game, but you're dead on with your points. Flawed but beautiful game.

[@frogglen6350]

32:38 There are many cemeteries that look like this.

[@TheBlackAVClub]

keep doing this bro.

[@zachthompson9976]

Excellent video! You explained all my issues with the game far beyter than i could ever hope to. Story and world were still enough to get me through the whole game, but after about 30 minutes into the epiloge i was so ready for it to be done*

[@delbertdoppler]

Very nice video! Congrats :) My take on the game is that it's basically pulled in 2 directions: The wild west simulation game and the interactive story of Arthur Morgan's last few weeks. I genuinely think both are great, but they got mixed in a way that doesn't feel that good. When I'm roaming the world and I stumble upon an oil company I want to rob a wagon from, why is it that I'm allowed to stealth-parkour my way into it, but I'm not allowed to do it when a mission requires me to do it? On their own, both work. On one side I have this very freeing experience where I can do anything I want and if i'm smart, it pays. On the other, I have this story I'm invested in and I'm completely willing to sacrifice my freedom to experience it, as I understand that the story needs some beats to happen that I might bypass if I'm let free. Combined though, the contrast is quite frankly ridiculous. It's because those 2 things are adjacent that it seems so obnoxious to me. Suddenly, Arthur feels dumb to just do the thing he's asked in the mission without even mentioning that 20 minutes earlier, he was doing that exact same thing successfully in another, safer way. It's bonkers. It's so weird. It clashes with itself. I think in a perfect world, the open world aspect of RDR2 would be reserved to Red Dead "online" (with the option to play without other players, like in The Forest) and the more contrived world of the story would be reserved to RDR2. As it stands, I love the game, it's one of my - if not my - favourite games, but I can see that some choices weigh it down.

[@mooddd2684]

I literally just discovered you coming from the Hollow knight and Elden ring video, about to watch this one, keep it up you make great and insightful content while being chill to listen to.

[@Erumore]

I'm always happy to get a comment like this one. Glad to hear you're enjoying my videos and stay tuned for many more!

[@telekinesticman]

Oh shit dude! I've been playing through the singleplayer for the past couple weeks, I'm now on Chapter 4. I'll see how much of this I can get through before larger story/gameplay spoilers, but will definitely have to come back when I'm finished! I'm losing a bit of interest in the gameplay already since I'm not usually into cover shooters and rather simple movement mechanics, but the story and world have definitely been holding it up for me. I'd played a lot of the online mode with my friends long before the singleplayer, and I just loved exploring the world and finding all the different animals. As a huge fan of dinosaurs (and Jurassic Park), I get so frustrated imagining a world with the polish of Red Dead 2, but with dinosaurs instead. It's like, all I've ever wanted in a game. I want to wander through that jungle and see the necks of sauropods reaching through the trees, and the faraway roars of a tyrannosaur. Basically I want ARK, but actually good. Anyway, I look forward to watching all of this one once I finish the game myself! Your videos are always excellent, so I'm going to be that cliched KZbin commenter guy who says "you deserve more subs bro".

[@Erumore]

Sounds like we share a similar opinion on the simplicity of the gameplay, but if you're still enjoying the characters and world then I'd say it's worth pushing through to the ending. I didn't try out the multiplayer because I heard it's been pretty much abandoned by Rockstar, but I bet it would have been a lot of fun with some friends. An open world Jurassic Park game is quite an idea; I guess Trespasser and the Horizon series are the closest things we have to that right now. Maybe the Peter Jackson King Kong game? I appreciate the comment and as always it's good to hear from you! Subs are going up slowly but surely... mostly I'm just happy that people are enjoying the videos I make.

[@telekinesticman]

@@Erumore I'm back after finishing the game yesterday! I can say overall that I really loved the story. (Spoilers below for anyone else reading this!) Arthur was a brilliant character and as someone who hadn't played the first game, I found the slow realisation of Dutch's true ideology to be incredibly fascinating. I didn't know Dutch was an antagonist in the first game, I didn't even know he, or anyone other than John, was even in it. That's how little context I had for most of the game and I still loved it. I found Dutch to be so charismatic and likable at the start, but I could tell there was something else going on, which gets more obvious the further you go into the story. I found the island section quite shocking and impressive at first, but disappointing overall, especially since I wanted to explore it myself, but then Arthur just finds the gang immediately (at least, to the player, it feels that way). My issue with the epilogue is that it's definitely way too long. I appreciate what they're going for, but much like the main story itself, it's just too much. Steam says I played this game for 100 hours, and that's obviously due to me doing basically all side missions I could find, along with hunting most legendary animals and going for my occasional blind hike into a new region of the map. Throughout the whole story, I felt like the game was far too long, but I also didn't want it to end, because I knew Arthur had to die. i was enjoying the story so much in spite of its length and the mediocre gameplay, but the epilogue really drives that frustration home with how pointless some of it can feel. While I understand John is the protagonist of RDR1, and the story is clearly presenting the negative aspects of revenge and the cycle of violence, it did slightly annoy me that it almost presented all of Arthur's story as just "setup" for John and RDR1, instead of letting Arthur's journey feel like his own. I dunno, this is all quite stream-of-consciousness for me right now. I also want to agree with you about the mini-map as I immediately switched it to the compass...however, the missions conditioned me to constantly be opening the larger mini-map that I couldn't take it anymore, and I switched it back to Regular. I also agree that the things you discover for yourself are far more interesting and engaging than most story missions (at least in terms of gameplay), but after I finished the story, I stopped playing and don't really intend on going back. I tend to explore as much as possible, or as much as I can be bothered to, during my actual playthrough. Once the story is over, it feels kind of aimless to wander around and look under every rock to find those handful of things I missed the first time. I prefer to do some story missions, then explore in the down-time in-between, and then get back to the main stuff. As much as I wanted to explore all of that desert...I instead just wanted to finally stop playing and move on to something else. If there's no major content out there, then I can't really be bothered, and if there *is* major content, I don't really think I can be bothered aimlessly wandering around to find it in such a huge open area. For example, I *could* wander around the entire map to find all those dinosaur bones, I could even use a guide for it, but why? Is it really worth it? After I finish that quest...then what? Quests like that in particular really don't interest me too much, as the map is just far too big for me to attempt that without a guide. There's probably other points in your video that I wanted to mention but I'm typing this a while after I actually finished it, that's my bad. I'm very glad I played this game but I wish the gameplay could catch up to its stellar character writing/acting and world design.

[@Erumore]

Looking back on the story a few months after finishing it, I remember it quite fondly too, I guess because the poor pacing mostly gets forgotten over time. I really liked Arthur as a character and enjoyed the moments where I got to learn more about him and his perspective. Dutch is still kind of an enigma to me, and I think the writers of RDR2 were constrained a bit by having to conform to the existing plot of RDR1, but on the whole the story successfully gave me the feeling of being part of a close-knit band of outlaws, which is probably the best praise I could give it. Taking part in the campfire scenes with Arthur and the others singing around the fire always brought a smile to my face. I still don't know what they were going for with the Guarma chapter though. The epilogue is definitely the section of the game I enjoyed the least, and is where the gameplay really starts to feel like a slog. The nostalgia of revisiting part of the map from the first game wasn't enough to justify the 8 hours of filler the game forces you through, and given that most of the map isn't even used I'm surprised that Rockstar thought it was worth the effort of including. I agree that Arthur's story is kind of diminished by presenting it as 'setup' for John's story from the first game, which I dislike especially because Arthur is a more likeable character in my opinion. Once I finished the story I was finished with the game as well. I don't think there's much enjoyment to be had lingering in the game's world after reaching the end of the plot, but while that plot is still ongoing it feels great to wander around, discover new things and stew over the events of the story. In my ninety hours with the game I found exactly one collectible dinosaur bone and zero rock carvings. I guess the player isn't really expected to find them without a guide, but as far as I'm concerned that just means that they'll end up watching the associated cutscenes on KZbin rather than actually doing it themselves. I'm not too sure what the point is of long-winded collectathon quests like that, but I suppose they're harmless as long as they remain completely optional. I'm also glad I put in the time to play this game, and its open world design definitely gave me some new experiences and new ideas to think about. Assuming their next game is GTA 6, my prediction is that the shooting mechanics won't be made more complex than the simple baseline we have now, but if Rockstar can preserve and build on the immersive feeling I got from RDR2's open world then they're on the right track.

[@kapiteinlulhaas7612]

When i played this game my wife was pregnant with our twins. Now that they are born and 1,5 years old and my gaming time is effectively reduced by 90% theres no way in hell i wouldve played more than half and hour of this game. Its like the game doesnt really need or want you to even play it, and just wants you to watch it.

[@JimBob-gv3ry]

Please keep making more videos! You're style is very similar to Joseph Anderson, only you are much more succinct in your analyses. I do have some criticism with your video though. If I'm not mistaken, you said you used auto-aim throughout the game and then summarised that the shooting was rote, mechanical, and boring, but - and this is just my opinion - I feel like any game where you used auto aim in the way you described would have resulted in boring shooting, and that's why I think many people don't use auto aim if they can help it. I can understand someone saying the shooting in red dead 2 is dull (I find it bland in certain aspects as well, but to go any game (that doesn't control horribly) with auto aim on the entire time - that just seems a bit like you're purposely taking away the fun of playing the game. Of course, the controls in red dead 2 aren't great, but I myself managed to go nearly all of the game playing with auto-aim off on foot sections.

[@Erumore]

Thanks for the comment, it makes my day to be mentioned alongside Joseph Anderson. You're the second commenter to bring up the auto-aim, so I'm starting to think this is something I should have addressed in the video. There are a few reasons I didn't change the auto-aim settings. Firstly, I played with a controller (which I think is the intended way to play) which makes some kind of aim assist pretty much mandatory. Secondly, the auto-aim is on by default which makes me think that it's also intended: almost every Rockstar game of the last 20 years has also had lock-on aiming, and shooting from horseback without auto-aim would have been basically impossible with a controller. Thirdly, even if I had disabled auto-aim while on foot, I'm sceptical whether it would have improved my experience with the shooting mechanics. I'm sure it would have made gunfights longer if I had to line up every shot myself, and given my complaint that too much time is spent on pointless shootouts already, I don't regret my choice to leave auto-aim switched on. I think there are more interesting ways Rockstar could increase the complexity of the shooting than just switching off auto-aim, like the double-trigger-pull mechanic that I mentioned in the video, and I hope we see them building on that kind of thing in the future (though I highly doubt we'll see anything like that in their next GTA game). Thanks again for watching and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying my videos. Stay tuned for many more!

[@nosouponhead]

Red Dead 2 and Ghost of Tsushima are, imo, as perfect as open world games can get. Ghost of Tsushima maybe more so.

[@2460-1]

It is pretty funny how every time you mention a gunfight you just get increasingly frustrated. It seems to me that the open world was a substitute for the main story. I guess to you that is good, but I find that incredibly disappointing. The purpose of a game like Red Dead is to entice you into the story. When this story gets bogged down by constantly branching narratives, then you kind of lose sight of what the purpose of everything is. Forgive me if I extend too long in my explanation. I will give an example to demonstrate what I am trying to say. In Vampire the Masquerade, you start off as a fledgling that slowly becomes involved with the plots and schemes of other vampires. It really immerses you into this sick world. Because in this world, you are constantly trying to find out what is in the mind of elder vampires and newer vampires. An ugly yet beautiful tapestry of deceit, lies, and hatred. The game references the plan that you will inevitably play into. Along with vampires warning you to beware of playing into a vampire's plans. The purpose of this game is almost created out of your own decisions depending on the endings you play for. Most (some endings are actually bad lmao. _If you know you know_) of these endings are just as good as the other honestly. Keep in mind, this game was in serious dev-hell (and it shows. The last portion of the game is quite rushed). It is only brought to its full glory with the unofficial patch. When a lot of food is being cooked at the same time, you (as a dev) HAVE to know when to turn off the heat. Because if you leave it too long, everything will just end up burnt or cold, and you will feel like you wasted your time with everything. My point is that Vampire The Masquerade understood that it had to nail every plot thread into something cohesive (the most important part). The result is something spectacular that many will remember. It just seems to me (from this review and many others) that Red Dead 2 failed to do that. I played the first one, but I fail to remember most of the things because I was just 10 or 9 when I played it. I always had this problem with Rockstar games. They feel way too long to be invested in (keep in mind I played witcher 3, baldur's gate, planescape torment). To me, the greatest sin you could ever do to a good story is pad the ever living 5НIТ out of it.

[@frogglen6350]

Im not sure how anyone can compliment this scripted mess of a game but then complain about the freedom in tears of the kingdom. (you)

[@hunnerboi8561]

It's much better at what it's trying to do than totk.

[@frogglen6350]

To quote Quagmire "God you're pretentious " Very nitpicky video