Ah, I noticed some trail effect near my feet yet couldn't focus on it (playing in first person). I didn't know that was my own scent (since you don't leave a trail yourself) or that you can see the wind direction from that. Thanks for the tip. I guess I should switch to third person for hunting.

I usually climb up on a ridge or hill and switch to eagle eye to spot anything around. Then snipe them from far away. Shoot first, investigate later. I would love to have a dog to retrieve the prey for me! You kinda have to get up high in first person mode otherwise everything is obscured. I guess it's a lot easier to spot thing with a camera floating above you. Especially those pesky rabbits. So hard to spot in first person. I finally nailed one in the head with an arrow, still only a good pelt. Somehow I lost all my varmint gun ammo again.

This auto gun swapping is really getting on my nerves. Every time he goes back to the pistol instead of the bow or sniper rifle. I got attacked by a bear and just resorted to fighting him off with a knife as my gun was swapped for a crappy one again that didn't even shoot. It's also glitchy with reloading. The last mission I did I fire off 2 shots and he has to reload 8, again and again. I wonder if you can get rid of guns you don't use so the game can't swap to them anymore. It's more than happy to swap your good gun for anything crap that lies on the ground lol.

I am at chapter 3. Last mission I did was that where you destroy a moonshine "factory" in the swamp area. I haven't done that many story missions because I have spent so much time exploring the map and hunting.

I have heard that the ending is good. Hope it's even better than the one in RDR1, which was one of the best.

Hmm ... one upping Red Dead this generation ...

I don't know. The thing is, to me, most games that push for an impressive story in games tend to not be impressive because they're very cliche and also extremely linear. It makes it feel too much like a cheesy TV show and not enough like a masterclass storytelling production. We have The Last of Us 2 which is probably the game with the highest chance of succeeding Red Dead Redemption 2, but I'm not sure it would be more impressive because like you said ... what make Red Dead over the top surprising is that it's an open world game with a wide cast of characters. If it was just linear it would be a lot closer to other games that have had similar levels of writing and VA quality. 

Who knows though .. and there's still Death Stranding which could blow us away too. 

I wouldn't worry about Sony not leading the charge though ... CD Projekt Red will probably put less emphasis on a detailed protagonist with Cyberpunk, and I think Red Dead is really the only Rockstar property that focuses heavily on story (besides maybe LA Noire?) so it will be a LONG TIME before a third party comes close. 

I've heard somewhere that this had a budget of 270 million. I don't know if that's true or if it includes marketing, but it would easily be the biggest that I am aware of. 8 years development time, 1000-2000 voice actors and 500 000 lines of dialogue works wonders. There have been probably atleast 500-1000 developers involved in this since multiple Rockstar studios have been making this in cooperation.

Makes you wonder how huge GTA6 and its budget will be. I hope they keep this more realistic story and gameplay style also in GTA6 and don't make it too similar to GTA5. They should atleast make the driving physics close to the ones in GTA4.

Im not sure if u ever played GoW, but ok.

Well its kinda funny to read all this complements about Arthur. Yea he is a really well created character, but nothing more. Maybe he would be one of the best characters this generation if not the fact  that he is a FedEx deliver boy for Dutch gang. And no Arthur cant't stand in one line with characters like Kratos or Geralt of Rivia.  I know hype and etc. But pls be more objective.

I'm only on chapter 4 so perhaps Arthur will still get some character progression. So far he has indeed just been a very well acted mercenary for hire / delivery boy. Of course he suffers from the same problem any open world game hero suffers from. 95% of game time he's just a stoic mute with only a couple of repetitive greet and antagonize sentences in his repertoire. Kratos and Geralt both have a lot of history to draw on, it's not really a fair comparison. If you only play the last game in their series without any back story knowledge, you might feel the same about them.

However at least in God of war the heroes reflect on what you are actually doing and recognize the distractions. Geralt and Arthur both don't give a crap about what you're doing. Arthur just called himself an adventurer in the last mission I did. (Well didn't actually do it as it was a fetch quest) I guess that's the closest description that fits as he's not really tied to the gang at all while playing the game. RDR2 has some great dialogue, best in a R* game. Yet after 60 hours, if Arthur would drop dead and the focus shifts to another character, I wouldn't give a crap tbh. The map is the real character in the game. I would cry if I lost my map!

Ehm ... I don't even know you, and you're already accusing me of lying because I simply have different opinions from you ...  

I had almost no hype at all for RDR2 before launch. Of course, a very small part of me was wondering "what if it's the best game ever? what if it's amazing?" - but I think about that for all releases that have even a sliver of interest from me. I'm not a big fan of Rockstar, I think GTA IV and V are pretty mediocre games and RDR, while great fun, suffered from far too little to do in the actual game (lots of content but 99% of it repetitive). 

You're free to disagree with me, but personally I do feel Arthur is one of the best protagonists i've experienced in a long while. I will admit that I can't comment on The Witcher 3 though, it's so odd, I really loved Witcher 2 and I've gotten dozens of hours into W3 and for some reason I just stop every time. 

I had a lovely time hunting, however I'm still longing to explore the rest of the map. Thus I unwillingly headed back to camp. Of course my horse didn't behave on the way there in his typical way. Really can you not see that tree.

He was supposed to turn left there....

So at night I took him out to make him watch what happens to horses that keep screwing up

It's a shame that lovely thud noise is lost in the gif.


Anyhow that's when the misery began. I got tricked again into a miserable mission with the varmint rifle as the only weapon in my inventory...  I can't stand these story missions with Dutch anymore. The most ridiculous stand on this spot or fail nonsense followed. He even shoved me out of the way to get me to go to my assigned x on the floor. F you Dutch. Should have done this a long time ago.


I skipped though the mission, restrictive nonsense. Then he wanted to do something so obviously stupid I didn't even want to begin the mission. Yet Dutch's icon was the only one left. So I started shooting at him in Saint Denis to see what happens. The coward fled, ran all the way back to camp. I ran him down a couple times on horse, he just got up and kept going again. Finally het got to camp all muddy and looking quite pissed. Of course as soon as he walked into camp his clothes cleared up like the weather and he looked his usual smug self again. He was still glaring at me or that might just be his neutral expression.

I tried burning him in town after reloading, alas he's invulnerable outside missions. It did attract the police and started a huge shoot out. I simply kept behind Dutch, using him as a shield while he took out about 50 blue guys. Of course in good R* fashion more and more keep spawning in until they are coming from all sides, at which point Dutch bolted to let me die.

Ok, I'll try your stupid mission. Yup same old shit. At some point the game even took almost all control away. Escape through the alley ways, nuh uh, Stay with the idiots that can get killed at any moment. Skip skip, bleh.

Thanks for the bounty Dutch, I didn't even fire a shot, well except at you.

Next mission I get dumped with crap guns again, yet I don't think you were supposed to be able to kill the monster yet anyway. I couldn't find it after though. Probably bugged  or I have to do Dutch' next assignment first. Tomorrow, I've had enough 'story' for now.

Finally beat the game in over 75hrs, still plenty left to do, actually wanted to drag the story until I've done all the challenges, strangers, fishing, hunting, then exploring the whole map, but the story and characters got really attached to me that I wanted to see everything that's gonna unfold, Arthur's sickness plus the music done made me tear up, I actually enjoyed every bit of time I had with the gang members in this game, almost a similar feeling I had/have with the characters in Suikoden 2 and TW3, speaking of which, I can safely say now that this is my best open world game, yes, it actually topped my former which is TW3, I am gonna play this until the online arrives, which I hope can still hook me in.

Two small tips.

If you go to a gunsmith(maybe somewhere aswell) you can customize your loadout for all your weapons so if you want to have a shotgun/sniper rifle everytime with you when you go of your horse you can!!

If it is night and you want to go shopping you can stand for the door and I think with triangle or Y you can fast forward the time to opening hours.