By forcing you to slow down and complete duties that seem lackluster, you slowly start to feel more present in this world and grow closer to your own version of Arthur. If Red Dead Redemption 2 was just all about riding around the West and shooting up saloons with your revolver, you’d likely feel disconnected from your avatar. The game then just becomes a power trip and the character that you end up playing is just an amplified version of your own wants and desires. Doing simple chores though such as chopping wood, skinning animals and dragging them back to my horse, and donating to the gang’s larger pool of money has made me feel more of a bond with Arthur than any other character I’ve played as in recent memory. My bond with the character thus far has been established in these small moments, not the large ones.
Bringing it full circle, I do not want to see Red Dead Redemption 2 pull a Magnificent Seven, even if this means making a bad guy version of the Seven. Which right now it’s looking that way. Seven cowboys riding off into the distance? The Magnificent Seven (I’m talking the 1960 version) is a great standalone tale on its own, while also having borrowed from a tale not its own. If you haven’t heard of Seven Samurai go watch it immediately, stop reading this article. While video games are drawing more and more from film, Rockstar has proved they can develop games that draw from certain pools while keeping it fresh and original.
The stables available in-game can allow you to have up to three other horses in addition to your „main horse” that you have with you out in your travels, so don’t forget the important of strengthening your bond with your horse to maximize its potential.
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, Best weapons Palworld 2025 somewhere one could make their mark in a relatively easy way (for the time).
In a time where open-world games are a dime a dozen, my problem with most titles in the genre is that they rarely force you to engage with the world that has been laid out. Instead, developers just use the confines of an open-world to place the structure of their game inside of, because it’s the normal thing to do more often than not nowadays. Simply existing in an open-world though isn’t enough when you don’t feel any sort of connection to the environment that you’re within. Forcing you to explore and take your time in the world allows you to get to know the area which you find yourself in. This is something that I think The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did so perfectly last year , and it’s something that I think finds success here in Red Dead Redemption 2 as well.
In Blackwater, John meets a politician in need of some help with blackmailing an opposing politician with some photos. If you view the photos in John’s inventory, you’ll see that the opposing politician has been caught in some rather…unsavory acts with a prostitute. You approach the target at town hall, show him the photos, and he changes his tune real qu
Another thing that doesn’t make sense is the beginning concerns water. No matter what you do, there are certain areas in the snow-covered mountains you need to tread water in. How is there not a scene immediately afterward of Arthur freezing himself to the bone, or at least getting sick? In the grand scheme of problems, this is a very minor one, but it was enough where it got me to think. Again, the beginning just has a lot of issues with
The same can be said for Arthur Morgan. Are there moments of intense excitement in his life such as when he’s robbing a train or watching the sunset over the plains? Absolutely. But even in the life of an outlaw on the run, you still have to make small decisions about whether or not you should take a bath or shave your face.
During certain missions, you are prompted to cover your face with a bandana, which is typical of Westerns. It looks cool. This is to keep your identity hidden, right? Well despite this, somehow you always get fined with a bounty. It doesn’t make any sense. I tried wearing masks too and that doesn’t do anything either. It feels like Rockstar put them in as an obligation to the genre. They didn’t want to implement it as a real disguise. It might have broken the game otherwise, or someth![]()