and i think i've played a game completely different from what everyone praised it for since its release 5 years ago
the positives : every area is gorgeous and i rarely fast traveled. i also liked customizing weapons down to individual metals, i made two pistols look like ebony and ivory from DMC. i think since gta 4, rockstar has gotten significantly better at writing with each published game, and this is them at their creative storytelling peak. the missions are varied and interesting, and while they still haven't figured out how to get rid of filler missions, they've done their best to make sure every mission was unique and still fun to play, particularly that swamp mission.
the rest of the game either left me disappointed or, in some cases, frustrated
my experience with GTA games usually treat the open world as a hub world for missions rather than a sandbox to fuck around. unless rockstar provides genuinely worthwhile content, i won't give a shit about the open world, i just want to see their writing team's skills on display.
saints row 2 fixed this fundamental problem with open world games by forcing the player to play the minigames the devs added. while it didn't narratively make sense that you couldn't take over a gang before running ass naked in the streets, you still engaged with the open world to a degree. the issue of the player being locked within the confines of the activity's rulesets persisted, but you were still engaging with some of the side content and that's what mattered.
san andreas had something similar to this, except the only times i've seen that was just CJ was required to lose weight. i remember 5 had cars you had to steal for a heist, or masks to buy, etc. which was close to what saints row 2 did, but this didn't make the game more entertaining for me. it was reusing the base mechanics of the game to provide logical sense to the story rather than fun.
red dead redemption 2 having the setting of you being a scrappy outlaw with a bunch of gang members you needed to take care of was the perfect setting to get the player to engage with the open world. what if a character was sick, or had to eat, and you were locked from a bank robbery mission until you helped them? or you wanted to attack an enemy gang, but the gang was out of ammo and you had to buy some? there were plenty of opportunites to make money in the open world, and having that be a requirement to allow you in a mission, or to make missions harder if you didn't engage with the open world, would've made for a more interesting experience. i also think it would've helped you be truly immerse yourself as an outlaw on the run with his friends.
in practice, i went out to hunt for like 30 minutes at the start of the game after the mission introducing hunting, and then never engaged with that feature for the rest of the 50 hours of the game, with the exception of the hunting done inside missions. the rewards for crafting talismans from legendary beast parts were negligible bonuses (how worthwhile is hunting a giant crocodile for -10% core drain when i can just stuff canned peaches in my mouth?) same goes for crafting satchel upgrades or warm clothes. with the game having a strong focus on survival, it's incredibly disappointing that it didn't affect the progress of the story whatsoever.
there were so many mechanics that i feel the devs were afraid to use in order to punish the player for ignoring them. dirty weapons only affected stats, but all guns one shot kill on headshots all the same. being a shithead to your friends would still have them be nice to you in the story missions. i haven't seen the characters be any different regardless of whether i funded the camp or not. nobody seemed to care about you being wanted if you were within the confines of a mission, and the list goes on.
in my positives, i said i rarely fast travel. after arthur, the guy you played as for the majority of the game, who had intoxicating charm that made you like him despite him being a bad guy, dies. he stares at the sunset in the distance, music with lyrics play, an elk shows up. micah might be alive, but him not showing up in red dead 1 probably means he died or he's not longer relevant, since dutch pretty much dissociated from him. the ending doesn't tell the fate of sadie, charles, etc. but it's up to you to imagine what happened to them. great ending!
then it says "a few years later"
as someone who tried playing red dead 1 years before 2 was announced, i dislike him even more after playing this. considering the context of knowing what happens after the story of 2, he feels like the game treats him as some sort of messianic figure, elevating him much more than he ever really was in red dead 1. i remember him coming across as a washed up outlaw picking up the guns because the government uses him to finish off the rest of the van der linde gang, instead of this legendary outlaw. rdr2 hasn't really made him out to be a prodigy gunslinger either, he was an outlaw trying to do his best but was clearly not as sharp as his peers.
don’t get me wrong, there are still good missions! john and jack both being chased during the mission after john killed the laramie boys was really tense! but my criticism still stands as i think, if john marston never had a game prior or never had his — in my opinion — overrated status as a rockstar protagonist, the story told here would’ve been an extended ending cutscene, or at most a mission or two where you do avenge arthur. from what i remember, rdr1 treats the death of the remainder of the gang as just tragic. a tale of broken outlaws on their last days, as the clutches of modern civilization and capitalism closes in on their lifestye.
what bothers me the most is that there were two characters that have a significantly more interesting story to tell than john marston inbetween rdr2 and rdr1 ever would've been. sadie adler starting as a widow, adopting the outlaw lifestyle of her rescuers proper while getting them into risk, then her turning legit would've made a far more interesting story, especially as if final mission would've stood the same, she would've been confronting her original saviors. i think it would've given far more opportunities for clever writing while justifying filler missions via bounty hunting targets. even charles smith trying to get by in saint denis would've been more interesting. but instead we got the guy we already played in 1.
the main game was 35 hours of a dude in a gang, running away from the law, trying to survive while his leader became more unhinged, putting the gang against one another until his eventual downward spiral, dissolving the gang completely, followed by one man's will to redeem himself by saving his friend from the people who betrayed the both of them. the epilogue was 15 hours of that friend building a house because his wife left him.
honestly, i'm not sure what else to say. the game reportedly cost 500 million dollars to make and devs were fucked over and forced to do 100 hours weeks. i've heard for half a decade about how this game was the greatest 8th gen game, and i play it and it's the same formula since GTA san andreas except they added a surface-level hunting sim next to it.
6/10
the housebuilding mission was great though




