Red Dead Redemption 2 Forces You to Slow Down and It’s For the Better
From the beginning of the game when you enter the bustling Western town of Valentine, to the city streets and electric glow of Saint Denis, every detail, environment, and setting is meticulously crafted and offers a ton for the player to explore and interact with. By holding the L2 button (as we played on PS4) to focus on a specific person, object, or animal, Arthur has a range of options to interact with them, whether it’s to greet a traveler on the road, robbing a store clerk, picking up an object to observe it in greater detail, and yes, even down to petting a dog or brushing your horse’s coat. These types of interactions aren’t just limited to characters that are integral to the story; you can engage with pretty much any other person or animal that you find out in the world, and having that possibility to engage with NPCs in such a way adds so much to how far Rockstar has gone to make Red Dead Redemption 2 's world feel deep and tangible.
The Red Dead franchise succeeds because it’s playing into the most American fantasies of what the Wild West was, while keeping it grounded. It was a time were America was still getting its footing as a new nation. Things were being discovered by a people who had largely still never seen most of what the land had to offer, thus appropriately titled, the Wild West. It seemed like a hellish dreamscape where those from the east coast talked of savages and wild beast, men who idealized the same sort of lawlessness discussed among certain circles. Yet, it was none of these things, for a people having just arrived to a nation, it was much tamer than one might imagine. Instead, it was a place not overly populated and begging for people to settle its lands (I hope we see Natives in this game). The west was a place of opportunity and discovery, somewhere one could make their mark in a relatively easy way (for the time).
It was the moments of quiet that were most enjoyable, just wandering the prairie through Redemption was enough to satisfy western fantasies. Both games also took place in the classic dusty west audiences have come to imagine from spaghetti westerns, now veering toward more recent films such as The Revenant, which seems to be the direction Red Dead Redemption 2 is going. Not a bad thing.
That was just one of the few examples where the game’s setting really honed in on the idea of Red Dead Redemption 2 delivering a world that looks and feels dynamic, and yet there were still plenty of other moments that genuinely had me surprised at the depth of interaction that it offers. Random encounters on the road in particular always feel like they offer some new interesting twist or story moment to remember, like when I helped a man wrangle in his horse and lassoed it back to him, or intervening as a woman was about to about to be attacked by a pack of wolves.
Aside from the numerous options to customize Arthur’s physical appearance and gear, the other Bloom Core genshin relationship that players will develop throughout the game is that of Arthur and his horse. Red Dead Redemption 2 has expanded immensely on making your horse more than just a mode of transportation, and there are numerous ways that players can invest time into developing their bond with their horse and, as a result, increasing its ability to take players through this world. These actions start as simply as riding the horse and utilizing its saddle to store all of your equipment and gear between missions, but as you spend more time for your horse and care for it — feeding it, brushing its fur, petting it, etc. — you’ll be able to increase its stamina and health.
Another spooky location can be found North of the Grizzlies, just above the „N” in Ambarino. Searching the woods around there reveals an apparently abandoned shelter that appears to have previously housed a witch. One that has not been abandoned for too long, either, because inside is a seemingly fresh cauldron full of some sort of bubbling liquid. If you’re capable of mustering the courage required to take a swig, you’ll black out and reawaken a distance away from the cauld
Red Dead Redemption was not only one of 2010’s best selling games , it was one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year . The compelling story, detailed game mechanics, and the vast swathes of dangerous wilderness kept players invested for years after its release. The sandbox world of the wild West gave players their own version of Westworld to explore, free to capture bounties holed up in the mountains or aid revolutions south of the border to their heart’s desire. The random encounters riddled across the map kept players on their toes while making the world feel more real and chaotic. And that was all only in the single player version of g
There’s a bit of a debate around this one. Just Northeast of Bacchus Bridge and Southeast of Donner Falls lies a hole in the ground. A somewhat familiar looking hole in the ground, for Tolkien fans. That being said, something about the whole house seems… off. Other than the obvious similarity of being a literal house in a hill, there isn’t much about the house that seems like its Lord of the Rings counterpart. Style-wise, they’re pretty disti