Red Dead Redemption 2 - For a Few Redemptions More

No, you can do all the traversal you need from the start. You must just be missing a trail or something. Maybe hit up YouTube?

I just looked it up on Youtube. I was misinterpreting the map. The two pillars were just there as a reference, the treasure isn’t there but close to it. Thanks Scott. Good to know traversal doesn’t change later in the game.

I was playing dress up last night and noticed that you can tab left and right to show the different hats if you’ve gained any others than what you start with. There’s a tab for “stolen hats”, etc. Works with masks, as well. Also, in the change clothes menu you are given further customizable options with your collar, shirt sleeves and boots.

I only noticed this when I went looking in my inventory for a really creepy mask that I stumbled upon around what I thought was Indian burial grounds. It was not Indian burial grounds.

(Sorry, should have put this in the “Tips and tricks…” thread).

A thing that happened last night:
I was up in the northeast, and got suckered into an ambush by some of the Murphree’s Brood guys (the cannibal hillbillies).

So I’m fighting them off, but I’m pretty close to Butcher’s Creek.

All of a sudden, while I’m fighting off all these nuts, I suddenly get a negative karma ding.

What I believe happened, is that I think maybe a random “normal” hillbilly from Butcher’s Creek just happened to wander over, and I shot them.

What happened next was pretty terrible, in that I guess I pissed off that whole town or something. At no point did I get a wanted level for anything, but I was assaulted by a seemingly neverending swarm of hillbillies. Literally dozens of them were coming at me, and no matter how many I killed, they seemed to just keep coming. What’s worse, periodically, I kept getting more negative dings to my karma.

I then decide that I need to just get the hell out of there, because I don’t see this going well, and while I’m killing tons of these guys, I don’t want to tank my karma. Also, I’m not confident I can win this fight, because they’re coming from every direction, and I’m barely keeping my health up.

So I call my horse. It had run off because it was freaked out, but it came back to me. I hop onto it, and immediately run directly into a tree, full speed, and fall off. I am then killed.

So that was fun.

Other things to note:
First person view, I believe I mentioned, is pretty cool for a bunch of things. Specifically, searching houses is more easily done in 1st person.

But there are things which are extremely cool in first person.

Like if you’re fighting a group like the Skinners, where they periodically come up and grab you from behind. Getting grabbed in first person, and then wrestling on the ground, is a lot more intense in first person.

Probably the most crazy thing is getting mauled by a grizzly bear in first person. That crap is nuts.

The horse running into trees thing is so annoying. If they programmed in horses getting freaked out by predators why not also program in an aversion to running into trees. Running off a cliff I can see if they don’t know it’s there but running into a tree?

I’ve had my horse halt and rear up at every cliff that would have been for certain fatal. I have hit quite a few rocks/trees though, every time it’s my own fault but it doesn’t make it feel any better knowing that.

Weird-- the other night I was showing my sis the game and kept trying to run into trees but there seemed to be some AI preventing it. Maybe you have to have a really fast horse at a full gallop? I’m still riding fairly pokey ones.

I was trying to rob a train last night, galloping my horse next to the train getting ready to jump on, but my horse was too fast. It kept getting in front of the train, some sloppy handling and we ended up across the tracks…

…I woke up from being dead and looked for my beautiful white Arabian, but some strange brown horse was standing there with my saddle on it and my stuff in the packs. A tear leaked out of my eye. I raged. I almost shot the new horse in my despair. This was the most emotional response I’ve had to a game character death since Aeris. I slogged back up to the mountains to find Phobos II (my warhorse is Deimos, the Arabian is (was 😭) Phobos) and now have to spend a few hours breaking her in.

So pro-tip: try not to get hit by a train while on horseback.

Yeah, that’s a good point - if you are going at a trot or slower I don’t think it’s possible to run into stuff. Only going full bore (cantor?) can it happen, and even then it has to kind of be something unavoidable by the horse AI.

My horse was killed by a train, just got clipped as I got to close to it while getting off of it, and I reloaded the previous auto save which was thankfully just 3 or so minutes earlier.

Every time I’ve ran into a tree (it’s happened to me twice), it has been hilarious. It’s a great addition to the game.

Try taking the horse up a steep muddy slope. The sight of Arthur and the horse tumbling and sliding in a flail of limbs down a steep hill is always exhilarating. (Beware: they may not survive.) The horse physics in this game are incredible.

Funny you should mention that. I was watching a recorded stream by our own @Jason_McMaster and he hit a tree and fell off twice within about 20 seconds. It WAS hilarious, especially because it was the same tree.

Yeah, for the most part my horse has been pretty good about avoiding trees on its own. But there was this one time I found a couple guys trying to open a safe by the side of the road. So naturally I killed them, set my dynamite on the safe, lit it, then jumped on my horse and hammered the A button to get out of there. And slammed right into a tree. At least I didn’t get blown up!

Oh man, I didn’t mean to get those two mad at me, but they almost killed me. So I was forced to kill them. But then I had the same problem they did. I tried shooting off the lock of that safe with various weapons, and just couldn’t get the darn thing open.

(I haven’t encountered any dynamite in the game yet).

Sometimes it feels like the horse just WANTS to run into a tree and I can’t avoid it. Sometimes it’s funny as hell, but sometimes I’m actually trying to get something done darn it!

The funniest thing I’ve done with my horse is walk this one really really narrow and dangerous path in the NW area of the map. It winds under a bridge and has like a 200 foot drop. My wife walked by and looked in horror at what I was doing to my poor dear virtual horse. I insisted I knew what i was doing and would be fine. 2 seconds later I slipped and me and the horse tumbled to our doom.

Their physics and animations on slipping is so good, isn’t it? Whether you’re on foot or on the horse, sometimes you step on those little pebbles and you start slipping. It feels just right.

Chiming in with my horse issue…

As with RDR, following the railroad is often the fastest way to get someplace. Now, going over big bridges w/ the railings are fine. But going over those smaller bridges w/o railings? Yea, for some reason I can’t fathom, every now and then the horse will just jerk hard to the right, and I just have to hope the fall isn’t enough to kill either of us. And no, it’s not always in the same spots.

It did get me to save often, and just go back before the stupidity kicked in. They really should fix that. That and keeping your armament the same when you get off a horse.

It has a truly immense feel of impact when you hit something with the horse. I don’t even know exactly how they are doing it, but damn, hitting something with your horse has more impact than crashing your car in GTA ever did.

Heh, at one point while encountering two safe robbers, i just stood there while they got progressively more angry at me, then they accidentally blew themselves up, and the safe was then open.