Red Dead Redemption

Yeah, think I found two areas but I didn't follow up on it. It's something I keep meaning to investigate more of.

Again, have only dipped into this, but an important thing I learned is that your auto-aim button (I think L2 on the PS4?) resets when you release the button. So if you hold and aim and shoot someone, release the button and repress it and it automatically jumps to the next target. The first few gunfights I had I just kept L2 pressed down, but it's important to release between shots. Maybe this was obvious to everyone but me, lol.

there should be maps at each murder scene, there are four total xxp

OK, I think I need some help, because I'm kind of struggling with what I should be doing and how to do it, just figuring things out. For example, I'm hanging out at the Overlook camp, checking things out. I haven't been playing much, but at one point someone told me I wasn't dressed for the weather. Was that just small talk, or is the game telling me to put on warmer clothes? How was I supposed to know the temperature, or is that the mechanic (someone will tell me)? What happens if I am not dressed right? Like, is this a fashion thing or something I need to be aware of? And I think I'm supposed to help around the camp, which I've done bit of, but ... should I be hunting? Does it matter how much time I spend on that? Does it matter how far off I make it from camp? I was exploring this abandoned camp and think I found a guy in jail, but I couldn't seem to interact with him. Was he dead? Was that just local color? And when I left it was night time. Is that a problem/something to be aware of? A bit earlier I came across a guy changing a horse's shoe, and afaict the horse kicked him in the head and killed him, so ... I looted the body. Was this what I was supposed to do? I tried to bring the body back to camp, but it wouldn't let me. And I think I can upgrade my satchel. Do I need pelts and skins for that? Does that take time to grind throughout the game, or should I be focusing on that now?

And as for personal stats, at one point I looked bedraggled, so I took a nap and now seem to be less stooped and haggard. Is that what was happening, I was tired? Do I need to sleep? Do I need to eat? How often do I need to eat? I'm having trouble figuring all this stuff out before I pursue more of the yellow story quests. I mean, I get that I *am* playing the game, in some way, but right now I can't even figure out how to make the onscreen radar map bigger.

figuring out how RDR2 works is the game

i mean that for real. some of the questions are just things you're supposed to figure out. like looting. it depends on when you do it, and how you try to do it on, and who is around. sometimes it makes sense, sometimes the game fucks up and you get in trouble for no particular reason, or you murder a child and no one notices.

for the game mechanic questions, honestly the best way to answer any of those questions is to google:

RDR2 ____

RDR2 how do clothes work
RDR2 upgrading satchel
RDR2 hunting
RDR2 how to do cool things on a horse

unless you actually want answers to all of those things. i figured those were figurative q's

Huh. Well, as long as I don't break any main story quests or anything by farting around I guess I will just keep doing that.

How about simple stuff like eating/sleeping. Are these things I Need to Do or just things I Can Do?

i mean, i'm sure a lot of people play RDR2 in a lot more concrete, task-focused way, but imo it's more fun to play open-world games in a BotW style, just playing and figuring out things that don't seem urgent, and googling everything else

i forgot if you actually had to eat/sleep or not, so

https://i.imgur.com/3JpeHgH.png

ok that was a terrible example because it led me to an article about a PREVIEW version of the game, but....siiiiigh

god, even google sucks ass now

some of the questions are just things you're supposed to figure out

this tbh

there's lots you can learn, lots you can straight up ignore and lots you can half-ass and none of it stops you either playing the story end to end or spending weeks fucking around finding stuff.

someone giving me all those answers would have lessened the experience for me.

Cool, thanks. As long as it's not the sort of game where if you don't do the thing before the other thing you'll never get to do the thing, or the other thing become 10x harder.

so far it's felt fairly not like that. the game seems pretty much unbreakable, which is a good and bad thing. although i encountered my first glitches yesterday: it made me redo a mission im sure i already completed, and later it tried to make me rob a stagecoach i'd already robbed and didn't exist.

ghost coach!

oh yeah, i speaking of which, i also rode a coach i was riding as part of a mission into a lampost and couldn't reverse or go around. so i had to get off and make the game fail me so i could start again

also, i don't know if this is normal, but I paid off a massive $900 bail to clear my name in St Denis, only to be set upon just a few minutes later by baddies of some sort as I was leaving town. I had no choice but to shoot back, putting my bounty back to $15 which was a bit annoying.

the game is really easy, nothing you do will set you up for failure. the camp comments about putting on warmer clothes is a glitch, also

yes it confused me for a while. I was wearing a massive coat in 20 degree celsius weather and people were screaming at me to wear warmer clothes. now i just wear the dandiest shit i can afford unless i go up to the Grizzlies.

Ooh, I forgot - something really unexpected happened. I've only met a handful of Native Americans so far, usually as part of a conversation in a quest. But last night I stumbled on a dead body quite near my camp. I'd just had a bit of a gunbattle with some O'Driscolls, so I was about to loot it, when out of nowehre I was set upon by three camoflaged men who managed to beat me to death in about 10 seconds. It caught me quite by surprise as so far you can generally spot a tussle a mile off. This was a stealthy, clever entrapment that completely threw me.

that might be the skinner brothers, they have a machete that one shots you

ahhhhhh... hmmm the name rings a bell. ah yes, i came across a few of them a while back and they got antsy with me so i gave them what-for. i didn't really get a good look at them this time mind, so my assumption that they were native American might have been wrong. It was around the Bayou area

I love shit like that, I have so much to look forward to in this game.

Still taking my time figuring out how to do simple ass shit. Had to google how to clean myself in a river, because I was covered with blood, either from hunting or from shooting some dude on a homestead who pulled a gun on me before I was even able to explain I was still learning the game mechanics. What a jerk, right?

Oh, also, settling in that I am essentially a bad guy, and that I am (I think) *supposed* to rob and loot and kill, at least within reason.

Did I miss something?

This thread is suddenly full of action. I'm seeing RDR2 highlights on TikTok and Tumblr. Recently had a YouTube video appear called "The Best Ways to Kill [spoiler character?]"

One of those moments where i can't be sure if it's the world at large or if the world is just targeting me.

But enjoying the conversation!

Possibly a lockdown flex means people are picking this game up as a way to pass the time (my situation), and perhaps the algorithms at play.

did a really awesome/creepy gator mission lst night. the few flashes of horror in this game really serve it well

i should try to get back into this

it's all about lockdown for me, i played it before but not in this depth

Total coincidence that I'm playing it now. Honestly, it's been on my must play list since it came out, but this past December was the first time I found it for $20.

I'm in St Denis and it's all too easy to have a run in with the law. My hard paid bounty is right back to where it was because I accidentally trespassed on someone's property without realising and ended up in a 24hr heist up in the eves of a railway siding with dozens of police thronging around it. I died.

On my way to the post office to once again bail myself off, I thought it would be funny to antagonise someone and I got done for "Disturbing the peace"

Did I miss something?

This thread is suddenly full of action. I'm seeing RDR2 highlights on TikTok and Tumblr. Recently had a YouTube video appear called "The Best Ways to Kill [spoiler character?]"

Josh started playing it and it started a global sensation!

Okay something very cool happened but I won’t mention for Josh’s sake

I think tomorrow I may actually go on a mission tomorrow!

i find with all these types of games i spend an increidble amount of time faffing around, exploring, kind of testing what the game is about, before getting fed up and ploughing as quickly into the story as i can

Doing some googling I kept coming across basic stuff that can only be addressed by proceeding forward. Like, "be sure to brush you horse," but you can't get the brush til later. Or "be sure to bathe," but you have to bathe in town. Or "sell your stuff to the fence or trapper," but they're somewhere else. So I think onward and upward is the way to go. I can always just move bales of hay at camp some other time.

Mate, being told to go somewhere only to be told you have to go and meet someone back where you just came from is the theme of this game

and a large part of why i quit playing after about five hours in... which in RDR terms means "right after i started"

I am truly terrible at this game. I wake up Bill (I think?) and he suggests we go to Valentine. Three of the women decide to join us. My first mistake is running the horse and carriage up on some boulder right outside of town (I was trying to turn on cinematic auto mode or whatever) and having to start over immediately. Then on the way there I help a guy retrieve a horse to ... I don't know what end. Help my reputation? I get into town, accompany Bill to buy some coffee, then rescue one of the women from a bad client. I chase down another guy on a horse who recognizes me from Blackwater, then kick him off a cliff (which the game implies is a bad thing). Then I go back to town and get in a bar brawl somewhere else, helping people who may or may not be part of my crew, because at the end suddenly Dutch is there, and there's another mission to do, if I want, back in ... Blackwater? Something about a bounty. Meanwhile, I find some secret room with a guy I can apparently rob, except I can't get in there, so instead I punch out a guy in a different room. The next morning I take a horse that may or may not be mine (who can tell?) to a train, and then thinking I'm supposed to rob some dude accidentally on purpose strangle him, get a wanted notice out in (at least this one) town, take the horse out a while til the heat dies down, learn I can pay off the wanted value back in town, so head back there, immediately raise the ire of the law, who kill me in a gunfight. And I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing in this town, assuming there are other specific tasks. Oh, there are a couple of side quests already, too, involving taking pictures of gunfighters. And once when I was trying to say hi to a new horse I accidentally punched it, and it kicked me in the head. Meanwhile, my steady steed is back at camp, but I've somehow accumulated all these other borrowed horses, and I'm not sure what to do with them. Just leave them somewhere?

Anyway, nowhere to get but better, I suppose.

^ this reads like a word for word account of where I was and how I was feeling a few weeks ago

i like your cowboy life, josh! sounds like you're having an interesting time at least

Just realized my summary recalls the Smiths' "Is It Really So Strange?"

"I left the North
I traveled South
I found a tiny house
And I can't help the way I feel

Oh yes, you can kick me
And you can punch me
And you can break my face
But you won't change the way I feel

I left the South
I traveled North
I got confused - I killed a horse
I can't help the way I feel ..."

Never knowingly heard that one but the lyrics sound like the kind of thing they would sing at the campfire

My new revelations: 1) I should really wear a mask if/when I rob people and 2) if I do rob or kill someone, I think I should get out of that area ASAP. Also need to figure out how to open locked/closed doors so that I can do more robbing.

^good life tips too

lol i loaded up gta5 and it opened with trevor out in the middle of nowhere with no vehicle and I almost tried to whistle for my horse

the eagle eye-based bounty searches in RDO are absolutely horrible. i mean objectively the online is pretty terrible. it's at least easy to zone out to and one of the only ways i can listen to podcasts

So apparently you either get visited by a wolf or a stag at various points in the game depending on how you play it. I've had wolf through-and-through. I've been so mean. I rescued a dog for some kid in Strawberry but shot it as I was leaving the scene. That said, it's been the debt collection missions I've had the toughest time with. I let two people off the hook in the end. Try as I might, I just can't be that nasty.

I still haven't able to play much of this, but that's a problem I was having. The lead character is innately a bad person - he's a killer and a robber, etc. - but I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to lean into that, or if I even want to. Can you play the game by being ... a good person? I doubt it. While I respect the fact that they set up the O'Gunfodder clan as my arch nemesis to shoot at, I feel less into shooting anonymous (and innocent?) randos in the wild just because the mission demanded it, or because I can. I suppose it is called Red Read Redemption, so maybe it finds a way to inject some morality into it?

that's part of the fun of these open-world interactive morality plays I guess - it's up to you. i found i started out trying my best to be a good cowboy, not to upset the applecart. but it was impossible. it only took me to accidentally pull a gun on someone or piss someone off in town to get a whole bunch of people on my case. so eventually i got a bit bored and started messing with it.

definitely raises a few debates about the dissociativeness of games like this. even though the game does a great job at realism and TRIES very hard to instil a moral compass in the player, it's still a bunch of avatars and who cares if you shoot a random man off his horse, loot his pockets and dump him in the river?

josh, if you press down on the cross-pad, it tells you the temperature, where you are and also there's a bar on the bottom telling you your social standing in terms of whether people like you or not. if you greet people in the street and generally do good things, it goes up.

guys its the WILD west, nobody is innocent here.