Red Dead Redemption 2 - For a Few Redemptions More

After playing some more I’m still torn. I find everything about the story, characters, and dialog interesting. I genuinely want to see what happens and what people Arthur is going to meet. Even the circumstances of the bounties and old outlaws for the book are entertaining. Everything is so nice looking too - even on a non pro PS and 10 year old tv.

But, and this is a big but - I’d have trouble naming gameplay elements I really enjoy. I don’t like the shooting - it just feels awkward to me. I have some trouble even seeing where I’m aiming - I feel like the cursor gets lost in all the movement. This is more of a problem when I’m on my horse, but still somewhat of a problem when standing.

I find hunting pretty dull. I didn’t enjoy the ‘witcher vision’ in The Witcher 3 and don’t enjoy following the animal trail ‘vapors’ here. I can deal with the long horse rides, although I’d prefer they were shorter. I do bump into entertaining scenarios from time to time.

I’m jealous of those of you (almost everyone) that can get into the game so much and enjoy ‘just being’ in the world, and enjoy the activities like hunting. I just find myself bored most of the time except when I’m engaging with the story, which is great.

I probably won’t comment again on the game unless I turn it around and have a more positive feeling overall. I don’t want to clog the thread with negativity, which I can tend to do as I don’t always know when to let go.

One last ditch effort, anyone have any suggestions that might make this a more positive experience for me?

Thanks

Just do the story missions then. All the other stuff is optional.

Man, I don’t know, I don’t like to push someone to keep after a game they aren’t feeling and just making themselves miserable thinking they should be having fun. Not every game is for everybody, no shame in putting it aside and trying something new. Maybe you’ll come back to it, maybe not.

But ok, suggestions. I don’t know when you play or what your mindset is, but I really do think you have to be in the right mindspace, to let the game dictate the pace. Maybe you can take a few minutes before playing, let the stress of the day leave you. Maybe listen to some calming music. Don’t look at the clock - cowboys don’t wear wristwatches. Maybe fire up the game and see if you can find your own game. I had a lot of fun tracking and not killing the wildlife. I enjoyed watching people go about their day in the cities. Maybe you just want to hop on a train and ride a while. Don’t worry too much about the story and the missions, they aren’t going anywhere. Just try to find out if the game is going to set its hook in you. It took me three different attempts over three years to finally get hooked on The Witcher 3 - it was worth it, but it was kind of a grind too.

@robc04 Kill some big game and cook it up with thyme. Thyme Big Game gives you a Gold Deadeye core for a whole day. Absolutely invaluable. Can’t remember the particular trinket from which particular legendary animal, but there’s one that gives you twice the thyme, oregano and mint when you collect them. Also, kill the Legendary Buck and the pelts you get will be better. The legendary animals themselves don’t need to be killed with finesse–you can unload an artillery barrage on them if you want–their pelts don’t suffer cuz videogames.

Oh, and when your Deadeye gets upgraded so you can tag targets individually, if you don’t want to bother with that just hold down right bumper and sweep across targets and they’ll be tagged automatically. Wish I’d known that sooner.

To make money early on, lasso dudes off their wagons to steal them and take them to the fence. Less of an honor hit that way.

Also, practice wielding your gun on horseback but not aiming it, right clicking the stick to look backwards, then aiming with left trigger, then clicking right stick again for deadeye. Comes in very handy when you’ve got pursuers.

I finally opened up Bounty Hunting. I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that opening it, at least, was a Mission. It wasn’t terrible though. I guess I might do some more just because, well it pays well.

Oh yeah, played around with predators more just because… the black bears really do just kind of warn you or run away even, they can charge but they don’t always do. Wolves will high tail it after you from who knows where for no reason at all. They’re more like goblins than wolves. There’s tiny food everywhere.

Now that I have a quiver full of advanced arrows I just laugh when the wolves show up. Tons of free meat for me!

Unless I’m caught with my dead eye depleted. Then it’s panicked firing with a repeater and messy corpses.

So I bagged my first grizzly last night. Usually I just avoid them but he looked perfect for a kill and I got a perfect pelt, picked up my next treasure map, raced back to the camp (wrong move I needed the Trapper), went there, got a new saddle and did a mission, it was close and then realize… It doesn’t look pelts disappear after load. It wasn’t my bear pelt I risked but a so-so elk pelt and they just stayed on the horse.

Was the entire pelt and carcass disappearing thing a bug that just got fixed?

I haven’t seen pelts disappear at all, what were the circumstances that it used to happen? I’ve definitely saved and reloaded with pelts on my horse and they stay there. Have I just been lucky?

Every time you died or you saved and reloaded, any carcass or pelt on the horse would be gone. It was the number one reason I avoided roads entirely if I had something good on there and also sped past any events.

I’m in Chapter 6 and the end is near. I left a LOT of side missions (like find all the dinosaur bones, kill all the wildlife the lady wanted, etc.) undone. No desire, for example, to try to track down a yellow throated warbiling sparrow or whatever and kill it (doesn’t fit my character’s persona anyway.) I’ve also only found one treasure. There’s one that looks like it’s at a railway station that I just can’t seem to get to match the photo. Whatever.

HOWEVER - there is one that I’d like to complete. It fascinates me and I think it would fascinate Arthur. Without spoilers, it involves some dead bodies you find. If Arthur is finished, can I still complete this in the epilogue?

The 1.06 patch notes do mention two pelt-related fixes:

  • Fixed issues that resulted in stowed pelts disappearing or dropping from the player’s horse when interacting with other nearby players

  • Fixed an issue that resulted in players incorrectly losing pelts

So maybe that took care of it. I don’t remember it ever affecting me pre-patch, but I wasn’t playing for very long before 1.06 so maybe it happened and I didn’t realize at the time, or maybe that bug didn’t hit everyone.

It was awful. It is one of the reasons I really, really hated ambushes. it robbed me of everything.

What’s the name of the mission? I can check to see if that mission is still accessible in the Epilogue since I finished it. “Dead bodies you find” isn’t enough for me to go on and it’s been a while since I played, =P

I think I know what you’re talking about, @JeffL, and while I did it before the end of the game I am pretty sure all sidequests are still open to you in the epilogues.

You can do most of them in the epilogue, though there is one specific advantage to doing a few of them beforehand.

If you hang on to the gold bars you get instead of selling them as Arthur, you’ll be able to afford a new horse before epilogue 2

Red Dead Online is still fun, if you stick with it and look for ways to make it so. Last night a posse I roll with had started a Hamish mission (save/protect a captive) and we encountered a sketchy dude who started following us around. After we politely asked him to keep his distance, a few minutes later I noticed the dude’s posse hanging around the mission drop-off zone. Then I spotted him on the road behind me and realized their plans. They’d scouted our mission and thought they would block the drop-off area while their man attacked us on the road from behind. So I took the dude out and managed to complete the drop-off rather spectacularly.

It’s too bad the video capture doesn’t include the audio of me taunting them afterwards in chat.

Elegantly done!

In other news, here’s a pretty great RDR2 themed funny video (live action):

LOL. Yup, witnesses see everything.

So apparently I was not the only one that didn’t realize losing pelts on loads was a bug. I thought it was meant to make the game harder. Now that I don’t lose everything on the horse I am 10x more likely to investigate something on my way to trapper or camp these days.

That was one of the absolute worst bugs in online for months. Hunting is amazing now. You can even fast travel with stuff on your horse now. And best of all, other players can’t ruin your haul nearly as easily.