The monolithic Western open-world adventure of Red Dead Redemption 2 is seen by a seismic section of the videogame community as an undisputed masterpiece. Red Dead Redemption 2’s world is alive and kicking, where everything happens with a sense of organic spontaneity and happenstance, a world where anything can happen at any moment-a mind boggling phenomenon when you experience it. RDR2 is a treasure trove of excellence and it has managed to redefine open-world games with an uncanny level of sheen and polish rarely seen in videogames. The open-world of RDR2 is adorned with immersion, foremostly in the form of an ample amount of realism including the well- known advent of horse jugular shrinkage in cold weather, the horses taking bowel movements, the horses having stamina meters, the horses having a bonding mechanic with Arthur. It’s not all about the horses though, as realism seeps into every paw of the game from how Arthur moves to the length of the hide skinning animations when Arthur cuts into a fresh dead animal he’s just slain. All this far-reaching realism has been met with contention as well as appraisal from the videogame masses, but is it enough to get in the way of the game’s overall enjoyment?
This article posits that whilst realism plays a major role in the working of Red Dead Redemption 2-it actually makes the game much more fun to play. Firstly why, would the realism in Red Dead Redemption 2 be so off-putting? Do gamers not want to breathe in their open-world experiences anymore-does everything have to be rushed? Ok so skinning a hide can take a needless amount of time and seeing the animation over and over again gets tedious perhaps-but why wouldn’t you want to celebrate a newly killed elk by seeing Arthur strip the epidermis from it? The realistic mechanics exist to make a world you can believe in-if prolonged moments were cut for player convenience, wouldn’t that take you out of the world? Sure an argument can be made that videogames should be videogames and stay away from realism, but aren’t we as gamers responsible for developer’s decisions to make games more realistic? We’re always blurting about how great the graphics are and how emotional the stories are in the videogames we play, so aren’t R* just giving us what we asked for? GTA IV and its brand of gritty realism made us care about the characters and events a lot more than if it had been arcade-like such as its sequel GTA V-where on the contrary everything was madcap and therefore not as engaging or immersive. In relation to RDR2, realism enables players to care about what goes on around them and keeps them playing for longer-who wouldn’t want this in an open-world videogame? The ambition and the way the story, activities and diversions pan out in Red Dead Redemption 2 keep the gas accelerated and the ride enjoyable and realism is part of this ride. Not everybody will take to how Red Dead Redemption 2 incorporates realism, but we are remembering these realistic moments regardless whether they are good or not-that’s what makes RDR2 different to all other open-world games. You got Breath of the Wild allowing you the freedom to waltz up and challenge the first boss after you just step foot into the game’s lavish world, you have The Witcher III and its unbelievably gorgeous world that you can get lost in for hours and hours, Assassins Creed: Oddyssey’s vast and vibrant Greek setting which gives you the option to explore the world without being told where to go and what to do- and you can pick up and mess around in GTA V without a care in the world. All these open-worlds have their niche and cater to different kinds of open-world player. Red Dead Redemption 2 chooses to set its particular table up with realism and lawless spontaneity as its cutlery, and you tuck into its meat as vigorously as you desire-it’s not to everybody’s taste but neither is a hog roast when vegetarians are at your dinner party. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a carnivore of a videogame and it would not be that meaty if it decided to take some risks regarding its realism. Impatience is possibly the biggest culprit and reason why players of Red Dead Redemption 2 complain of its realism. There’s no denying that elongated repetitive action will get on some gamers’ nerves, but RDR2 seems intended to be played at a leisurely pace without a sense of urgency-you wonder why there are so many distractions and missions-R* want your time to be long and prosperous in their western open-world, and that’s where its quality really shines. Maybe if we weren’t rushing towards completion, we can see what RDR2 is really like and appreciate it much more for being a great open-world game and not a hindrance-inducing wild west simulator. |
If there’s one thing that can be almost universally agreed on it’s that Rockstar know how to make one hell of an open world. Not only do they make the world interesting from a story perspective, with it being utilised exquisitely in nearly every main mission they provide, but also in terms of just making the world feel alive and unique. A Rockstar game world is quite unlike any other game world for that simple reason, it’s a world you want to inhabit and live out your wildest fantasies. Red Dead Redemption 2 was no exception to this lofty standard with an overall ideal, and by no means incorrect assessment, that the game is among the most unique and lifelike worlds ever created in a videogame; with literally hundreds of hours of content available to play through, as well as a near infinite amount of possibilities for random and exciting non-scripted encounters to happen along the way.
So why, oh why, does Rockstar make the thing such a chore to play? The answer is extremely straightforward, but not one that excuses the problem that RDR2 has a near insatiable need to ruin your enjoyment with the game and its world by making the majority of the game’s mechanics so complex, and tediously long to play out. That answer is the relentless pursuit of realism. “But realism is something gamers and developers have been pursuing for decades!” I hear you cry. True, and I will commend that Rockstar have had a very clear goal to make RDR2 as real as possible…but to follow that commitment as far as sapping the very enjoyment from the game is perhaps a step too far. Much like Dr. Frankenstein creating life in Mary Shelly’s famous novel, Rockstar were so blinded by the desire to achieve unparalleled realism that they did not stop to think whether they should actually achieve it. For example, a core component of the game is riding horses. RDR2 takes this a step further by allowing you to own and name a horse (or several). This then goes even further by restricting the efficiency of the horses abilities whilst riding until you bond with the horse enough and this can take hours upon hours to achieve. To bond with your horse you must feed it, clean it, ride it regularly, make it sprint to a level where it begins to get tired but not tired enough that it throws you off, not let it get hurt, and (most bizarrely) tying it up to a hitching post whenever you get off it. The less you do this the less your horse bonds with you, ergo the less effective it is when you use it. Whilst this bond will naturally progress over gameplay, I first had a problem with these mechanics when I played a mission where I needed to keep up with another horse that was sprinting, but it was significantly faster than my horse. Fine, I’ll buy a faster horse. This didn’t solve the issue though as the horse would throw me off within a few seconds of sprinting because I hadn’t bonded with it enough with it yet to allow me to sprint long distances by horseback. So, in order to actually continue progressing through the story, I had to spend about four hours getting the horse to bond with me by riding around, feeding it, grooming it, and tying it to hitching posts. Now on paper, having a physical bond between protagonist Arthur and his horses is a great concept, and in practice it largely works so long as you stick with one horse…but the moment you want a new horse it restricts your ability to continue playing the game effectively unless you sink several hours into bonding with the horse. If in a shooter you had to train how to use a gun for several hours before being able to effectively kill someone with it, it would be called bad game design, but with Red Dead it was hailed as genius. It’s a double standard that forces players to play the game a particular way and artificially extend the games length. Another aspect of game design which really amazed people was how the weather affects Arthur, particularly when the temperature changes. One particularly noteworthy example of why this is actually implemented too heavy handedly is when I was on a main quest where I needed to trek around 20 minutes by horseback to a snowy mountaintop. However, the game had not explained to me until I reached said snowy area that if I stayed in the snow too long Arthur would be adversely affected unless I changed his clothes into something warmer. I attempted to press on, though ultimately succumbed to dramatically decreased health among other stats. So, I made a longer journey, back past camp, to a place where I could buy a more appropriate outfit, and then travelled all the way back to replay the mission. The really infuriating thing is this was not addressed prior to me arriving in the snowy area, so I needed to double back and waste time. Why not give me a mission marker to stop at a nearby town and buy an outfit beforehand like many missions have in relation to other resources? To then add more insult to injury is just how long some of the animations take. I must say though, RDR2’s animations are simply superb and it’s amazing just how much detail there is in them. But, when I must watch a 10 second skinning animation hundreds of times over the course of the game, it again is just artificial elongation of an experience that is already so overstuffed. There is a reason many people do not finish, or are even put off playing RDR2 and it’s because of the games gargantuan size, the fact that such simple and very repetitive tasks take so long to do is a detriment to the games overall quality and enjoyment factor. Rockstar are no strangers to receiving flak for overdoing realism in their games, GTA IV is a key example of this. But GTA IV seems like an arcade experience when compared to RDR2; so why is it ok for GTA IV to be criticised for its commitment to realism (which was far less obtuse than RDR2’s) and yet RDR2 is celebrated for it despite often having the caveat of “but it does make the game a bit of a drag at times.”. It’s a common complaint I see crop up even from the games most die-hard fans, and it most certainly can be attributed to the games online component that is far less popular than Rockstar’s other online title, GTA Online, which came out 5 years prior. Why would you want to play a multiplayer game that requires hours of setup to do what you wanted to do in the first place? Why not be able to just jump in and do it like any other multiplayer experience? I will not deny that the commitment to realism is one of RDR2’s biggest selling points as it is quite unique. Some mechanics like having Arthur’s hair and beard grow in real time which must be cut or trimmed and styled as desired are brilliant additions, because they do not get in the way of the games core mechanics and flow. But mechanics such as those I’ve mentioned above, and some others, do make the game a chore to play. In an era where there are so many amazing games to play, why spend 4 hours getting a horse ready to complete a story mission when you could spend 4 hours actually making progress in a game. Whilst I will never say that RDR2 is anything but a great game, incredible even; the commitment to realism does often sap enjoyment from the game, and isn’t that why we play games, to escape from reality and enjoy ourselves? |