Red Dead Redemption

I should finish RDR one of these years

me too, but that horse is so fucking slow

it gets more bearable once you upgrade to the steam-powered mechanical horse

pls tell me you are not joshing

whatever happened to jeff levine, miss that dude

I just don’t know who’s that interested in the old west as a trope for a game. Personally I’m much more excited in something like cyberpunk 2077

Is there a thread for that that yet btw?

I’m v excited for that but rdr2 is here now

there's no cyberpunk thread yet i was waiting until it has a release window announced but feel free

meanwhile i am stuck on pc and will not get to experience horses realistically pissing and shitt ing in 4k HDRwith you guys in real time

Same

Same because I'm still on a PS3.

https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1829936466

the soundtrack has arca and colin stetson playing on it... huh

xp that is an incredible read. the bosses are all monsters obviously, but the delusion/masochism of some of the staff:

“Out of all those projects, Red Dead Redemption 2 has been the easiest I’ve experienced personally,” said one Rockstar San Diego employee. “Core hours, including lunch, would be nine hours. I’d say I probably get in an extra two hours on top of that most times. During crunch I probably put in another hour or two on top of that.”

So working 11, 12, or even 13 hours days is 'the easiest'.

Those who had worked fewer than 60 hours were marked with the word “Under” in red letters.

This is so unacceptable! The thing about not crediting ex-staff (and being proud of it as a company policy) is also very much The Worst.

“I’m sorry you had a nervous breakdown and left as a result of our enforced 13-hour workday policy, but rules are rules”

just reading the kotaku review and this stood out amongst the oohing and aahing at the detail :"...sludgy kinesthetics, jumbled control scheme, and unclear user interface". That's exactly why I didn't get on with RDR1 !

I read that your horse's scrotum expands and contracts with the weather.

Mehh clunky controls are no big deal when you have interactive horse balls

imagine being the poor kid working 100hr weeks on ball-shrinking code.

do what you love and you'll never work a day in yr life iirc

Makes u think

Your horse is dirty

Your horse will collapse

your horse's testicles are worryingly slack

Hickory dickory dock

I’ve got some sympathy for the rockstar employees who are saying "please don't boycott the game or we'll get no bonus and we'll have thrown our lives away for nothing" but really, "we'd prefer you to validate the system that's screwing us" feels like a lot to ask.

Not I dilemma I'll need to deal with any time soon tbf, given my current backlog. Very likely I'll just be buying it used 9 months from now.

i'm getting it tomorrow and playing this in 4k w00t

spoilers: the rockstar employees will get their bonus on this one, it's too popular for any boycott to make a dent

I only rarely found Red Dead 2 to be “fun” in the way I find many other video games to be fun. The physical act of playing is rarely pleasurable on its own. It is often tiring and cumbersome, though no less thrilling for it. No in-game activity approaches the tactilely pleasing acts of firing a space-rifle in Destiny, axing a demon in God of War, or jumping on goombas in Super Mario Bros. Red Dead 2 continues Rockstar’s longstanding rejection of the notions that input response should be snappy, that control schemes should be empowering and intuitive, and that animation systems should favor player input over believable on-screen action.

Pressing a button in Red Dead 2 rarely results in an immediate or satisfying response. Navigating Arthur through the world is less like controlling a video game character and more like giving directions to an actor. Get in cover, I’ll tell him, only to see him climb on top of the cover. Did I press the button too late? Did my button-press register at all? Dude, get down, I’ll cry, as his enemies begin to open fire. He’ll slowly wheel around, then slide down to the ground with an elaborate stumbling animation. GET IN COVER, I’ll command, pressing the “take cover” button for what feels like the sixth time. He’ll haul his body weight forward, then finally crouch behind the wall.

i always enjoy these rock star games but no one can deny that they're not as tactilely enjoyable as other video games

are there ppl seriously planning on boycotting this game bc... i kinda didn't follow this but working conditions at rock star i guess? hard to believe rock star's primary audience has suddenly become politically engaged and left-wing.

i dont think theres any boycotting going on really, just the kotaku piece from earlier this week that interviewed current & former rockstar employees about crunch which mostly just made it sound like they have rotten management there, not really any huge surprises

the kotaku review of the game is good & a pretty measured take on the whole thing

Excellent quote and exactly right.
But gta3 and vice and Santos WERE visceral and after that horse ball graphics became more important I guess

https://www.gameinformer.com/review/red-dead-redemption-ii/an-open-world-western-for-the-ages

10/10

i'm sure they've already got the game of the year edition content ready to go

gamespot and eurogamer with 9's. seems a little more reasonable.

i am sure that i'll eventually pick this up after a price drop, and enjoy it. but it's kind of weird that i pretty much know exactly what this game is and what it will be like to play it. part of that comes from playing the original RDR, of course, but it's also just the usual AAA game stuff. in some ways it seems like how you know what a marvel movie will be like before you go (which is why i rarely go). i know that there will be mobile camps with 20 of my friends in the gang, and that every time we move the camp to a new location, i should walk around the camp and talk to all 20 of them to learn more about their stories, pursue the occasional sidequest, and if i keep talking to the cook throughout the game maybe i'll unlock a funny chef's hat or something. it's all good, i'm glad it's all there, it's just weird to know how the game will be

damn, i wish i had your gift. I have to actually play it to find out what it's like.

i think i understand xp but i still end up watching all the marvel flicks eventually bc i know what they'll be and what they'll be is light entertainment

yep, and that's why i'll still play it, eventually

just referencing a point in the kotaku review about all of the people involved in making something like this, years and years of (forced overtime) labor - it leads to stunning technical achievements and an insane level of detail in every aspect of a huge open world game that you can lose yourself in for years. but it also seems like industrial gamemaking also inevitably means a regression to the mean

i prefer my light entertainment to have abstracted rather than representative gameplay

regression to the mean isn't a good way to put it. pre-emptively taking shots at myself because i know they're coming. there are advances forward each time, tech-wise, more and more "content", the story gets a little bit easier to swallow, and more of the voice acting is performed by actual voice actors, so it's not like things aren't improving. i just mean that the advances end up being so predictable. AAA games aren't regressing to the mean so much as honing in on the perfect mass-media game. that pursuit isn't unique to games but it seems like the videogame industry is particularly suited for it, like you can literally just throw more people and money and time at a big project and yell GO! and it will magically pop out a few years later, two steps ahead of the last one in the series, and implementing some of the advances from other games in the genre during the passing period. that's cool i guess but something about the whole thing leaves me feeling empty

damn, i wish i had your gift. I have to actually play it to find out what it's like.

i mean, obviously i'm goofing a bit here. but just as an example of what i mean - in this new RDR2, the main character can fall and get mud on his outfit, or blood on his clothes from gunfights. then later, people in settlements will be like "whoa you got blood on you cowboy, hope that's not yours!" or whatever. (i learned about that from the kotaku review).

all of that is really cool! i'm not sure if it's the first big AAA game that does that or if they already stole it from somewhere else. but what that means is that in the next big open world game, 1 or 2 years from now, whatever universe it's set in, whatever the game is about, the same thing will happen. you'll be a space miner working an asteroid all day or whatever, and when you get back on the spaceport one of the maintenance crew will say "whoa space man, you got cobalt all over your helmet! bet ya wish it was palladium instead!" and that will be kind of cool, but also predictable at that point, like it just has to happen

I thought that had already happened?

https://i.imgur.com/68ZYWe7.jpg

honestly i just wish people in real life would comment about all the blood and palladium i have on my clothes

is this gonna count as another sad dad game

If you want Palladium on your shirt buy a RIFTS tee.

https://palladium-store.com/mm5/graphics/00000002/images/TS804-Rifts-Logo-T-Shirt-XL.jpg

Didn’t know karl was a butcher