Red Dead Redemption

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.

Is the crossbar also how I ... eat? That gives me access to my satchel, right? I was confused by that, since there is also stuff in my wheel (which I also find kind of confusing), but not nearly as comprehensive.

Wait, dump him in the river? Am I supposed to dispose of bodies?! I kind of figured they're just left there, like my various abandoned horses. So the guy I pushed off a cliff, the guy that knew me from Blackwater, is he still dead at the bottom of the cliff!?

I mentioned that dude before, btw, because he's really kind of illustrative of the inconsistency here. He recognizes me from Blackwater, because I figure I did really bad things in Blackwater. So he horses off, I assume either out of fear or to alert the authorities, I catch up with him but, rather than rescue him, push him off the cliff, which the game dramatically tells me was a "bad" thing to do. But the only reason he ran off was because he *knew* I was a bad, murdering scoundrel! In which case letting him go seemed like it would have been the *wrong* thing to do, from the perspective of a bad person that doesn't want to get caught for the bad things he did.

it took me a while to get used to the selection wheel. Hold L2, and while you're doing that press R1 to scroll between WEAPONS/ITEMS/HORSE, then use the regular L stick to select a thing (like food). Then you just let go of the L2 to eat it, or select what gun you want.

I did find it a bit hard to get used to some of the instructions. You could be riding with a group and listening to what they say, trying to steer your horse so it follows them, and meanwhile essential tips on how to play the game are flashing up very quickly in the top left hand corner.

If you kill someone on a road, it's best to be wearing your mask. I've also found it's a good idea to move them off the road to a quieter place (or dump them in a river). This is so that no one discovers it and raises the alarm. That said, last night I was doing exactly this and a witness still seemed to work out what had happened (blood on the road? how do they know it wasn't from an animal?), so i don't know.

I mentioned that dude before, btw, because he's really kind of illustrative of the inconsistency here. He recognizes me from Blackwater, because I figure I did really bad things in Blackwater. So he horses off, I assume either out of fear or to alert the authorities, I catch up with him but, rather than rescue him, push him off the cliff, which the game dramatically tells me was a "bad" thing to do. But the only reason he ran off was because he *knew* I was a bad, murdering scoundrel! In which case letting him go seemed like it would have been the *wrong* thing to do, from the perspective of a bad person that doesn't want to get caught for the bad things he did.

I can't quite remember this bit. Did the game fail the mission or just give you a slapped wrist?

This was in the first (only) town I went to. Valentine? A guy comes up and stammers "don't I know you from somewhere?" And then identifies you as from Blackwater and bolts off on his horse. The mission is to catch up to him, and if you don't you fail and try again, so you *have* to catch him. But when you do he's hanging off a cliff (like a big idiot) and it gives you the option of pulling him up or kicking him off. I kicked him off, because who wants a fleeing witness to my purported bad deeds? But for all I know had I pulled him up it would have made me shoot him or push him off, anyway.

There is definitely something serial killer in plain sight about Arthur. I can go about my business just killing people then return to the camp covered in blood and they're all, ha ha, that's my Arthur, always up to something.

thi sis true, although people do treat you differently if you've been up to no good

You will murder at least 50 people in cold blood and be treated as the hero throughout the game

"You're a good man, deep down Arthur"
Me: How many more innocent lives do I need to take to convince you otherwise?

i wish there was some different mechanic than mowing down waves of enemies, i feel arthurs bodycount probably exceeds the cumulative total of every real wild west outlaw. and it'd make the dramatic arc a little more believable. alas it's a video game i guess

One of the things I liked best about "The Last of Us" (which I guess is an exceptional game in every way) is that all the deaths have a weight to them, not least because you kill for your survival but because the cumulative effective of death and killing is a well-considered theme of the game. There's even that moment toward the end of the game where you meet a stranger who tells you about this kill-happy couple making its way across the country, and you immediately recognize that it's you. Instead of giving you a choice, *this* game makes you a "bad" bandit from the start, with a history of robbing and killing, but it doesn't quite clarify its morality enough (at least not early in the game) to indicate whether *more* robbing and killing is a bad thing, even as it compels you to do both. In this sense (and maybe the game changes, or offers more context) it's kind of a lazy undercutting of its incredible world building. Everyone and everything has so much detail and character, but you, as the protagonist, remain on *moral* rails even as you wander the wild west making decisions with modest or superficial consequences. Def. does not make the game bad, but super-early it doesn't feel particularly ... compelling.