General Gaming Red Dead Redemption II | Official Thread of Shrinking Equine Testicles

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Captain Pickle said:

Also, you use dead eye for slow mo bullet time but when does it turn into tracking animal trails.  Do you have to select track animal from your sights or binoculars first?

 

 

???

 

R3 for Deadeye and L3+R3 for eagle eye

[Captain Pickle]

3 minutes ago, Bacon said:

???

 

R3 for Deadeye and L3+R3 for eagle eye

well shit.  I haven't been hunting much.  

 

thank you for your pity.

[number305]

21 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

RDR2 is the video game equivalent of Blade Runner 2049. It's a big budget sequel that both expands the world and fills it with incredible detail and really luxuriates in that creation. Its part tone poem, part character study. Its slow and plodding, and that's largely the point. Speed it up and cut it down and you lose that very particular feeling it's trying to instill. Like Blade Runner 2049 I imagine there will be people put off by the pace and perhaps unwieldy length, but unlike it, I imagine Red Dead will make plenty of money.

 

 

 

For my part, I remain undecided. I loved 2049 and other movies like it, but I'm not so sure that experience of a meditative 3 hour movie translates as well to a 60-100 hour game. When I can get into the right headspace, I can appreciate what R* has accomplished here, but there are times when the animations are just needlessly long and the endless riding is more grating than it is calming. I've played for quite a while now and I don't feel like I've accomplished anything, which I think is the point, but I also think it actively hurts my enjoyment.

 

I just started Chapter 3, and I while I still don't like the controls, I've more or less gotten the hang of them. I continue to accidentally do the wrong thing from time to time, but I'm getting better at recognizing why that action happened. For a game that is so packed with details, I feel like they stumbled a bit on the fundamentals. At least they did well with the camera.

 

I'm also finally starting to manually save more often, because I've gotten randomly screwed over a few times. I killed a legendary bear, and on my way to the trapper I accidentally ran my horse into an oncoming traveler. Before I realized that triggers a gun fight, I was dead, and my bear pelt was gone. A tooltip said something about my having surrendered the bear pelt, but I didn't have time to read it and there wasn't any way to see a log of messages, so I have no clue what happened to it.

 

For a game that takes everything so slow, I'm not a fan of how quickly everything escalates to violence. I suppose crashing your horse into someone is a violent act, but apparently so is standing still in the road for too long. I was riding my horse a bit too hard and didn't realize I'd drained the stamina, so I stopped. I was feeding the horse, getting my hat back on, and mostly looking at the scenery, and despite being on the open prairie with the road hardly discernible from the surrounding landscape, I was apparently a roadblock for far too long, and the stranger behind me started shooting. I've walked by strangers who were unimpressed by how quickly I was leaving them alone and started shooting. I know I can talk and deescalate the situation or get away faster, but it just seems odd how quickly things go from "I don't like the look of you" to the O.K. Corral.

 

 

 

Ugh.  I have been looking forward to this game for a long time but have not purchased it yet.  Little reviews like this give me pause.  I really only have small amounts of time to play games.  Sometimes I can string together an hour and a half late at night after my kids go to bed to play.  I don't think a game that is this slow and plodding will be enjoyable sliced up into that small of increments.  If I can only play for an hour in a day - and during my hour of play time essentially nothing happens, that does not sound fun.

[atom631]

9 minutes ago, number305 said:

 

Ugh.  I have been looking forward to this game for a long time but have not purchased it yet.  Little reviews like this give me pause.  I really only have small amounts of time to play games.  Sometimes I can string together an hour and a half late at night after my kids go to bed to play.  I don't think a game that is this slow and plodding will be enjoyable sliced up into that small of increments.  If I can only play for an hour in a day - and during my hour of play time essentially nothing happens, that does not sound fun.

you will progress, but obviously very slowly. i think you could probably get 1 main story mission and maybe one side mission/random encounter done within 1-1.5hrs of gameplay. 

 

 

[atom631]

35 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

RDR2 is the video game equivalent of Blade Runner 2049. It's a big budget sequel that both expands the world and fills it with incredible detail and really luxuriates in that creation. Its part tone poem, part character study. Its slow and plodding, and that's largely the point. Speed it up and cut it down and you lose that very particular feeling it's trying to instill. Like Blade Runner 2049 I imagine there will be people put off by the pace and perhaps unwieldy length, but unlike it, I imagine Red Dead will make plenty of money.

 

 

 

For my part, I remain undecided. I loved 2049 and other movies like it, but I'm not so sure that experience of a meditative 3 hour movie translates as well to a 60-100 hour game. When I can get into the right headspace, I can appreciate what R* has accomplished here, but there are times when the animations are just needlessly long and the endless riding is more grating than it is calming. I've played for quite a while now and I don't feel like I've accomplished anything, which I think is the point, but I also think it actively hurts my enjoyment.

 

I just started Chapter 3, and I while I still don't like the controls, I've more or less gotten the hang of them. I continue to accidentally do the wrong thing from time to time, but I'm getting better at recognizing why that action happened. For a game that is so packed with details, I feel like they stumbled a bit on the fundamentals. At least they did well with the camera.

 

I'm also finally starting to manually save more often, because I've gotten randomly screwed over a few times. I killed a legendary bear, and on my way to the trapper I accidentally ran my horse into an oncoming traveler. Before I realized that triggers a gun fight, I was dead, and my bear pelt was gone. A tooltip said something about my having surrendered the bear pelt, but I didn't have time to read it and there wasn't any way to see a log of messages, so I have no clue what happened to it.

 

For a game that takes everything so slow, I'm not a fan of how quickly everything escalates to violence. I suppose crashing your horse into someone is a violent act, but apparently so is standing still in the road for too long. I was riding my horse a bit too hard and didn't realize I'd drained the stamina, so I stopped. I was feeding the horse, getting my hat back on, and mostly looking at the scenery, and despite being on the open prairie with the road hardly discernible from the surrounding landscape, I was apparently a roadblock for far too long, and the stranger behind me started shooting. I've walked by strangers who were unimpressed by how quickly I was leaving them alone and started shooting. I know I can talk and deescalate the situation or get away faster, but it just seems odd how quickly things go from "I don't like the look of you" to the O.K. Corral.

 

 

 

your review is nail-on-the-head accurate and sums up my experience perfectly. 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Captain Pickle said:

Also, you use dead eye for slow mo bullet time but when does it turn into tracking animal trails.  Do you have to select track animal from your sights or binoculars first?

 

 

 

You have to find a clue for that particular animal like droppings or half eaten food, then turn on dead I to track it... it works like Geralt's Witcher sense in The Witcher 3.

[SimpleG]

23 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

You have to find a clue for that particular animal like droppings or half eaten food, then turn on dead I to track it... it works like Geralt's Witcher sense in The Witcher 3.

You can follow tracks with out that I think.

[Kal-El814]

32 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

You can follow tracks with out that I think.

Correct. I don’t think you’ll know what animal you’re tracking until you do a successful track / hunt though. 

 

Also...

 

For a game where the developers very clearly set a deliberate pace, an unfortunately high number of the gold medal criteria boil down to “do this mission as fast as possible.”   At least one mission I saw has two separate speed timers for different segments. One of them included some interesting dialogue I’d have missed if I’d mashed the gallop button. Ugh. 

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Kal-El814 said:

For a game where the developers very clearly set a deliberate pace, an unfortunately high number of the gold medal criteria boil down to “do this mission as fast as possible.”   At least one mission I saw has two separate speed timers for different segments. Ugh. 

It is frustrating because it is artificial content, "forced" replayability. There are a lot of conversations that happen, and they happen in the timed parts as well. I have looked up some of the mission I was currently on online to see what you need for gold, and you literally have to skip story to get the gold medal sometimes. There is one where you have to steal a stagecoach with Hosea and he talks about a mechanic I had never heard of until then. I was going for gold and you had to take stagecoach to its destination within X time and I when I got there the dialogue cut and switched to different line of dialogue

[Captain Pickle]

29 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Correct. I don’t think you’ll know what animal you’re tracking until you do a successful track / hunt though. 

 

Also...

 

For a game where the developers very clearly set a deliberate pace, an unfortunately high number of the gold medal criteria boil down to “do this mission as fast as possible.”   At least one mission I saw has two separate speed timers for different segments. One of them included some interesting dialogue I’d have missed if I’d mashed the gallop button. Ugh. 

yeah, one of them you have to skip dialog scenes.  I've decided I don't care about metals

[Bacon]

8 minutes ago, Captain Pickle said:

  I've decided I don't care about metals

You know, until I read this post, I cared about them because I wanted plat, and was going to just say that, but then I realized something. To get plat you need to play RDR:Online and I don't have PS+ and doubt I ever will again. If I can't get plat then there is not point in caring about any of the trophies. I have wasted quite a bit of time doing shit I didn't want to do to get plat. 

 

I will be playing the game differently now.

[Bloodporne]

2 minutes ago, Bacon said:

You know, until I read this post, I cared about them because I wanted plat, and was going to just say that, but then I realized something. To get plat you need to play RDR:Online and I don't have PS+ and doubt I ever will again. If I can't get plat then there is not point in caring about any of the trophies. I have wasted quite a bit of time doing shit I didn't want to do to get plat. 

 

I will be playing the game differently now.

When I first got really hooked on MGSV I kept re-playing missions instantly to get a non-shitty rating. It was tedious and annoyed me actively.

 

Once I dropped what I realized was total nonsense and just focused on having fun, the game really opened up for me.

[Captain Pickle]

8 minutes ago, Bacon said:

You know, until I read this post, I cared about them because I wanted plat, and was going to just say that, but then I realized something. To get plat you need to play RDR:Online and I don't have PS+ and doubt I ever will again. If I can't get plat then there is not point in caring about any of the trophies. I have wasted quite a bit of time doing shit I didn't want to do to get plat. 

 

I will be playing the game differently now.

sweet man.  Get on the lax trolly!

 

I never quite plat but I'm always like 98% and must gold everything.  Usually just a couple of things left like riddler trophies and then just give up BUT given how big this game is I don't want to get near the end all burnt out and just slogging through to get to the end.  I'm gonna be like the game... take my time, not worry too much, and just take it in.

[Captain Pickle]

8 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

When I first got really hooked on MGSV I kept re-playing missions instantly to get a non-shitty rating. It was tedious and annoyed me actively.

 

Once I dropped what I realized was total nonsense and just focused on having fun, the game really opened up for me.

I think I must revisit that game with this new found philosophy!

[Bloodporne]

Just now, Captain Pickle said:

I think I must revisit that game with this new found philosophy!

I was always trying to rush missions due to time constraints for ratings etc. until I realized...you literally can do whatever the fuck you want. Unless the mission is specifically time-sensitive, I ended up loving to play "Infiltration Sim" and totally camp out, watch routines, take my time. I ended up dumping an insane amount of time into that game by just enjoying how much the game was 'bendable'. 

 

Every playthrough I saw on YouTube was really based on good ratings, therefore fast clearing times, so I assumed that's what 'good playing' looks like. Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed clearing the entire fucking base of every breathing thing instead. 

[Captain Pickle]

2 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I was always trying to rush missions due to time constraints for ratings etc. until I realized...you literally can do whatever the fuck you want. Unless the mission is specifically time-sensitive, I ended up loving to play "Infiltration Sim" and totally camp out, watch routines, take my time. I ended up dumping an insane amount of time into that game by just enjoying how much the game was 'bendable'. 

 

Every playthrough I saw on YouTube was really based on good ratings, therefore fast clearing times, so I assumed that's what 'good playing' looks like. Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed clearing the entire fucking base of every breathing thing instead. 

Yeah, I do like to ghost stealth games as much as I can.  

 

As for difficulty, I don't need a trophy for upper difficulties.  I'm mostlikely going to choose them just so the game don't suck.  I had a blast with Give Me God of War and being slightly weak against the Valkaries.  So much satisfaction when beating them down.

[skillzdadirecta]

3 minutes ago, Captain Pickle said:

Yeah, I do like to ghost stealth games as much as I can.  

 

As for difficulty, I don't need a trophy for upper difficulties.  I'm mostlikely going to choose them just so the game don't suck.  I had a blast with Give Me God of War and being slightly weak against the Valkaries.  So much satisfaction when beating them down.

 

I have ONE more Valkyrie to beat... ONE more.

[mo1518]

Well, as poor as my first impressions were, the game definitely has its hooks in me. Currently sitting at work watching the clock and daydreaming about returning to the wild west. There are rabbits that need hunting and innocent bystanders that need hogtying. 

[TheLeon]

Whoops: if you try to open a door before you've fully stopped running, you'll bust it open and make a bunch of noise, alerting the people on the other side of the house that you're trying to rob them. 

[mo1518]

3 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

Whoops: if you try to open a door before you've fully stopped running, you'll bust it open and make a bunch of noise, alerting the people on the other side of the house that you're trying to rob them. 

 

I do find scaring the living daylights out of shopkeepers to be one of my favourite past times. Kick door in, "Jesus!" 

[TwinIon]

29 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I was always trying to rush missions due to time constraints for ratings etc. until I realized...you literally can do whatever the fuck you want. Unless the mission is specifically time-sensitive, I ended up loving to play "Infiltration Sim" and totally camp out, watch routines, take my time. I ended up dumping an insane amount of time into that game by just enjoying how much the game was 'bendable'. 

 

Every playthrough I saw on YouTube was really based on good ratings, therefore fast clearing times, so I assumed that's what 'good playing' looks like. Turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed clearing the entire fucking base of every breathing thing instead. 

The malleability of MGS5 is its biggest strength. I'd play missions with a certain style in mind, but if things went to hell, that was fine. I really felt like I was deciding how to accomplish the objectives, and I could easily change my mind mid mission if it was getting tedious. I've never really cared about ratings or trophies, but I was consistently surprised at how I was rated. I'd finish missions and feel really good about how it went only to get a terrible rating. On the flip side, I'd sometimes screw up, but then end up finishing really fast, and I'd get a much higher rating than I thought I deserved. For me, those ratings really pushed me to play in a way I didn't enjoy, so ignoring them was really the best option. 

[Bloodporne]

Just now, TwinIon said:

The malleability of MGS5 is its biggest strength. I'd play missions with a certain style in mind, but if things went to hell, that was fine. I really felt like I was deciding how to accomplish the objectives, and I could easily change my mind mid mission if it was getting tedious. I've never really cared about ratings or trophies, but I was consistently surprised at how I was rated. I'd finish missions and feel really good about how it went only to get a terrible rating. On the flip side, I'd sometimes screw up, but then end up finishing really fast, and I'd get a much higher rating than I thought I deserved. For me, those ratings really pushed me to play in a way I didn't enjoy, so ignoring them was really the best option. 

The ratings are seriously almost exclusively based on time it seems. You can miss like 50% of the objectives, not get perfect stealth etc. and yet still hit the S ranking if you're just fast enough. 

 

To me, that is completely counter-intuitive to how I like to play and totally at odds with all the gadgets and possibilities available. It boggles my mind that there aren't multiple ways to an S ranking. You can't, for example, hit all objectives, no kills etc. and get an S if you take your sweet ass time to do so. 

 

Anyway, over and out on the MGSV talk in a RDR2 thread, sorry!

[skillzdadirecta]

I just noticed that Arthur's normal movement speed is significantly faster in 1st Person.

[ALIEN-gunner]

 

[SimpleG]

10 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I just noticed that Arthur's normal movement speed is significantly faster in 1st Person.

And more responsive, I think it strips away the animations for everything.

[Captain Pickle]

1 hour ago, mo1518 said:

Well, as poor as my first impressions were, the game definitely has its hooks in me. Currently sitting at work watching the clock and daydreaming about returning to the wild west. There are rabbits that need hunting and innocent bystanders that need hogtying. 

yeah.  Stayed up late playing and was tired but just started doing things like play poker and cook some meat.  I think tonight I'm just gonna go hunting and maybe one quest.

[mo1518]

5 minutes ago, Captain Pickle said:

yeah.  Stayed up late playing and was tired but just started doing things like play poker and cook some meat.  I think tonight I'm just gonna go hunting and maybe one quest.

 

My plans for the night mainly revolve around finding clothing to recreate gene wilders outfits from blazing saddles. 

 

Which is to say I'll probably be in a two hour long gunfight after I accidentally loiter near a pedestrian for too long. 

[TwinIon]

I was just reading about hunting and totally didn't realize that you could study animals and get suggested weaponry and quality ratings. I imagine the game taught me that at some point but I guess I missed it. I haven't done much hunting but even when I've tried to get good pelts I haven't gotten a single perfect one. I also only just figured out that you buy leatherworking tools through the ledger and not at some store. I figured I needed to unlock another town or something. I think I'll try to do some hunting tonight and upgrade some gear.

[Bacon]

3 minutes ago, mo1518 said:

My plans for the night mainly revolve around finding clothing to recreate gene wilders outfits from blazing saddles. 

 

You can defiantly get close. But I don't know about the jacket. 

[SimpleG]

I am slow on the up tick but just found the double clicking L1 when holstering your gun.

[Firewithin]

So I just unlocked fast travel.   This can only be done from the gangs camp?  I can't build a campfire in the middle of nowhere and go from there?

[SimpleG]

24 minutes ago, Firewithin said:

So I just unlocked fast travel.   This can only be done from the gangs camp?  I can't build a campfire in the middle of nowhere and go from there?

Gang hideout and towns with a post office

[TwinIon]

I totally didn't realize that you can unlock fast travel from the camp. I really need to see what else the camp unlocks do.

[Biggie]

2 hours ago, mo1518 said:

Well, as poor as my first impressions were, the game definitely has its hooks in me. Currently sitting at work watching the clock and daydreaming about returning to the wild west. There are rabbits that need hunting and innocent bystanders that need hogtying. 

It’s grown on me. In fact now that I know what the fuck I’m doing I kinda want to re-start. 

[Firewithin]

28 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Gang hideout and towns with a post office

oh cool.  that makes it better.  will mess with that when i get home