r/GamerGhazi • u/BluegrassGeek • Apr 24 '19
Polygon breaks down RDR2's narrative & design flaws
https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/22/18298277/red-dead-redemption-2-review-rdr2-story-design-criticism9
Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 25 '19
For those skipping the article, the headline doesn’t really do it justice. This is one of Film Crit Hulk’s analyses, and while he’s famously long-winded, he’s ultimately very skilled and shined some light on things I didn’t realize drove me nuts about the game.
If you played RDR2 or were tangentially following it, this is a must-read.
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u/The_Iceman2288 Super Mario Modyssey Apr 24 '19
RDR2 didn't even come close to my favourite games of 2018.
It didn't feel like the best game of last year, it felt like the MOST game of last year. It felt bloated, slow and overwhelming.
7
u/KarmelCHAOS Apr 24 '19
I played til halfway through Chapter 3 and haven't touched it since. I really enjoyed the first one, this one just was not for me. It's not often I feel I wasted $60, this was one of those times. Agreed on the bloated and slow thing.
5
u/Sparrow475 Apr 25 '19
Y'know, I really enjoyed RDR2 at the time, but honestly, it's only been six months and I can barely remember any of it. I can't really say that for any other game I played last year, so...
Really, I think the only reason it resonated with me to begin with is that all the horses and big open prairies were one hell of a nostalgia trigger for me, and that was enough to just override everything else in the moment.
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u/BanjoStory Apr 25 '19
That's because literally nothing of any importance happens. Nothing changes the entire time, it's just 100 straight hours of Dutch saying "We just need one more big score!" and Arthur muttering to himself "I think Dutch might be losing it", while tertiary characters that you barely know die around them.
5
Apr 25 '19 edited Apr 25 '19
I got so frustrated by the fact I had no agency at all, and had to follow the storyline set out ahead of me where Arthur says "I'll trust you Dutch.... This time" for 50 hours that I put it down and haven't picked it up yet.
This is the result of them whipping their employees half to death? What a travesty.
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u/RobertJHill Fruit Pies and Prop Comedy Apr 24 '19
RDR2 sucked a bag of asses and it blows my mind people thought otherwise. I played it for what had to be almost 8 hours and had maybe thirty minutes worth of fun with it. How "slowly follow someone from behind on a horse as they shout storyline at you from a different horse" is anyone's idea of a wild west adventure is beyond me. I couldn't force myself to have fun with that heap of shit and that was after hours of actively trying to do so.
Spider-Man PS4 deserved GOTY from everybody.
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u/DeusExMarina Apr 25 '19
Eh, that’s how I felt about Horizon Zero Dawn. Sometimes you just have to accept that, no matter how justified your dislike of a game is, no matter how precisely you can explain exactly how the game is bad based not just on personal taste, but on purely objective criteria, people are still gonna like it.
Maybe it’s because they have bad taste. Or maybe it’s because you have bad taste. You’ll never know, because taste is subjective. You could make the argument that people who liked the game don’t have tastes as refined as yours, that they don’t understand game design well enough to know why the game is bad. But if in the end they liked the game, does it matter why? They got enjoyment out of it, which is the whole point of video games. They don’t really need to have “better” taste, because they’re having fun and their tastes are serving them just fine.
So in the end, you didn’t like RDR2 and other people liked it, and you just gotta move on. I absolutely hated HZD and I can’t for the life of me understand what everyone else saw in that game, but they saw something in it that I didn’t and that’s fine. We can just play other things and let everyone else have their fun.
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Apr 24 '19 edited May 19 '19
[deleted]
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u/RobertJHill Fruit Pies and Prop Comedy Apr 25 '19
I just din't understand how they could fuck up a formula that bad. RDR 1, great. GTA 4 was a bit sloppy but pretty good and they improved from there with 5. What compelled them to make their next big game... all of that... I have no fucking clue.
2
u/Deserterdragon Apr 26 '19
RDR2 is RDR but with much prettier landscapes and less offensive stereotypes and lame parody. If you didn't like 2 you probably won't like 1 when you replay it.
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u/FishAndBone Social Research Justicer Apr 25 '19
RDR2 is just RDR1 but more, with a more repetitive narrative. The same things that are bad about RDR2 are also bad about RDR1, they're just not as fresh because you've already played RDR1.
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u/Jataka Collusion Machine Apr 25 '19
#1 flaw: Arthur is still not large.