On Wed, 04 Jan 2023 20:35:39 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <
spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
"Red Dead Redemption 2" was one of the games I grabbed during my
holiday frenzy (it's not /all/ about giving away games to others! ;-).
I grabbed it because the reviews are good, and I'm a fan of Rockstar's
other games. Yet, now that I stare at this behemoth, I can't help but
wonder: should I bother?
The game, I'm sure, is quality. The world will doubtlessly have an
incredible amount of detail and character. The storyline will be >entertaining. The gameplay will be mechanically sound. On a
minute-by-minute basis, I'm sure I'd love this game. And I did spend
real money on this thing; I shouldn't let that go to waste.
And yet...
The game looks so intimidatingly huge. Not only with its mammoth map,
but in the sheer number of things to do; main quests, side quests, fun >sandbox nonsense, skills, guns, NPCs... there's just so much.
Everything is detailed to the most intimate detail (infamously, even
the size of the horses' testicles varies with the temperature). It
doesn't help that this is game three of the franchise; the series even
has a history that's gigantic. There's just so much THERE... do I
really want to immerse myself for God knows how long with this one
game? I have a backlog running in the hundreds of games; can I really
afford to spend so much time on just RDR2? Will it really be worth the >investment of time?
Plus, it's a western. That's never been a genre I've particularly
warmed up to. I don't dislike it, but I've always preferred more
settings much older or much more modern.
So I'm torn. Do I or don't I? If only the game were smaller...
You could do what I did, and just play online (while that's still an
option, I don't think they are investing any more in it so who knows
how long the servers will be active... another few years sure, but not
as long as any RDR2OL fan would like).
Then, just choose one role at a time. Like Bounty Hunter or
Collector. Particularly for an action fan lover like myself,
Collector role might seem boring, yet somehow I enjoyed the hell out
of it. I did kind of cheat a bit by looking at the map of items...
https://jeanropke.github.io/RDR2CollectorsMap/
..but that's because money was otherwise hard to come by in the game,
and required to enjoy it. And, even with the map to guide me (toward
items that would have been IMPOSSIBLE to find otherwise), it was still
fun in an exploration kind of way. Oh yeah, did I mention I needed
the money? :)
Actually the most profitable thing I did was participate in races...
that truly funded most of my activities, as I had a fast horse and
practiced up on all the maps until I was mostly coming in first or
second all of the time. Very profitable. But last time I tried races
there weren't enough people in them for the prizes to be worth while.
I still enjoyed the hell of them... its not just racing in the
traditional sense (all going in the same direction)... on some maps
it's just whoever shoots all the targets first.. But firing a bow an
arrow (and guns) on horseback at those targets was addictive fun.
I eventually became a completionist and decided to max out each role.
Some I enjoyed more than others, but I really can't remember a game
that inspired me to play that many hours (trust me, hundreds) just to
have the sense of knowing I saw everything there was to see (mostly
anyway).
So they did release some DLC and some new roles. The very latest
significant release (blood money or something I think its called), I
never did finish all the missions in that, just because it took them
so long to update it that my interest had kind of fizzled.
Honestly I want to go back and complete the single player game one of
these days.. Just because I enjoyed the world and the mechanics so
much, I'd like to see the content that was created for all of the
directed missions. Even though the missions in Online felt a little
like "side missions", they were still more fun to me most of the time
than "main missions" in most other games.
But I think that had a lot to do with how much into the setting I was.
I like western games and am of the opinion there's not enough
representation of the genre.
But, the fact you don't like the western theme makes me wonder why
you're interested in it at all, honestly? For that reason, and the
fact I think you may have no interest in online, I can't say I
recommend for or against (in your particular case). I will say that
if you venture into RDR2 online, you may be surprised at how often it
feels like a single player experience.. especially in such a big world
which I'm guessing is much more sparsely populated with other players
than when I played it.
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