Topic: Red Dead Redemption 2 OT

@Shellcore 60-ish%. I'm at the very start of Chapter Five. Since my gaming was small bursts rather than extended sessions over Christmas, I decided to put it on hold, like one of those annoying 'mid-season breaks' they have in TV shows. I'll get back on it in January

@NecuVise Oh, I completely agree. I enjoyed the fishing so that wasn’t a problem. I had most dream catchers so wanted to see how that ended, and had a few of the carvings already.

@Shellcore I just booted the game back up and having completed the epilogue, I’m on 93.5%.

I haven’t completed the dinosaur bones, exotics, or hunting requests; only have 40 weapons; have completed 1 challenge so also don’t have full cores; and only have 3/4 robberies.

EDIT: for what it’s worth, I have 50% of the trophies. I’m surprised the one for Marko Dragic is so low. The ones for surviving bear attacks, and for studying AND skinning every animal are a bit ridiculous.

@Hego Not sure if this helps, but there are a few options you can tweak which has helped some people.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/11/guide_red_dead_redempt...

@Thrillho That's incredibly good going. I was referring to story progression % as overall percentage depresses me. Don't tell me, but thinking I missed the Marko Dragic one as saw his second mission pop up, rode to it for it only to disappear. Camped out just in case it came back. Rather annoying.

@Shellcore I think it only appears at certain times of the day (a few side missions work like that a bit later in the game). The trophy relates to an unscripted event though..

I found the game picked up the pace a little in the 5th chapter onwards (the one where you go to Guarma ) and certainly feels more focussed from that point.

Do stick with it!

@Thrillho @Gremio108 @Hego @Shellcore @JohnnyShoulder @NecuVise @Jaz007 thank you for all the advise over the last week. I have decided rdr2 is just not for me after my latest death. The cumbersome controls and long playtime are the wrong combination when I will have no time in 2 weeks time and need to get through Astrobot and Soul Calibur 6.

Have a great new year. I can tell the game is amazing, the quality voice acting and immersion is second to none. Not good for me when I have 4 kids and have to play with subtitles to stop waking everyone up.

@Kidfried Yeah, trying to go any faster than walking pace en route to the fence in the marketplace = one of the most hazardous things you can do in this game. Give me the alligators any day

The fence's shop in Saint Denis reminds me of the shop where Randall Peltzer bought Gizmo from at the start of Gremlins. Just thought I'd share that with you all this morning.

I just started playing this week. I could spend hours just walking around town saying Howdy to people.

@Kidfried I think everyone likes Sadie. There are some great characters call through the game though. Some from later in the game I liked include Rain Falls, Charlotte, and Hamish.

And I liked the mix of missions. Obviously the big set piece ones are particularly great and I love ones where you all ride in together to storm somewhere. But lots of them have good bits of story to them.

A friend of mine who was playing the game finished it last night so we finally had the chance to sum up our experiences. It ended we agreed Fallout 4 is a better open world!

@Kidfried My friend got busted by the fact that in chapter 6 he lost all he worked hard for. He spent hours and hours hunting and collecting perfect pelts just to get some furniture that you are forced to lose. Then I told him: "In Fallout 4 you can see your settlements growing and living and if you spend time building them, you get rewarded for it since they add elements to the gameplay". He also hated the fact that you have to play missions how the companions (aka the devs) want you to play them or is game over. And you are also forced to use certain weapons instead of yours, more beautiful and powerful, just for the sake of the narrative. No sense of freedom at all, which we consider very important in an open world game. RDR 2 felt more like a linear action/adventure game with no invisible walls...

@andreoni79 I thought Italians had good taste?

@ApostateMage I still rated it 8/10, so I surely appreciated a lot of things about RDR 2 but if I ask myself:
"Would you prefer to have another studio working with the RDR 2 engine or to have Rockstar working with another studio's engine?" then the answer is ready.
Gameplay wise, RDR 2 is a 6/10 to me and there are zero chances I'll go through the game again; great graphics, great music, great voice acting but god I wished I were Dutch, the one who decides what to do and how instead of a compliant handyman.

@andreoni79 This was my niggle with an otherwise great game. The time investment didn't seem worth it in the end - aside from the story which I enjoyed. As a linear open world game (strange description) it works with directed missions and a strict ruleset. As a sandbox and more personalised gameplay experience, it falls flat for me. That point in Chapter 6 was a bit of a gut punch...

@Kidfried The epilogue is kind of weird and I’d have been happy enough if it wasn’t there at all.

New Mexico is cool to revisit but is quite an empty space for how massive an area it is. The change of tone is quite neat though.

I won’t say too much more if you’ve yet to play it. However, I’m glad that I didn’t sell all the gold bars I had as Arthur as it was a pain to have no cash to start with as John.

@Kidfried Yeah, I get that they wanted to link the games and the fact they remade New Mexico in such detail but with so little happening there, it makes me wonder whether a remake is on the cards but that would be a first for R*

And chapter 6... the emotizonal impact of the death of your horse was slightly lost on me as I’d decided to finally splash my cash on a better horse in the final chapter so Shiva (my horse from the start) got to ride another day. Maybe.

Herein lies the problem and the genius of RDR2 — I spent the last 4 hours playing and didn’t advance my game progress toward the end even one fraction of a percentage.
I have been trying to just push through so I can experience this grand conclusion that I keep hearing about, and I have been telling myself to just focus on story missions and glaze over the extra stuff for now. Yet, I just always seem to be tempted by the many distractions in this huge game world. The stranger interactions are often better and more fun than the story missions. I started my session at 49.6% story completion and after 4 hours of gameplay, I’m still at 49.6%. 😂 I made no progress.
But I [I’ll use spoiler tags for these experiences just in case people may not want to know what stranger events are ahead] helped a biographical writer collect stories for his gunslinger book, I helped a guy develop the electric chair, I went on a date and watched a show with my ex, and then got into a brawl at an art gallery to defend an artist’s questionable paintings
And then I spent 30 minutes picking out a new vest, hat, and engravings for my rifle.
But my favorite was when I met some kind of strange traveling performers which included chasing a little person magician as he disappeared in puffs of smoke through the wilderness. And I can’t wait to see their show in Saint Denis.
All this fun and not a single bit of it added to my game progress.
So I am both delighted and frustrated by the game. All this time spent and I haven’t even done any hunting, fishing, or robbing to speak of. And just forget any hope of trying to find all the cigarette cards, dinosaur bones, camp requests, and filling out the plant and animal compendium! And every time someone cries out randomly for help in the street I quickly run the other way. — I don’t have time for your problems, dude! I can’t get involved!

I have read that the story really picks up soon, and I really want to experience it. Not to mention I have so many games in the backlog. But if there is something RDR2 does well it is — distract you with hundreds of hours of fun side content.

@Th3solution The total percent complete count is utter garbage though. You get a “tick” for completing a small number of strangers missions and then it’s not counted anymore. You also get points for completing the collection quests which take forever. Obviously story missions add to it too.

I got up to 20% or something completion whilst mucking around with all the other stuff in the game and doing little main mission.

And anyway, it’s exploring the world that made the game so special to me so play it how you want!

@Thrillho Okay, that’s good to know. I thought I was seeing that number go up much more quickly earlier in the game, but now that makes sense if stranger missions just stop being counted.

One of my problems is that I like to play games to completion and try to see all content. (At least games that I really like). In open world games I like to mop up all the side activities in an area before moving on to the next story mission, because in some games if you progress the story then you get locked out of optional missions or optional hidden loot. I believe RDR2 is like that. Robert mentioned after he reviewed it that he missed some of the stranger missions and interactions because you can’t go back to them, and he recommended trying to hit them all. I tend to play games this way anyways, but the problem is that the side content is almost never ending here. I’m trying to at least finish the big question marks in the area, but each one is a rabbit hole that you fall down which leads to more missions and interactions. So I’ve tried to not be so obsessive-compulsive about doing everything available, but I just can’t help myself sometimes. But the important thing is that I am enjoying it.

Oodles of side content is actually an epidemic in gaming now in general. I’ve stalled out in a few games lately because they have so much content, much of which is often fluff. The Stranger missions do not seem like fluff in RDR2, and in fact are often more entertaining than the main story. The hunting and collecting and helping people on the street is more filler-type though so I will probably just skip that kind of stuff because I really want to finish this game. It’s one of my early 2019 goals. 😋