I’m rounding up the end of the story and the events unfolding are just brutal. I’m grimly moving from story beat to story beat. Having a drink at the saloon or going fox hunting feels inappropriate.
Without any spoilers: I found that my way of dealing with knowing what was coming was spending time out riding around the countryside, exploring and appreciating the beauty of the wildlife and the scenery.
I had a wonderful surprise encounter with a side character at a train station, during a main mission. Red Dead Redemption 2 surely has words to say about redemption. Some of them colloquial.
A short passage from Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship:
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock."
Finally played through Chapter VI and loved every inch of it and was ready to finish the game. Now I’m over an hour deep in the epilogue and getting kind of annoyed. This game is extraordinary, but…
Yes, that is a truly awful design decision. Just fucking save after the end and let people come back later.
WE NEED TIME TO GRIEVE, OK.
It is worth getting to the final credits and seeing some of the things there. Also, once you’re in the epilogue you can travel around the countryside and see people in your gang and others you know in their new lives. Though I really hated, after where I was as Arthur, being reduced to being forced to clean poop and move hay.
I picked this up over the prior Steam winter sale with the expectation that I wouldn’t finish the game as I’m not really a western fan and I’m not fond of certain Rockstar mechanics like spawning enemies in shootouts and convoluted PC controls. I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally punched my horse in the early hours of my playthrough.
Happily it didn’t take long for my expectations to be shattered. I adjusted to a horse punch free gaming and the long intro sequence had just the right length. I never felt frustrated because I wanted to free roam right off the bat.
I’m currently at 125 hours logged and counting. I haven’t been this engrossed in an open world game since The Witcher 3. Rockstar pulled off an amazing technological feat with their engine. The first time I stood atop a mountain to see a vast landscape realistically illuminated by sunrays beaming down through holes in the near FS2020 quality volumetric clouds ranks up there with my most memorable moments in gaming . The night lighting in Saint Denis is quite a sight to behold. And it was all done without ray tracing too.
It’s hard to stay spoiler free with a 2 year old game but I learned there are six chapters and two epilogues to play. I savored every moment but each chapter brought with it a twinge of melancholy because I knew I was that much closer to the end game. I did Google early on if I could kill Micah, and later if I could avoid tuberculosis, but that stuff is baked into the story. I know that the group doesn’t end up in Tahiti awash with cash, and I know how you die is affected by your honor of which I kept well into the white zone because I can’t bring myself to play evil in games. Antagonizing little Jack? Hitting the camp’s stray dog? Never in a million years. Hell I feel bad for killing animals for crafting.
Judging from the recent comments, I do wish the legendary animals and side plots of Chapter 6 were introduced earlier in the game. The unfolding events and Arthur’s TB kind of saps my motivation to tie up any lose ends. It’s still a bloody fantastic game, but where I’m at now I sort of want to fast forward to the credits
The immersion in this game is just off the charts. Even after 100 hours of game play I still was amazed by the visuals and loved riding around and exploring the world (not really my thing usually).
Not sure if it’s the best game I’ve ever played, but it was the best experience. I just loved the world and being Arthur.
I agree… comparing it to Witcher 3, the stories in the game are much more down to earth and subdued, but they are almost as effective. By the end of Red Dead 2 I cared about a number of the characters, and that is tough for a video game to do. I also played it after Cyberpunk, and after that sizable disappointment (just my opinion) playing this was like a breath of fresh gaming air.
Haven’t played this in a long time, butI can’t wait to pop the disk into the PS4 Pro and see what it looks like in 4k HDR on my new TV (please tell me it supports HDR). I mean, it looked great on my 1080p Panasonic Plasma with supersampling but this will be another level.
I believe it does support HDR. I remember when it first came out someone posted some comparison screen-grabs of it (might have been in this thread actually) saying ‘oohh look how good it looks with HDR’ etc, but I remember thinking to myself that it actually looked a bit shit and washed out. It turns out that a little while later Rockstar said that they messed up the HDR implementation and that it did indeed look like shit, we had some emperors new clothes stuff going on here haha, but hey it happens right. I’m sure they’ve fixed it by now though, so you should be good to go.
I just finished Chapter 6 and begun the first epilogue and I have to say that’s the perfect gif that sums up my feelings. 130 hours of Arthur and his faithful steed all over after a stupidly protracted They Live fist fight with Micah. And now I get to be a farm hand. Oh boy.
I think someone mentioned up stream that RDR2 is the better game but RDR is the better story. I’m going to have to dig out my 360 and play that next or watch a let’s play.
I said that, but it was the reverse, and I still think it’s true. RDR2 is the better story and system, RDR2 is a better game. I think RDR2 went too far w/ the ‘realism’ of it at times, not to mention making it a full-time job if you wanted to 100% everything (RDR was challenging, to be sure, but not like RDR2).
I also think playing RDR makes the epilogue of RDR2 better, as you’re playing w/ the protagonist of RDR, so it doesn’t seem as pointless being a prologue to that game.
This thread is going to make me re-install the game. I had just reached Act 3 recently, and it seemed like a good stopping point. I didn’t know I would step away from the game for over 2 years. Question is whether to step away from Dragon Quest XI, or to finish that first.
I wonder how good this game is at teaching you the controls after you’ve been away for a long time.
Get ready to punch your horse a few times by accident. :(
The only time I ever punched my horse in what has to be over 100 hours of play time was on purpose just to see what all the fuss was about.
I have to confess I did accidentally punch the horse in Act 2 in that little town near the encampment, and my horse kicked me into the street, and I landed on someone in the mud street, which was taken as an attack and lawmen immediately killed me.
I don’t think you clarified anything here… :)
He’s not wrong, though.
Ha! I only played the original for a few hours… I have a vague, unreliable memory of playing one multiplayer session with @triggercut and maybe some other folks from the OO forums. Or maybe I dreamed that.
But I certainly didn’t play it enough to enjoy whatever prologue narrative set-up it has to offer about John Marston and his bitch wife Abigail and complete dud of a son Jack (please tell me they die tragically) at the tail end of a 100+ hour ARTHUR experience. Please, R⭐, roll credits and let me feel like I completed the damn game! I’m hate-playing something I would be having fun with if it was an unlocked bonus option in the main menu. I liked Abigail and Jack throughout the main game, now I can’t stand either of them! Argh. Let a man be a man, woman! You married me.
I jumped into RD Online last night to give that a shot and it’s pretty fun. Not sure if I’ll stick with it for any amount of time but the world is almost too gorgeous and impressive to leave behind. It stuns my visuals.