Red Dead Redemption 2 - For a Few Redemptions More

The one fence by the GTW barn seems to always have a mule just wandering around.

Speaking of money. There’s a mission in which I go after my arch rival, but it’s early in the game, so of course he wasn’t there. But I looked in the chimney and found a big cache of money there (I think the game said it was $600 or something). But then I never gained access to that money, nor did I ever have a cutscene where I gave the money to anyone else. What gives?

If I had access to that money, I could get a few upgrades for the camp!

Yeah, I need to start getting into hunting for serious. I need to get my challenges going, plus upgrades for the camp from Pearson, plus all those legendary animals wandering around taunting me with their skin, and now I’ve found a poster in a train station for some zoo asking for specimens. I’m beginning to think this game is some newfangled Cabela’s hunting simulator with some other stuff thrown in for flavor.

That bugged me a lot - it wasn’t in the camp upgrades. In fact, almost every mission I do where I get a cut and the gang gets a cut, where does all that money go? I think that $600 you probably got a cut of like $100 or something (I missed it but I can believe it happened) like any other mission that pays out like that, but it’s strange the camp funds don’t go into the thing called “camp funds”. I suppose if they did you’d just upgrade the camp that much earlier. When you complete a mission you can look at the details and one of the pages, among such details as various challenges within the mission, gives you the breakdown of payout. This being such an early mission, I probably just missed that detail. Usually it will say “your cut $120” or something on the right side of the screen.

EDIT:
I just thought to watch someone else do this on YouTube and sure enough, $100 is your share and the others get a cut, and then the rest goes to the gang, though again money going to the gang from missions don’t seem to actually be spendable by the player.

I kind of wish there was more things to spend camp funds on. I’ve got like $1900 in there and only occasionally drop like $100 to replenish/restock.

Yeah, this is the money that goes to the secret stash that Dutch is supposedly keeping.

Like, the stash of all their money that got left behind in Blackwater? The same deal.

This is actually what is being tracked in Arthur’s journal… it’s different from the camp funds, which can be thought of as more of a “petty cash” thing.

Ah! Okay, that makes sense. Thanks!

Man, this game.

On the one hand, its commitment to slow gamplay pace and negative space is teriffic. Moments like trotting past an abandoned village in a downpour, pausing, inspecting it, and having Arthur draw a sketch of it are kind of sublime. It’s the kind of thing you can do when you have supreme confidence in your presentation.And it can carry it.

On the other hand, you have the missions. I picked up a bounty for a lost cause dipshit wanted dead or alive. He was holed up in an abandoned fort. How was I going to approach this? Was I going to sneak up and take his men out one by one until I could bring him in alive? Was I going to find a sniper position and take him out, and then pick off stragglers? …no. No. You’re going to walk in the front door and announce your presence like a moron because that is what the mission has been scripted as and now you’re in yet another shooting gallery. IT’S NOT EVEN A STORY MISSION WHY IS THIS SCRIPTED TO FUCK YOUR SYSTEMS COULD SUPPORT LETTING A PLAYER PLAY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ahem

Moving on to playthrough #2!

Heh, I took that guy alive. I killed all his men while slowly pushing up through the ramparts of the fort, then eventually rushed him and knocked him out with the butt of my rifle.

Ultimately though most of the bounties are fairly open… you aren’t generally forced to do them one way. Even some of the major missions, you have a choice between at least two major options.

Chapter 4 has been a blast so far. I love that I feel like I’m based out of Saint Denis because this town is just amazing. The tonal shift feels interesting as well as the setting - the city just feels so wildly different than the wilds the last 30 hours have taken place in. I had to actively take a break from the main stories because A) jeez there are just a TON of Strangers in Saint Denis and all of them have been super interesting (and lengthy) so far and B) I wanted to get out of the smoggy electric lamps and back under the moon again.

I thought I was out of Stranger missions and did one more yellow mission (another fun one!) and suddenly three more stranger missions popped up! I’m going to be in chapter 4 awhile, feels like.

This article is pretty awesome:

But even more awesome is this from the comments:

I’ll set the scene for you. My 5 yo was sitting next to me, with my 3 yo hanging off my back. They loved it when I interacted with the horses, I had them try their hand at fishing, all was well.

Then I decided to do a bit of bow hunting. Came upon the legendary grizzly. It noticed me, started to growl a bit, and turned my way. My youngest got a bit nervous, clamped her hands around my eyes just as I had brought up the bow and pulled back the arrow. In the span of 2 seconds, all hell broke loose, my arrow missed, and I regained function of my eyes just as the bear was mauling my character a la The Revenant.

I’ve never heard my daughter scream like that. It was the deepest, most guttural sound she’s ever made.

Quickly pausing the game, I had a long talk about how none of this is real, it was just a game, I’msosorrypleasedon’ttellyourmom, etc…

Needless to say, RDR is now relegated to post-bedtime only.

To be fair, if all he had was a bow, he might as well have covered his own eyes.

Was doing a stage coach robbery and used dynamite planted in the path to “stop” the horses. Found out that it will totally blow peoples legs off with bones sticking out the bottom. That was a bit shocking. More than most games as it looked really really real. I felt kind of bad about that one. And then I looted them and shot the witness that rode by. So maybe I didn’t feel that bad. ;)

I’ve done four or five, and if they can be approached multiple ways, they’re pretty shitty at signposting them.

Sure, you can take the lost causer alive - that’s fairly obvious, as long as as you’re willing to navigate the gunfire. I wasn’t - because fuck him, and all his ilk. But you’re still funneled into a frontal assault instead of approaching the situation using the gameplay systems. And the main post-story mission medals just highlight the problem: you might have a choice for how a mission will branch, but ultimately you’re an actor rated on how well you hit your marks.

You do the Valentine bank heist. You pick the quiet safe cracking option. You make your way out - oh no: you were too slow and now there’s a chase. You look at the post mission brief, and now it’s the clear the problem isn’t that you were too slow and hit a fungible kinda success but not quite state. It’s that you didn’t get enough headshots during the mandatory chase.

This really captures how I feel about the mission design:
https://twitter.com/GTElephant/status/1060283209613803532

https://twitter.com/GTElephant/status/1060283750318309376

https://twitter.com/GTElephant/status/1060284014089699339

Oh and I want my old horse back. The Arabian looks really cool and gets lots of compliments, but it’s a total f’n wuss. I’m getting bucked off left and right when anything remotely dangerous is around. So annoying…

I think of this as a feature. It’s a rattlesnake detector. I find that as long as you continuously pat it, it will only just whicker and roll its eyes and sidestep nervously.

Can I say how awesome it is that the horse’s body language is so well rendered.

Yes, for sure.

Also, horse drifting never gets old, it’s so cool!

I actually have never been bucked off a horse yet - I don’t know what I’m doing differently, but when my horse (also the Arabian) senses trouble we’ve already either trampled it by accident or moved far enough away the red dot vanishes off the rader as I look down.

Trying trotting slowly along the muddy shore of a swamp near St. Denis, particularly at night, when you can see the gators’ eyes reflecting the moonlight (this detail!) from on top of the water.

Quick question: if I redeemed a code for pre-order dlc (the War Horse and some other stuff) after I got the Tennessee Walker horse, am I going to see the War Horse (or for that matter any of the other stuff) in this playthrough?

Background: this was the physical PS4 version bundled with a PS4 Pro 1TB.

Yeah, I didn’t think to redeem my codes until chapter 2 or so and that stuff was then available in the stables (or in the menus, or wardrobe, etc.)

@Matt_W those little details continue to amaze me dozens of hours in. I’m constantly finding new ways this game goes above and beyond to keep me playing. Last night I noticed this cool vest I’m wearing billow out when I get my horse up to speed, catching the air, because of course they thought to model that.

Matt! What’s the new avatar?