The most interesting thing here is the parallel between riding through the countryside and the long shots of scenery from Western movies.
RDR2 : Yakuza :: Suburban sprawl : 15 minute city
I badly wish for Ennio Morricone
The writing is for concussed 14 year old boys
The acting is often poor, especially minor characters and the audio is often engineered badly so it sounds like two characters in dialog have two different audio tracks
The GTA DNA is transparent
I know that I need to use the steam donkey. Wait long enough for me to do it myself.
The Chelonian storyline was abysmal writing
Jeremy Gill is terribly written and too transparent
The game needs to decide what Arthur Morgan’s ethics are.
Good music to end chapter 2
The game is way too scripted though
I really liked the camp moving. That’s a strong story moment. It would have been better had it been less scripted though
I don’t like and I don’t understand the bounty system and I’m tired of always ending up with bounties on my head because of story events.
I don’t really feel like I have the ability to just make some money if I want to. There’s no space to just live for a little bit in the world. I want there to be more in the way of little jobs that I can do.
Shooting the hell out of a town should have a larger impact. It feels like it would destroy a town to have it happen.
When riding around, I came across a sick man and had to rush him to the doctor at St. Denis. This was the first I had seen or heard of the town and that experience was excellent.
Good to simply be able to simply beat up a eugenics supporter in a game
I got on the train for the Billy Midnight mission and when I reached, my horse seems to have disappeared and so I had to reload and I lost like three hours of progress.
I like how the mission takes you from Rhodes to St. Denis though. That’s good open world design. Losing my horse is unacceptable though.
The day-night system has no purpose. It only serves to irritate.
The economy is entirely busted
It’s frustrating that I had some perfect pig skins and donating them at camp went to funds when there’s an NPC somewhere that could have crafted with them
The honor system is bad design. Why do you want to punish me for doing bandit cowboy stuff in the bandit cowboy game?
Why doesn’t it apply when I do this home invasion of people with dialect? Why won’t the law show up for this but they do show up for other equally remote locations?
Why did the game just dump me here where there is nothing to do?
Why is it even possible to punch my horse?
The UI is often miserable. I can’t chop firewood I can’t deliver the book
I don’t know how to rob someone
Why doesn’t the rest of the camp ever make a meaningful contribution
Way too much dead time of riding while people talk
Archibald is very funny. He’s well written
The hair is so badly animated
The zebra is fun
What a magnificent sunset
The item wheel is very inconvenient
The horse poop looks low quality
Can someone write two houses once without doing Romeo and Juliet
It’s incredibly deflating to run away with Beau from the rally and have nothing happen
The use of Blackwater and the clear definitions of character past is good. Too many games bring you in as a blank slate
Absurd hand clipping when Arthur hides in the wagon
The progression challenges ruin the immersion. I am not playing as someone who wants to rob 5 people for a total of $4 or someone who wants to drag a random person 3.3km behind my horse.
Why is the gang member mission so scripted? Why can’t I bring the information I get and get a group together? Why can’t I get people drunk for information?
Many locations reinforce the theme park nature of the game. Places like the fort or the reservation have nothing to do until the game spins the ride up.
Why have a mission that involves driving a stagecoach slowly? What is the point of the game?
The cutscene dependence works against the game. I wanted Charles to back me up for the truce meeting with Colm. Sean getting shot was an impactful moment but it feels unsophisticated for the game to use a cutscene for it.
Is it so much to ask that Rhodes have a stable?
Grinding the minigames is boring. I did not enjoy doubling down on every blackjack hand.
Hunting and gathering do so much for an open world game.
I appreciate the range of random incidents as well
The brothers who ask you to shoot bottles off their heads was fun.
Carrying the guy meant for the chair was very funny.
The game is not built to be played. It’s ridiculous how easy it is to have a catastrophe happen like running over someone in the middle of St. Denis.
It’s also just bad UI. So many basic things are a pain. It’s a pain to sell things at a store or donate things at camp.
Maybe the most important aspect of the game is that Arthur Morgan is very likable. Like Kiryu, he’s a very positive masculinity character.
The animations for things like gathering plants taking so long is an example of the ideology of immersion ruining gameplay. Contrast with BotW
Guarna is rendered beautifully
I also respect that the game is willing to just throw you into a completely new area like that.
The plot deaths feel inexpert though
The TB is unsatisfying
The deer at the end of the walk is excellent
The game’s wildlife is a highlight
Getting a balloon ride is a nice way to see the world anew
It’s a decent set piece but I’m tired of set pieces
The item wheel is so tedious
You have the time to work on horse testicles but you can’t keep my horse from running head on into other horses in the middle of the road?
I think my big criticism of the game is that it’s a lot of pieces that aren’t fully fleshed out and don’t quite work together.
This is the issue with Arthur’s characterization. Why do I stick up one carriage and help another? There’s no real reason, it’s just what each mission asks of me.
Another example is that there’s are storylines to unlock the horse fence and the carriage fence but it’s so damn tedious to take a horse or carriage there that I never bother.
For that matter, why can’t I donate a horse to the camp for someone to sell?
I could go robbing people but what’s the point when the money is so meaningless and dealing with the law is tedious
Why is there an honor bar? When you do something that would be dishonorable in a story mission, it doesn’t matter. Why is it always looking over my shoulder? It doesn’t match the rest of the game.
Also, why have that and also have challenges that give you dishonor? How does it fit Arthur to go lassoing people and dragging them behind his horse for no reason?
Why are there all these scripted missions with the O’Driscolls and Raiders and Murfrees but I can’t go clear them out?
Why is there an inventory limit and why must it be so low? Also, why are camping and cooking so tedious? Why is fast travel so tedious?
I would like more to do with hunting. I enjoy doing some hunting. However, it seems so pointless. Getting perfect skins is a lottery and the trapper’s menus are so tedious that I don’t care about the outfits.
Also, getting places is slow and finding animals takes forever.
Why have a couple of quests around herding animals but no dynamic events where I steal sheep or cattle
Why have chores and donations to the camp when it means so little once a few key upgrades are done?
Pirates, Yakuza and BotW really obsolete this game.
I think if you were to cut two thirds of the game and deepen the rest, there’s a fun Pirates style game inside where you go hunting and doing cowboy crimes that I would enjoy
I don’t think that any of the side quests are particularly memorable. Maybe the circus.
The problem with the end of the Strauss quest (besides the anti-Semitism) is that I would have liked to pay off debts much earlier. I had the money anyway
Excellent music as I finish the absolution quest
The widow is very poorly animated.
It’s not even that interesting to see Micah gain prominence.
The fishing is really bad. It’s too slow and hand-wracking
The horse is really well done. I’m very attached to it
Arthur asking Dutch to save Abigail was very well done
It doesn’t feel like Dutch developed as a character. It’s a lot of tell but little foundation