Red Dead Redemption 2 Critique: Nothing Is Perfect

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to my Red Dead Redemption to critique this was easily the biggest March of 2018 even with the games week trailers it had the second biggest opening weekend in entertainment history and it deserves it rock stars overworked employees deserve something to be proud of Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game of the generation an incredible gaming experience and easily among if not the best game released in 2018 this critique will examine why but it will put particular emphasis on the game's weak points it might be fantastic but it's a country mile from perfect and I think the best place to start is with the gameplay [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] when I talk about gameplay what comes to mind is combat and movement but think of a grand strategy game there are no such systems outside of extremely basic win or lose combat scenarios and simple troop movement yet they are games which means they must have gameplay this is obvious but I need to clarify the gameplay isn't just movement in combat gameplay is how you interact with the ruleset you've been given so when I talk to a random stranger accidentally pull my gun get into a fighter then rush down to a river and dump the body I call that excellent gameplay if gameplay is how you interact with the world kind of like a highly immersive ruleset then the dynamism present in rockstar games is still gameplay and that puts it leagues above the vast majority of other open world games you see a train in the distance you can go there you can climb it wait wrong game you can rob that train stop it loop the safe take the passengers jewelry deal with the guards and the patrol that comes after that patrol can chase you for miles he might lose your horse steal another hide you might need to take the fight into a town which we get civilians killed or provide a more manageable zone to execute your pursuers other notable things you can do of robbing carriages and horses to either sell take as your own or loot what's special about Rockstar open walls is that all the systems combined to provide memorable experiences dynamically is then they're not scripted that means no chase will be the same but it's a different experience every time and when those experiences are reliably fun which they are you get an endlessly enjoyable gaming sandbox that's what GTA 5 has been to me since its release in 2013 and that's what keeps people playing it along with GTA online even now in 2019 that's where longevity and replay value comes from because the campaign's combat and movement in rockstar games are never anything special that's why i'm starting with this because while in 2019 it might not seem like the most important aspect of the game with time it will be read dead - does this well and that's alone is why it's the best open-world game we've seen since breadth of the wild but it gets a lot more interesting when we compare it to GTA 5 in GTA you can seemingly get stars out of nowhere even if no one sees you do a crime the police magically know exactly where you are and shoot to kill in red dead we have a witness system crimes will only be recognized if you're directly implicated by a winner but you've still got an opportunity to prevent being found out you just need to chase down or kill the witness how hard that is to do is pretty much directly correlated with the population of the area as you would expect with this system you can have your fun without being forced to escalate it into a police chase which I believe is a huge improvement over GTA furthermore there are areas of the map where presence of the law is slimmer best which again puts escalation under your control in a realistic manner this is great which makes it one of a kind because having so many systems that serve realism and immersion is also one of read debt twos biggest problems in Red Dead Redemption - your actions have consequences that sounds great on paper but in practice what does it serve immersion and that's great but um it's what you want from a rockstar game get into a fight your horse might permanently die cause trouble you're wanted everyone will hate you you can't use fast trample you'll be hunted do literally anything except walk in a straight line hello bad honor okay I might exaggerated that last one but the point is clear much of what you typically do in a rock star sandbox for fun is punished either narrative Lee by having everyone hate you or gameplay-wise by instantly jumping to a high bounty wanted level if you get caught for anything or not being able to fast travel until you pay off your bounty in GTA a death is a restart there's no lasting effects of doing anything this isn't GTA which might be a counter-argument not all rockstar games need to be the same a Red Dead Redemption is modeled after that sandbox and dynamic gameplay is still rockstars strength so punishing you for using it seems extremely counterintuitive another weakness in Red Dead 2 is the degrees of escalation in GTA you can go from brawling a couple of cop cars with a pistol to taking on an armored battalion of cars trucks SWAT teams helicopters and so on with a minigun there's a clearly defined sense of escalation with the star system and the tools you have to respond in red dead escalation is on a more meta level with your bounty because death or losing the cops doesn't reset it the result of that is chases feeling similar compared to GTA especially if you aren't paying off your bounty every time you die which are probably not lawmen only vary in their amounts and the strongest you personally can get is the Litchfield repeater with high velocity rounds and golden claws not exactly impressive and I don't think you could use the realism argument either why don't they have some wagons with a turret that's just an example but there's a hundred ways you could go bigger than men on horses in 1899 overall then the dynamic sandbox is fantastic because this is still a rockstar game but it sacrifices a lot in service of immersion and realism but mean the game's single-player won't have longevity comparable to GTA 5 which is a real shame sacrifices in service of immersion is a bit of a theme with Red Dead Redemption too but let's not gloss over the side that benefits [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] there are very few games on earth that are more massive than this living breathing world is a lovely marketing term to describe awhile but feels real a world that dynamically reacts to the player I don't need to tell you how good this game looks but I will anyway I said this is the best looking game I've ever played three times in 2018 God of War spider-man and then Red Dead to every single frame looks like it could have been painted the ground the trees the mud at the rain the way the dirt sticks to your clothes and the snow especially are all mind-blowing ly realistic but what's especially impressive is that the skyboxes ant but really they're made to look especially dramatic especially present I really don't know how to describe it but it's exactly what you'd expect from a painting not a photograph which seems to coincide with the Hudson River School of Art and luminous landscape paintings of the 19th century and that makes this game look stunning pretty much permanently I highly doubt anything's going to top this for a long time the sounds of gunfire and the music are equally as impressive as the visuals the score is unique and that it sounds as if it could have been made in 1899 it's remarkably periodic and punctuates the game's most dramatic and emotional moments perfectly however that's not what you hear people raving about on the Internet the details in this game are utterly unparalleled let me just run you through some of them in the intro you ride with my car and Dutch in a pack of three you're at the back you shout ahead to Dutch the rider just ahead to relay a question to Micah at the front that's your character accounting for the conditions they're riding in although this is scripted there's a cinematic camera to use if you hold the touchpad it'll put up some black borders and take the camera a bit further back best of all it's not automatic you can switch the shot whenever you like between a small few choices I don't know how much use this is going to see from anyone though the game already puts an unbelievable amount of effort into seeming cinematic at all times at the end of some fights the number of enemies might make a run for it they saw their friends go down and didn't want to join them so they ran most games wouldn't have even thought of it but Rockstar wants you to believe these enemies are people if you get into a 50 man shootout there are no exceptions it doesn't matter if it was in a mission the law will turn up and you will be implicated if you're still at the scene NPCs bodies will actually decay with time and if you're in the right parts of the map vultures will come down and feast on them you can actually head into theaters and cosplayers a youtube comment horses don't teleport to you when you whistle which is actually one of my favorite things about the game that might be controversial but let me explain myself fast modes of transportation and fast travel are get-out-of-jail-free cards you get yourself in a bad situation even when you aren't in combat you can just summon amount or teleport out of it taking this away means any bad situation you get yourself into has to be gotten out over unassisted it creates more interesting gameplay scenarios and makes you respect the world you're in I'd also say that the animations on characters are absolutely fantastic which is no surprise since the game uses euphoria physics like in Max Payne 3 but that makes the protagonist very slow to control in any building if you walk out the straight and then rapidly switch or stick from left to right he barely turns at all if you do a full circle of the stick Arthur will only perform about sixty degrees of the turn you can imagine how that affects combat and navigating small spaces you can never get our much input you need to get the character to move in short exact increments this example of gameplay sacrifices is just the tip of the iceberg cores are definitely an interesting feature and they do seem to be mostly in service of immersion Deadeye health and stamina are represented by white rings but the actual symbol inside that controls recharge rates can be white gray all the way down to red and that means you want to be consistently eating and drinking to maintain them through this consumables have a reason to exist but why is scarcely increases debt it doesn't affect difficulty all that much but it does mean you constantly have to go into your inventory to eat something if you want to beat your max in the next fight it's just annoying is it a massive marginally was it worth it no I don't think so but you might disagree and I kinda get where you'd be coming from this one's up for debate what follows not so much the game likes to force you to get out rifles and shotguns from your horses saddlebag every time you reset either from death or starting a mission this is fine it adds an element of preparation to combat and it means the always thinking about what weapons to bring for each engagement but routinely you'll bring weapons out on your horse and they'll have disappeared next time you check it's a spectacularly irritating feature once I've selected them they should not go away until I reset similarly there's a gun cleaning mechanic you lose damage and accuracy if you use your gun too much so you have to use gun oil to clean it but is this even a massive I don't think so how is running your gun over with some cloth going to make it more damaging and regardless this contributes absolutely nothing to the game apart from the tedium of pressing r3 only when you're moving slowly and holding square it might have been intended to encourage you to switch your weapons more but that doesn't work in practice because there's no reason you'd ever need to think about conserving your gun oil it's plentiful my patience however isn't being forced to slow to a crawl in the camp has the benefit of making it more likely that you interact with characters and notice details but when all I want to do is get to a blip on the other side of camp it can be fantastically frustrating couldn't we have least had a light jog and then of course you've got the more controversial individual body looting and having to open every single cabinet in Drori to access maybe one item at a time is it slow yes is it amazing the first time you see it yes is it amazing the 200th time you see it not really how many times will you see it let me tell you well over 200 times it drifts towards frustration by the real end game but I don't think it ever gets quite that bad the ultimate example of this however is honor so what does honor actually do well it has massive story implications for a start affecting the cause of the ending how characters address Arthur and his tone in some of the cutscenes as for gameplay you'll get large discounts and new available outfits near the top end near the bottom end though you'll get a higher drop rate of useful consumables and more money being collectable off Norman's corpses I say near the bottom end but pass the first small section of bad Honor it's just that there's no more rewards for bad honor apart from a grip which is supposedly the reward for negative max though I have seen reports of inconsistency clearly negative honor is geared towards people who are playing for it you get more rewards from what you're doing killing people specifically lawmen however it is worth mentioning that this still isn't sustainable because the money you lose from dying once is vastly more than the money you'll get in even an hour of robbing and fighting what Nets you good and bad honor is largely logical but our big problem is inconsistency aside from the fact that you can just endlessly fish and throw them back into the water as a ridiculous good on a farm for an example of inconsistency I once had to chase down a horse with a woman hogtied on top of it I eventually tried to shoot it in the foot and for that I got bad honor so rescuing a trapped woman is wrong if I have to shoot a horse in the foot that makes me not want to bother I had similar happened with another trapped woman a bunch of raiders executed her husband and were about to do the same to her I come in kill the Raiders but because I loot one guy before getting round to cutting her restraints I get bad on her when I finally do cut her free she just runs and I get no good honor so I'd be a better person had I simply let her be shot in the head according to the game another time I find a similar situation a man and a woman held hostage I intervene but I'm not quick enough I get bad honor why the game is telling me that I'd be more honourable if I did nothing this happens all the time in the game pseudo-dynamic map events just like GTA and Red Dead one random events will pop up in the map that you can go along with rescuing someone finding someone to compete against even happening upon prisoners to free or a train that's in the middle of being robbed there's so many of these and they're impressively plentiful matching the quality of the rest of the game but the biggest rewards are honor and in those cases where I risk having a hostage be injured or shot in my rescue attempts it's safer to just keep walking on the one hand honor does shift rewards in favor of your play style with more consumable drops for bad honor players and more discounts for good honor players but on the other hand honor comes at the sacrifice of dynamism because in addition to the risk presented by the inconsistency you will be less compelled to simply do as you please as you would in a normal Rockstar game if you know there are fairly significant consequences to it I believe this is counterintuitive because honor would be an excellent way of rewarding you for taking various actions in the map events I don't think it's a completely screwed up system I just think it needs some heavy tweaking if it must be carried over into the next right dead so now we understand how gameplay is affected by the attempts to make the game more immersive in the open world there are arguments you can make in numerous cases that we gained immersion was worth the sacrificed gameplay but with regards to control or even dynamic escalation I certainly think Rockstar went far over the line tell me what you think but we can't blame immersion for the gameplays other problems so far we've been addressing the topic on a broader sentence past combat and movement but now let's look at just that it's been 5 years since the last Rockstar third-person shooter what have they done for us in all that time [Music] the wid thing about Red Dead Redemption too is that when you really try to master the combat and you get to a respectably high skill level with it it's actually really fun yet many of the things that make it fun are either never shown off or impractical to use in most of the main story what applies to everything though is the feeling and visual aspect of the combat the guns and punches feel and sound good enough you've got a massive blood splatter you can shoot through the heart creating a fairly gruesome death you got the black and white kill cams you can dismember with explosives one of the most enjoyable things to do is the close-range executions you approach someone very closely in press r2 to get them into the right position press r2 again you shoot it looks good only problem is you can't access it while running so you end up having to brake before getting into range which isn't exactly optimal if you don't you'll tackle them instead which is useful for slowing someone down without lethal force and beating the piss out of them or just guaranteeing an accurate shot enemies will also tackle you which you have to press circle to break out off and they can melee a gun out of your hands influence from Max Payne 3 shines through very clearly which is confusing as well late to see but straight off the bat we can carry a shotgun and a pistol at the same time even though that's purely visually we also have euphoria ragdoll physics the protagonist is slower to control and there's a die it makes perfect sense to take inspiration from rockstars best combat system but the dives only useful sometimes it can quickly get you behind cover while yes you can activate Deadeye during a dive this only allows you to mark targets you cannot fire and that means you just have to wait for the animation to finish an Arthur to get on his knees wasting a huge amount of Deadeye just for the sake of looking marginally cooler it's taken a lot of good ideas from Max Payne 3 and not really done anything at all with them still with all these brutal options you have at your disposal you can get Red Dead 2's combat playing great you can thing is the game doesn't put you in a position to reach those Heights very often let's start with our biggest problem console exclusivity no really because Red Dead Redemption 2 is a console exclusive you're on a controller using primarily precision weapons this is annoying because you only have so much fun control with the analog stick and when you factor in everything else the jokes around your aim I'm struggling to see how the generatively depending on snap to aim can be avoided unless you prefer playing it like a cover shooter it is absolutely true that you can make the aiming feel a lot nicer in the settings this makes combat can durably better but it's not an excuse if you generously assume that 5% of the playerbase even know about this then maybe 2% actually changed the settings you simply are handicapping yourself if you choose not to use snap to aim because most people can only get so good with the sticks and that would be fine if the increased skill factor with no snap make the game more fun but I don't think it does I think it makes it less fun and that might sound ridiculous at first but just hear me out for a bit the only way to reliably hit shots when aiming is to wait awhile before you pull the trigger the little circle surrounding the reticule will deflate until the short has perfect accuracy the problem with this is it makes cover shooting and shooting with any mid to long range weapons slow because you have to wait so long between each shot you cannot use skill to overcome the acure izing time because the bullets spread within the circle is random not only does it make combat slow and boring since this is the only effective strategy at these ranges but it also goes against the theme of a rootin tootin cowboy shoot in video game I want to be fine firing every weapon I have for days not stuck behind cover at short range though everything changes you have lots of cover meaning you can move without long-term risk you do not need to wait for the circle to deflate meaning you can hit fire everything you've got you can access the brutal close-range kill animations you can use Deadeye for both its functions facilitating accurate panic shots and badass multi kills you can use aggressive tactics with pistols throw balls or melee and practically every weapon barber sniper is viable depth all of a sudden there's good balancing between the sidearms most of the earlier shotguns power versus reliability and many effective solutions to any combat situation exactly what I described about how good the combat can feel applies here the problem is short-range combat is more dangerous you just are more vulnerable and without snap to aim all these badass multiple minute long brawls in the middle of a town would simply not be reliably possible see what I mean now Red Dead 2 is mid to long range combat just ain't that fun the other problem is the game doesn't always put you in situations where short range is possible it's up to you out in the world but for the average player most of their play time is going to be in the story we'll get onto that soon but there's much more to get out of the way the controls occasionally conflict I want to grab a guy with a gun instead I jump onto his wagon and get shot to pieces because both were triangle and mounting took priority the snap to aim isn't perfect I run into a stranger he starts shooting me and when I get my shotgun out I target my own horse instead of my enemy the winchester model 1887 exists you cannot flip load it not a problem but it makes me melt inside speaking of weapons weapon variety sucks - there's very little distinction within many groups and some individual weapons are objectively better than others which makes a certain importance useless and others boring then you've got your enemy variety there's a guy with a gun and guy with a gun on a horse your variation is what gun they're using but in practical terms that makes a marginal difference at best until you start fighting the must free broods who introduce a new enemy type a guy with a massive machete one hit from him and your debt which is great because it encourages you to change your play to adapt you need to take them out quickly and run if they get too close that didn't work for me though I just saw them as an invitation to run directly out then with a machete of my own well that's just as good problem is you see them what twice yeah in story missions the design is so unbelievably restrictive that short range engagements can only be had sometimes and it is always a risk less for yourself more for the mission success believe me it gets apocalyptically bad and it's not always relevant to combat what's incredibly impressive about Red Dead Redemption too is that its story is both engaging and massive you can spend days getting through it it took me well over two weeks of play sessions really engrossing stuff and as such combined with the problems I've addressed about the game's longevity the vast majority of playtime for the average player I believe will be logged in the campaign in the story online will significantly change the balance but a Red Dead online success will not become for both GTA online it just won't and be you don't want to overestimate the amount of Red Dead - owners who will actually put a large amount of play time into the online mode so if the majority of play time is spent in the story that's where gameplay and all aspects of it not just the combat has got to shine the most massive shame because I have simply quit and played something else multiple times due to this games frequently abominable displays of restrictive game design where do I even start let's just dive in in the deep end in story missions you can't go a certain way because you've not been told to yet you can't go too far from the pack or they die you can't go upstairs yet because hasn't told you to you can't put down a mission specific body to lose or get out a bigger gun momentarily this is to ensure that every narrative moment is adhered to the artha is in the right position to do exactly what he's supposed to do at exactly the right time it's successful only game because you aren't confident you follow the instructions to the letter because you want to learn the game's mechanics and because you can't predict the narrative consequences of doing something off script when you have your confidence you just want to have fun so being restricted this heavily is frustrating this happens all throughout the story constantly but what follows are some particularly awful examples of restrictive design on Dutchess Guam omission there's a door you need to head through to get into a building if you get there before Dutch it's locked but as soon as Dutch arrives it's suddenly open on this same mission Dutch will tell you to make a run for a trapped prisoner as soon as the building explodes if you run as soon as the building explodes instead of simply following Dutch you can't interact with the prisoner at all in fact there's still an invisible wall near his cage when you're rescuing a gang member from the State Penitentiary you have to eliminate two guards there's a sniper but you're not forced to use it well I thought they if we want to do it quietly we should get close and take both out with a knife can't you can't even get close you have to sit up there and do exactly as the game says but when you're protecting Sadie and Dutch in a similar situation you're not actually allowed to exit your scope at all and then in one of the game's most important missions it happens again but the angles and distance makes you feel tunnel visioned so you end up spending half your time searching for Sadie Stealth's worse in fact Stealth's so bad I could have designed it better myself in three days of the Commodore 64 stealth is fairly regular in the main missions yet I only recall one moment in the entire game where it isn't on Rails 90% of stealth missions require you to follow an NPC and they'll tell you exactly when to hide and exactly when to move you can't kill anyone unless you've been clearly instructed to you can't pick your own route or it'll break somehow you can't actually be spotted by anyone as long as you follow the instructions that's the skill being tested you literally just need to follow instructions and it's frankly an utter embarrassment the whole design philosophy here is just so incredibly confusing because sometimes you are directly presented with multiple options as to how something is to be done like plant dynamite or sneak into a cave this is good for replayability but the only thing ever affected by things like this is how much money you get at the end if that's the context I'd much rather have one option plant dynamite but multiple ways of dynamically doing that like whistling or taking them out from a park you know like a normal game instead I get to pick between sneaky following Charles and spicy following Charles both end with the compact section so apart from dialogue what difference does it make I've only been referring to missions from the first six chapters so far but Red Dead 2 does have an epilogue this is the last spoiler warning I'll give the mission design in the epilogue doesn't get better it gets worse on the mission where you set out to buy a barn with uncle if you accidently pull your gun near the salesman you fail got a ride all the way back to Blackwater shoot on the way to find Ramon Cortez fail the guards noticed you or maybe the law spotted you stray too far from Sadie in the shootout fail she dies this random arbitrary bollocks is so horrendously restrictive it makes me want to simply put down the game and play something else but the game doesn't have to be this restrictive as proven by the times it isn't in the reins full mission you're allowed to get the items however you please kill them all sneak from any angle another example would be chasing the medicine for Captain Monroe - do we optimize you need to refrain from killing either of the guards because the game has you on rail for the vast majority of missions the player is unlikely to be aware of the options they even have I thought last subtle and that works but I imagine a huge proportion of players had no idea what to do because any other time you've robbed a wagon it was either easy and scripted or lethal you can see how even so deep into chapter 6 the final chapter of a good 45 hour story I still don't know what I'm doing in basic ass missions because I've been babied the entire time you know in hindsight I'm struggling to see the practicality of focusing so much on immersion and realism both in the story and in the open world in a game such as this if we view the intensity of a game's immersive quality is directly proportional with how little it takes to break it then we would need Red Dead 2 to be pretty much perfect in its realistic execution when you're chasing Sadie in a hot-air balloon as cool as that is I struggle to believe that all 20 odd gunslingers couldn't hit either this massive balloon or Sadie or her horse even when she's a sitting duck this alone betrays the immersion built up by practically every other aspect of the game and takes you out of all of that at least for a while still be invested in the story of course there's a thousand other games that have plot armor in this way but the rest of what Redemption - does the dialogue in the story the horse balls the opening every individual cabinet loses its effectiveness in the wake of this despite its practicality Rockstar still could have made it work there's more ways to create a tense situation and to shoot stuff than having a band of twenty gangsters maybe you've got to rescue Sadie from being hit by a train while you're still in the hot air baloon maybe you've got to shoot some unaware guards on board you can have plenty of enemies without them all having a clear shot on Sadie other emergent breakers that could have been avoided include the fact that characters will sometimes speak loudly in earshot of guards they're trying to sneak by but not everything is avoidable if it takes so little to break this game's immersion does that include the fact that Arthur can already take ten shots before dying well from my experience it doesn't break anything but it sure as hell does crack the surface in those fight scenes where you're taking tens of bullets and continuing on in another game that wouldn't have mattered yeah it does and they're trying to create an action-packed third-person shooter see what I mean about practicality maybe it was worth it in some parts but we've covered the gameplay and I've shown how large sacrifices were made for the sake of marginal or even partially pointless games in immersion and realism both out in the open world and within the story pointless either because they just don't work or because there's only so a massive a rockstar third person shooter with objectively unamerican bat mechanics can be before you see critically diminishing returns on the effort put in its longevity will be reduced as a result of its relative lack of dynamism but the world it's set in has beauty that is truly unparalleled and won't look bad even in 10 20 50 years the detail is mind-blowing and it's a pleasure just to be in it it's much more than even that when you consider the delivery of this pleasure our upcoming 45 hour story let's find out what the hypes about Red Dead Redemption 2 starts with Duchess gang up in the mountains they're being hunted by the lore on one end and the O'Driscoll gang on the other Dutch is a respectable charismatic leader and he pulls the group together remarkably well according to the old Driscoll's a trains passing nearby sometime soon which sounds like a good opportunity to make some money maybe escape from this place you rob the train only trouble is who it's owned by Leviticus Cornwall with the Train money you set up camp near Valentine which is where the games world opens up alpha spends a lot of time helping out the gang in various ways and what's impressed is how incredibly well they've made you feel like a part of this gang you can buy upgrades for the camp you can eat the daily soup you can talk to all the members of the gang or just slide them off there's side missions to is great it truly is fantastically well executed the gang members and mostly every other character in the game feel like humans like people they feel real like no other game I've ever played making a character feel real doesn't mean writing dialogue as everything we're a real conversation real conversations are never so interesting or witty feeling real simply means having them react as they would if they were real and dialogue being written in the appropriate voice it's not a masterclass but if Vince Gilligan the guy who did Breaking Bad wrote for a video game I think it would look like this another thing that impresses me about the characters is that no one is without fault some characters might have extremely good aspects and extremely bad aspects some characters might fall in the middle and have nothing clearly good or bad but it's about balance which makes them more believable what's gonna follow from here is essentially a formula you move to a place you do a few things Dutch comes up with a plan because you need more money it always involves a god damn train but not always it goes all right maybe you get an entire celebration in until uh-oh SpaghettiOs [ __ ] hits the fan time to run away that's your cycle it's not rigid for example at the end of chapter 4 Dutch his plan doesn't work at all you don't even get the money and chapter 3 doesn't technically end with a plan because things go tits up before it's properly started the formula being so blatant works into the story it becomes very important for Dutch in Arthur Duchess plans always fail they're always told that they need only a little more money but they always end up getting screwed over somehow as the leader this begins to send Dutch slowly off the deep end people are getting killed people are losing faith and Micha is whispering into his ear making him lose his morals over time for his own gain and for his own survival as for Arthur he just seeks meaning he's been driven by Dutchess promise of escape and when this routinely fails his killing and robbing feels pointless but he still has loyalty to Dutch and that keeps them together for the most part we can see how the formula works for these characters and how a constantly changing base camp means the story is kept fresh by the setting changes but the formula does make the game slightly predictable as time goes on we're clearly not going to escape so we know the plan is going to fail we've only been to half the map and we're only on chapter 4 it like episodic TV shows is directed by the nature of its own existence no house isn't going to die no he didn't find out what was wrong with the patient within the first 10 minutes of the show the formula is an inherently flawed model and in this case doing so many similar things so many times does get a tad bit uninteresting I'm slightly disappointed with the missed potential of having a less predictable storyline but that's not the only way attention is removed from the story Red Dead Redemption 2 is an incredible prequel but it is a better game if you didn't play the first so much intrigue so much tension is completely removed if you know what's going to happen to certain characters we know John Abigail Jack Dutch Xavier Bill and uncle make it into Red Dead one after Chapter one Arthur and Jackie visited by agent Milton with the Pinkerton Detective Agency they've been hired by laviticus Cornwall to take down you and you can he makes you an offer to turn them in you refuse and later on Jack is gone there's a lot more to this but the point is we already know it's going to be ok when uncle is kidnapped by the skinners we know we're getting him back the game is just nowhere near as interesting if he played the first so I'm extremely thankful that I didn't these are all inconveniences however in the wake of this the biggest problem with the story is padding every mission has some function but that function very often didn't need an entire 20 minutes dedicated to it for example when you're burning the Gray's fields with a short most of this is just hiding slow sneaking pouring moonshine and then finally getting some action at the end 10 minutes of boring gameplay and for what three things tutorial izing mechanics like in most Rockstar missions character bonding and marginally furthering the plot here's why none of these things need to be in a dull mission sure we needed to gain the braithwaite's trust and trashing the greys Fields was a good way of doing that but we could have done a listen e of other more entertaining things to do so or we could have just done this in another mission there's tons of other missions that take us to the greys place why not simply burn the fields at the end of one of those we need to bond with Sean because he doesn't have much screen time and as Keanu Reeves said the strongest bonds are forged in the most intense situations but the same thing could have been in another mission and as for tutorial izing moon shine again same thing could have been done in a bank heist or something infinitely more exciting no mission is pointless but often times those points could have been made better in a denser format and then you come on to the formula the second formula I can think of ten other missions similar to the Shawn mission you meet up with someone gallop over to wherever you need to be for five minutes while chatting do something you've not done before even if it's trivial like using an instant lockpick or I don't know hurting some sheep Arthur makes a sarcastic remark about how that could have gone better the character split up done being formulaic is already going to lead to predictability and it's not like doing half of this would be interesting even if I didn't see it coming where this any other game with dialogue and characters that weren't as strong the story would be dragged into the swamp by these issues thankfully you start to see the back end of these formulaic missions as chapter 4 closes and act 3 kicks into gear when it comes to writing pacing has always been my biggest obstacle there's simply no clear guide on how to do it right what makes a good pace story why a poorly paced story is so incoherent but my limited understanding is this imagine you have a weighing scale on one end you have low paced sections and on the other end you have high paced sections there needs to be a good balance and what that is is relative to the position in the story act one has a high paced intro but has the greatest proportion of low paced sections as we learn about the world and the characters act to start as a low paced beginning but proportionally as high paced the next one and finally act 3 has the greatest proportion of high paced sections for example in chapter 5 at the beginning of act 3 you spend about 10 minutes walking but from then on in you've got stealth freeing captives blowing up buildings fighting a warship and armies of men to escape a desert island back to Lemoine where you're not being attacked for about 10 minutes but then get raided by the Pinkertons and then mow them down with gasoline gun the high paced missions in act 3 are rarely something but they're not very well supported I don't think introducing new major characters this late in the game as a wise move let alone new characters whose missions are slower than most affect one's the Native Americans have an interesting place and they're really important for Arthur Morgan's development but why everything involving them is so horrendously slow is beyond me I would want to help them you know just had five chapters beforehand and all the plates are spinning kind of want to get a move on and see how this all plays out not help a bunch of random strangers that I've only just met this would have gone down better if we had helped the Native Americans in act 1 and return to them only for the best missions in act 3 it would have served Arthur's character art better too still if anything in this game is a masterpiece is that Arthur's character arc in chapter 6 duchess mania begins to put the gang in harm's way and Arthur contracts tuberculosis prognosis ain't good through this death sentence he starts to see the world more clearly whatever Dutchess utopia is Arthur probably won't live to enjoy it he believes no one will and tells John to leave to run with Abigail and Jack so they won't be caught in the crossfire loyalty was once all he knew where's that got him it makes a big difference if you choose to help rains fall for Charles as Arthur learns that things are just things and that people matter more all of this coincides with the debt collecting side-missions the worst and worst positions people are put in by his and Strauss's loan sharking business so much so that you're allowed to help many of the debtors instead and Strauss can't stay the conversation you have with Charles when trying to spring eagle flies changes your perspective a little more yeah you're dying but knowing that gives you the chance to be something more than what you are everyone else Hosea Lennie Sean died outlaws and that's all I'll ever be it pays off when the gang prepares their rescue attempt Arthur decides exactly what he's going to do without asking Dutch for permission and when Dutch tries to take the rest of the men for his own many of them stay with you you're the leader of a charge against the army backed by men who were inspired by your will to save people in the final mission Red Dead Redemption Abigail is kidnapped by Milton who he uses to draw you into a trap you're too weak to fight alone so you're up in the sniper tower covering Sadie but she can't reach Abigail before being taken by Milton to and so despite being sickened to the point of barely being able to ride a horse Arthur fights through a battalion of Milton's drones to save Abigail and Sadie he reassures Abigail that even though John might be dead after the previous train iced Jack is alive but they can still live a good life and that they're both good people after they rode off I realized that Arthur is the best protagonist I've had control of in Rockstar Games sure and easily in this console generation he didn't start a hero but he became one of the best in the most natural and engrossing ways I have ever thought possible through spiritual enlightenment and material pain I believe that much of Arthur's character revolves around masculinity Arthur insists upon John and his family leaving he's practically a whole reason he was even considered he says that if John Abigail and Jack got out then maybe this would all mean something at least to him protecting innocence is what Arthur finds purpose in now let's view masculinity as a force of action sometimes action can take the form of creation and sometimes destruction both can be good both can be bad since masculinity is not at all passive its easy for it to become extreme I think that's why you see men disproportionately at the top of society CEOs directors but also at the bottom the homeless the suicidal and equally it's why men are typically the most helpful having provided things such as electricity and medicine but also the least terrorists warmongers what Arthur knows is destruction but sometimes in order to protect he must destroy it's a course shift on his masculinity I suppose being a good man is for him being willing to provide his gun and sacrifice his body for those he cares about the other link to masculinity I'd say would be off his vision of a black wolf and a lone stack I believe the black wolf represents becoming separated from the pack and the stag is the good within rising above it and becoming the hero that everyone needed maybe it's simply representations of good and evil or perhaps being a hunter and a protector at the same time it's some gorgeous imagery but further than that I don't think the game is trying to say anything else with regards to masculinity the final decision you make is between having certainty that John escapes with his life or going back to the camp for the money despite the fact that going back wouldn't exactly align with Arthur's current path I love that the biggest act of heroism for Arthur is one that you make but it ain't the last you're surrounded Pinkertons on one side Mike on the other Arthur came all this way did all this to get John back to his family and so he tells John to leave begs him practically it's not like Arthur has anything left to lose that final stand on the cliff to fight off the Pinkertons as John escapes is the most invested I've been in a story for years [Music] [Music] [Music] Your Honor decides the delivery of your fate but your fate comes all the same I've never felt happiness that a character got to live out their final moments is a good man and such sadness that I wouldn't get to see them again and the fruit of Arthur's sacrifice is realized in the same excessive quality as the rest of the game Red Dead Redemption - epilogue is as big as two chapters from the base game and no one saw it coming now we play as John and we start having turned over a new leaf we're looking for honest work rock stars missions have an impressive precedent in that gameplay mechanics used in missions like firing your gun in the sky could be dynamically used in the open wild so the amount of absolute depth is gradually increasing as you play through the story the epilogue breaks this trend you're shoveling pig [ __ ] and building fences you can't do that out in the open well you wouldn't want to either you're doing boring tasks taking [ __ ] from Abigail constantly and trying to pretend you're playing Red Dead Redemption - when you're just not there's one fun mission in the entire first part up until finally you put on your jacket in your hat and out rides John Marston in all his glory [Music] when John is finally let loose you keep all of our furs weapons and ammo so the only thing you technically lose was the horse in your course at this point the epilogue picks up John finds uncle Charles and Sadie and with the man you build up your ranch from the first game some of the most action-packed missions in the entire game come from bounty hunting with Sadie but it's not enough to redeem the epilogue in my eyes those sadie missions might be good but they take the arthur missions restrictive 'no stew in all new high i've already been through some of them sadie dying if you go off-track having to restart the mission if you do anything remotely threatening it gives me nightmares just thinking about it the epilogue feels like an act one it's slow paced repeats the same mission design over and over with even less variety than the main story and as you playing as a character we're not currently invested in maybe more so if you played the first game but certainly not comparable as to what you felt for arthur by far the biggest problem is most act ones have the benefit of introducing you to the characters in the wild act one of the main game is mental because we're discovering everything about the game the graphics the dialogue the characters the fighting the horses everything we already know everything in the epilogue the only thing it's got is introducing us to Red Dead Redemption one's map if you hadn't already gone there as Arthur it's a real shame but there are two major moments I think it's worth at least a single playthrough for they don't make it good but at least worth seeing first is our proposal to Abigail alpha never got to spend his life with Mary even though they came so close but he spent the final moments of his life making sure John would get to live with his family it would have made Arthur happy for us to give Mary's ring to Abigail which is what happens after John looks at a picture of Arthur and Mary from well back before the events of the game and the second is when all the threads come together Sadie returns to John with news of Micah we wanted to kill him since Arthur we've known Sadie would find him eventually and we knew that Abigail would oppose John's revenge mission so this is a clearly effective climax with all the characters fulfilling their functions Abigail's begging of John to stay is so real it's hard to explain the ending of the apologue is only narrowly beaten by the ending of the main game it's a vicious fight through Micah's gang just you whatever guns you had and the game's best music in the background what happens truly couldn't have been more fitting Sadie John Dutch and Micah all play their parts Arthur is avenged John gets the blackwater money and his family are made her once again Dutch realizes the part mica played in the disruption his vision but he can't find redemption for himself some more minor details would be that you can find members of your gang out in the wild Tilly's in San Denis marybeth's at Valentine train station Pearson owns the roads general store and even rains fall can be found at Hanna's burg there's also an N credit scene where Mary stands above Arthur's grave which actually brought tear to my eye I couldn't find a good place to put it but I think the villains deserve special mention in that they're impressively awful Milton is a one-note [ __ ] with not a single interesting quirk and Cornwall is just heartless businessman number 563 at least Milton's death is satisfying Cornwall has just kept by Dutch near the end with no warning whatsoever mike is a selfish creepy prick but at least he's got more than one dimension I don't want to end on a bad note but I kind of think that's oddly appropriate I hope I have quantified the good in the bad of the story well enough it's let down by formulae padding and mediocre villains but the dialogue the presentation and the masterful character arcs are something every fan of stories and games should experience online is a huge component of any Rockstar game nowadays but as of now online is in beta and I will not be covering it in this video beta means my criticisms are extremely temporary and further than that online appeals to a generally different audience than that of the single player if I do cover it it'll be separately Red Dead Redemption 2 was my game of the year because it is that beautiful because Arthur Morgan is that damn compelling because the wild is that rich and detailed it's got so many flaws that I could never call it a masterpiece Rockstar could have done so much better but that doesn't make it a bad game or even a mediocre one it's a fantastic one a must buy but I wonder was it worth the crunch time the mistreatment I'm not seeing the efficiency because I got this suspicion that those extra 20 or hours didn't go to the meat of the game as I said I could have made a better stealth system on my own but instead to something like having the mud textures bond to every item of clothing right or you know horse balls passion sadly can be faked with brute force but only to a degree that's what a lot of this game smells like that's what I thought at the start when stories were spreading and in retrospect now it's the same I don't like it I don't even know if I can in good faith recommend this magnificent game but it's much too late to vote with your wallet and I'm not here to preach Arthur Morgan Adam Jensen death Geralt of Rivia my favorite heroes and games have got a new addition and my collection of favorite games just might to thank you all for watching this is among the first videos I partially augmented with my new Darksiders - inspired writing style and I very much hope you enjoyed it any feedback would be greatly appreciated but you'll see a better example of what it has to offer next video I don't want to harp on about Darksiders - but I do think it's my best video yet and the feedback has just blown me away so if you have an interest in Zelda that game any of the sequels or videos like this please do check it out and if you'd like to help support the channel otherwise sharing the video or donating if you have a few bucks to spare goes a huge way thanks again next up is probably going to be something very unexpected so be on the lookout for that see you then [Music] [Music]

Channel: Whitelight

Views: 807,109

Keywords: red dead redemption, red dead online, red dead redemption 2, red dead redemption 2 gameplay, red dead 2, rockstar, rdr2, playstation 4, arthur morgan, john marston, rdr2 trailer, rdr2 online, red dead redemption 2 ost, red dead redemption 2 pc, red dead online glitch, red dead redemption 2 analysis, red dead redemption 2 critique, red dead revolver, god of war, spiderman, gta v, gta 5, rockstar game design outdated, whitelight, red dead redemption 2 review, it's no masterpiece

Id: GeAKDFiMtDU

Length: 47min 0sec (2820 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2019