Red Dead Redemption 2 is in many ways a game better “experienced” than “played.”
If you can envelope yourself in this world, accept its incredibly leisurely pace, and embody Arthur Morgan, you’ll have an experience like no other video game.
If you can envelope yourself in this world, accept its incredibly leisurely pace, and embody Arthur Morgan, you’ll have an experience like no other video game.
Everything Rockstar promised about the fluidity of missions, dialogue, and interconnected game systems is true.
Missions just start, or are found. Items are bought by browsing a store, not browsing a menu. You exist in this space. It is not a theme park.
Missions just start, or are found. Items are bought by browsing a store, not browsing a menu. You exist in this space. It is not a theme park.
But this lovingly detailed design has its downsides. This is not a wish fulfillment, power fantasy video game.
Complete a mission far from home and you’ll spend a LONG time on horseback. Get dirty and you’ll have to pay for a bath. Run out of food and you’ll stop to make more.
Complete a mission far from home and you’ll spend a LONG time on horseback. Get dirty and you’ll have to pay for a bath. Run out of food and you’ll stop to make more.
In many ways this is quite brave. Rockstar knows this game will sell millions and yet stubbornly refuses to give horses infinite health, drop fall damage, forces players to clean their guns, forces them to eat (but not too much), and withholds fast travel or a long, long time.
But the downside of all of this is less patient gamers will call RDR2 boring, and even more generous gamers will likely concede that AC Odyssey and Spider-Man probably are more purely fun to play “in the moment.”
They’re video games that feel like video games.
They’re video games that feel like video games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn’t feel like anything else.
