Red Dead Redemption

So it took me two times at the horse race to realize that I actually need to KEEP HITTING X in order to make my horse go super fast!

The entire game I've just been holding X once I get up to "top" speed. GUHHHHH. It was a piece of cake after that - I even fell off my horse once and still won easily.

Pretty turned off by the leering Mexican accents - hopefully this will be balanced out soon.

One thing about Mexico - five minutes after crossing the border I got stopped by a bunch of Federales who had their guns pointed at me! Fuck, I killed em all, what did they expect? Now I've got a bounty on my head although no one seems to give a shit. Guess I should pay it off, or use that pardon I've still got. I don't even know if they have a telegraph office in Perdido, though. (I too am doing the good guy thing..)

nice work, goole, 100%? is there any equivalent of GTA's pigeons in this?

As goole mentioned above, it is sort of creepy how American Indians have just been totally erased from this version of the Wild West.. I know it's 1911 and all but.. I guess I should just let it go. Ugh.

I am gonna do the proto-airplane mission if it KILLS ME. I remember hearing the girl talking on the train at the very beginning of the game about "flying machines" or whatever, remembered that the game takes place in 1911 and was like I AM DOING THAT.

there are indians in the third segment

there are no pigeons but when you add up all the flower picking and hunting of different things...

i will inflict on you all a spoiler because it pissed me off and disappointed -- you never get to drive a car! there's a stat in the game "distance driven" even! assholes!

maybe something for dlc

The car is the Liberty City Theme Park of Red Dead Redemption

Haha the fucking flower picking. I refuse to do "Flowers for a Lady" because I am sick and tired of carrying around like 50 bazillion bouquets of Wild Feverfew.

never forget 1911

the survivalist maps are a godsend. plus, it tells where to find which flower in the challenge description! it's really less of a hassle than those fucking pigeons.

being an outlaw definitely keeps the game more active. I was capping people from the train last night ^_^

love that you can actually jump from your horse to the train

don't think you can go the other way however : /

are there benefits to extreme low honor? i played as a goody goody and people kept giving me stuff.

can't decide if i'm going to pull the trigger on this, i borrowed it from a friend over the weekend and got as far as finishing the first tutorial horse race. it seems pretty rad but i have a track record of giving up on open-world games about 35% of the way through. at least there don't seem to be any dialogue trees.

the only diffs I have noticed from low honor is you get different random encounters, like to steal and murder instead of helping folks (by stealing and murdering). also you get bounty hunters chasing you which keeps things lively.

there is no fence to be on with this game if you have the gaming system to run it imo

yeah i'd call it R*'s best w/o much hesitation

big praise indeed

it's close betw. this and vice city for me, nostalgia's strong w/the PS2 GTAs

the writing and v/o is head and shoulders above even IV. the mission design is finally good. the secondary challenges are interesting well-thought out, hit that grinding w/o grinding sweet spot. the body physics and gun combat are excellent (the gta games are kind of bad as shooters, really!)

i'm not totally without complaints but most of the things that bugged me about the GTAs have been mostly fixed. and the things it does well it does really really well. you can't understimate how important it is to have a game be pretty.

funny i think it's closest to bully in terms of uh vibe, maybe cos of the atmosphere and hazy old timeyness

Yeah the voice acting is pretty great, isn't it?

They're good at gluing a bunch of pretty different kinds of story together. The Sam Elliott dude you meet when you first get to Mexico has a total Japanese deep-mystery vibe goin on. "I'm the last of my kind..." "So what are you waiting around here for?" "I don't know..."

explain me social club. what is it? why do i need to join? what do i get? is it more multiplayer focused or does it add to the single player game? etc

The voice acting is great, and I love how well RDR hits Western tropes. The concerns about federal interference in the wild west, the outlaw versus the law, the formation of community, the move into modernity, the simultaneous empathizing/hatred of the Other -- they really studied how Westerns work before making the game.

priest outside of the saloon drove me so crazy that i was compelled to lasso him and train track the dude after draggin him around town for a bit.

def more murderous in this than most games, must be the outlaw vibe.

Man, I am loving the storyline in Mexico. Really great.

btw did u dudes know that wild horses don't have horseshoes but non-wild horses do

o_O

so here's a question

If I have avoided every GTA game because of discomfort with the premise, would there be similar ethical considerations that would lead me to want to avoid this game as well or does the gameplay exist in a setting with fewer relatable-to-real-life ethical qualms?

imo its way way way more ethically sound than the other gtas. you will be killing peeps, but i havent really run up against anything where i had to kill innocent people, and the rewards for doing so because why not are minimal.

obv I don't have an issue with killing ppl, otherwise I would never play any game ever

you shoot a hell of a lot of people, is that a problem?

xps lol

your character is presented with option to be more honorable or not in a few given cases. there is a mission or two where you have to do some heinous stuff but the immorality of it is the point, narratively.

if you're asking this question at all, maybe go do something else

NOTE: i am not as far into the game as some other people are, so i cant say things dont get shady further on, but it feels like a concerted effort was made to give you a non (or at least semi) violent out - the fact that you can lasso and hogtie criminals instead of shooting them, and that you get more $$$ for doing so is a big indicator of a different approach i think.

Well my issues with GTA run more along the lines of "gang violence is awesome and btw aren't these minorities/immigrants amoral sociopaths; ps women are playthings" so if the storyline is more about framing issues like that in unflattering/impactful terms rather than "yay boobies/blood" (I know some of the later GTA games are supposed to be more mature in this regard but, you know, life's too short), maybe I'll check this out.

Personally, I feel that the honor mechanic does a good job of making you feel guilty for misdeeds. The presence of it makes RDR feel a lot less nihilistic than GTA. And even mistreating criminals can dock you honor. I lasso'd a thief and rode him around until he died and I lost honor. The whole thing kinda made me feel dirty and immoral.

All the missions you do for the government in Mexico made me feel so gross.

But in a good way.

ok wrt women, theres a lot of prostitutes in the game, but thats kind of a western trope at this point so eh, the plus side is that as a married man, you dont engage in anything w/them. also, correct me if im wrong, but bonnie has got to be the most fleshed out competent female character in rockstar history, right?

I don't have an issue with prostitutes in a game, either, unless they are there expressly for you to beat the fuck out of them

I enjoyed returning the favor to the mexican soldier who was all like "its no big deal, man!"

in that sense this game is hardly any different to gta, i haven't tried but I'm almost certain its possible to waste the prostitutes if you so desired. its an option, just like it was in gta.

Oh, GTA didn't encourage that? (lol you can tell I never played the game)

You can play the entirety of the GTA franchise without ever having sex with or killing a prostitute.

xp
no, i'm almost certain that no gta game referred to that act in its story missions.

both gta and rdr are reflections of a period in some kind of dark seductive world. RDR might seem less seedy to most, gta gang killings (no matter how parodic rockstar play it) probably feel a little harder to swallow for some people which is understandable.

RDR features a lot of rum goings on, mostly murderous in their flavour. Women being hung from trees, is probably the grimmest i've seen so far.

i should point out that the woman being hung, you had to rescue

i don't know why that's important, lol

ok, let's do this

My only problem with the game is that I think John Marston is too chatty while he's riding from place to place doing missions. I reckon he could have been more Clint y'know. Also does anyone know if you can just shoot the gun out of your opponents hand when you're having a duel after being busted cheating at cards? Having said that, riddling them with bullets is pretty fun.

i get what Dan's saying and here's a straight answer: yes, there's a lot less relatably icky gang bullshit and putting caps in people's asses. The game is about two steps away from racism; the first guy I met in Mexico might as well have been al pacino playing Tony Montana which didn't even make sense and there is a definite parochial "save us old white guy we cannot survive without you" vibe. Also there's a real disregard for life that even GTA never fostered; the game invites you to kill kill kill every animal you encounter... weirdly, that puts you somewhat more in game and of the time though?
All the above aside, I recommend this whole heartedly and would definitely say it's the best thing Rock Star has ever done.

wow, that is high praise!

Also does anyone know if you can just shoot the gun out of your opponents hand when you're having a duel after being busted cheating at cards? Having said that, riddling them with bullets is pretty fun.

Yeah, if you wait for them to draw before you do and then paint the X on their hand as it flashes white it disarms them and ends the duel immediately.

My only problem with the game is that I think John Marston is too chatty while he's riding from place to place doing missions

His shoehorned in philosophy discussions are almost as laboured as his "sick of this goddamn bullshit gonna shoot you in the head soon" talk to Irish.

Also Herbert Moon really needs to stop getting robbed and/or saying that thing about Jews running the country.

I have avoided every GTA game because of discomfort with the premise

Me too. The setting changes everything, though. It's basically Deadwood - there are no rules, there is no law, you have people living right up on the edge of survival, life was cheap. Which makes kill or be killed a legit choice a lot of the time. In GTA it's pretty much modern times, when there isn't really any defensible reason for carrying a gun.

And yeah, echoing what others have said the game really steers you towards being a good guy. Of course there's nothing stopping you from going all bnw on people's ass but from what I can tell the game gets harder if you do this.