Red Dead Redemption 2 Review | The Most Immersive Game to Ever Exist
Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) is the craziest game I’ve ever played in terms of realism. Never in any other game have I ever been so wowed…
Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) is the craziest game I’ve ever played in terms of realism. Never in any other game have I ever been so wowed by the dedication it has to realism. I don’t think any other game will be able to top this for a long time. For this alone, it’s worth playing to experience.
The realism stems from several different places in the game, and the first many will notice is the animations. Whatever system they have in place for characters to look at and pick up items, then realistically throwing them into their bag is simply nuts. Looting bodies, your character has to go through an animation to rummage through the other person's pockets. Granted, some players will just want the item to pop into their inventory and will see this as “lost time” or “padding” but in terms of the most immersive and realistic game to date… it’s incredible. Beyond “actions” you have muscles (and other things) on horses moving realistically, dusters and coats blowing in the wind, and trees swaying, I could go on and on about how every one of these minute details just works in harmony that I’ve never seen before, and it is mind-expanding.
The other thing that blows my socks off in the realism department is the “idle” animations, specifically of the animals. If you’re lucky, you might see two elk fighting between the trees in the woods. Birds will swoop down to lakes to catch fish. NPCs and your character will shift their body weight around when waiting. It’s insane. The amount of work in every detail of every living thing I just cannot even fathom the amount of man-hours spent researching this stuff to make a realistic world like this. Could talk about how bewildered I am about it for hours.
That aside, you might be wondering if the story is good and let me tell you, yeah it’s good. It was always interesting to boot it up and experience a few stories embodying the old caricature of the Wild West. The most fascinating thing that I kept coming back to was the conflict in the main character, Arthur, and how the industrial revolution in America was slowly but surely killing off the ways of the “cowboys and outlaws”. It was thought-provoking enough to keep me wondering about the characters even when I wasn’t playing the game, so I’d say that it succeeded there.
The gameplay loop was engaging, and I felt like the controls were tight enough that no death or mission failure was outside of my control. Speaking of, many missions let me tackle them however I wanted with whatever weapon loadout I wanted, so the freedom of choice was excellent. Beyond that, the gun customization is out of this world, letting you add attachments that give raw boosts to stats, while otherwise letting you customize the appearance, down to what kind of wood the weapon is made from. It’s such a surprisingly complex and in-depth system that rewards players who love to spend hours customizing things to their heart's content.
My only personal gripe with the game… there’s so much to do… so so much to do. That it’s overwhelming. I often found myself bee-lining for the story missions because I was attracted to the narrative the most. What I found with my time in the world, is that the longer the story drew itself out, the less I felt compelled to experiment in the open world, and experience side missions and activities. The newness of it all, and the shock value of the realism also slowly faded away as I played more and more story missions… that seemingly go on forever. In its defense, I don’t think the ending to RDR2 would have had the same utterly profound impact, had I not spent as much time as they made me spend with those characters, specifically while occupying the space within Arthur’s mind, but that perception of length is still something I have to bring up.
GTAV had a similar effect on me. There’s something about the Rockstar formula that doesn’t sit well with me as a gamer… I think of other times I’ve spent playing massive RPGs like The Witcher 3. While it might not be a fair comparison for many reasons, I spent well over 100 hours playing and still wanted MORE after that. I was having so much fun, that it didn’t feel like 100 hours. Something about the Rockstar formula for me, makes me feel every hour that passes. When that narrative conclusion rolls across the screen, I’m satisfied with the finale and ultimately the finality of its gameplay loop, even with just a mere 50 hours. It’s somewhat of a shame because I know there are 200+ more hours of things for me to do, but I just can’t bring myself to do them. I must not be the target audience!
My thoughts on that aside: This is a near-perfect masterpiece. I think that any player from any background will be able to not just see that this is an artistic masterpiece, but many will also love their time with RDR2 in any number of its activities and side content, of which there is so much that I truly believe you can probably spend an infinite amount of time in this game. One that all players should find time to experience. NameBrand.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.