One thing I have to say is that I'm genuinely impressed how much I care about the characters in the story. For the most part, the story missions are kind of tepid and boring, but the characters themselves are great. Which is surprising because I usually have a hard time caring about game characters. I think the reason is that you have a lot of moments that humanize them. For example, helping Mary find her younger brother Jamie. I genuinely felt a lot of warmth when Jamie hugged Arthur like family - or the final scene when Mary is near speechless and gets on the train. It was like Arthur was a father figure, or at least an uncle, to Jamie. And it was so cuuuuteee when Arthur went on a fishing trip with young Jack (makes me want to finish the OG game and finally play Undead Nightmare, which I never played).

I think a lot of it is down to the fact that the game contextualizes it better than most other story-driven titles on the market. You don't care about the characters because the game designers force you to watch some cutscenes. You care about them because you come home to see them every few hours.

Although I will admit, I can only remember a few names off hand that aren't the main protagonist - Charles, Lenny, Dutch, Hosea, John, Micah, but that's more of a problem with there being so many characters (and me being bad at remembering names). It does feel a little like they just took every stereotype possible and made a character out of them to fill a huge roster, rather than make a few characters mixed with various stereotypes. But still, pretty impressed on that front - that I actually care about some of the characters.

Also if anyone knows a good free video hosting site  for small clips, I have some great Red Dead 2 clips

I'm absolutely loving it, at chapter 3 and about 40% in now. There are some pretty annoying logical flaws in the bounty system, like others have reported. For instance, if someone is giving you lip and you antagonize them and they attack you physically, you can and often will get a bounty for assault despite not having started the conflict.

The bounties you can claim yourself are absurdly poorly paid, I think I've gotten 50$ max for one, which is a joke when I have about 3000$ myself.

I haven't had that many issues with the controls, on horseback it kinda makes sense, you horse becomes less and less lumbering and unpredictable as it levels up. My white Arabian is now finally at level 4 bonding and can maneuver like an acrobat, even crashing through dense forest and brush.

Exploring and emergent gameplay is the best in this game, I recently happened upon a house with four highwaymen drinking and jesting. I sat and listened as one grew increasingly angry at his mates, and as their argument escalated, I kicked in the door, shotgun in hand, and opened up on them. One was left standing, unarmed, he revealed where his stash was and I let him leave. Payday and honor gained, perfect!

The setting and characters are awesome, I feel so invested in it all, this effect is only further underlined by the slow and deliberate pacing and actions. I've never cared about visual upgrades or cosmetics is any game, but I find myself trimming Arthur's beard to style, dressing him up and wearing the coolest boots, braiding my horse's tail and mane and even customizing my guns to all look a certain way (black steel overlaid with semi-dark wooden finishing). Dialogue, music, acting, immersion. Easily among my top ten games ever, all in all. It has its issues, but they are far overshadowed by its strengths.

Ha, have I got the video for you. Look at me simply trying to go from point A to point B... My ass horse veers to the right instead of left where I'm trying to get him to go since there is more room on that side. Bump, crash, other guy gets mad, starts shooting, then I'm scrambling to clean up not to get a bounty. I sped up the aftermath for comedy value.

No real spoilers there, just some running along a road trying to avoid a bounty. I pawned the final wagon for $40!

I'm still so sidetracked that my gang came looking for me and asked me when I would be coming back. Still too many interesting things to find, I'll get there when I get there, leave me alone! I ran out of markers to flag structures on the map I want to investigate further. Most places you visit get a description on the map, however not all. The same abandoned gold mine has tricked me 3 times now. Too bad you can't add comments on the map yourself. There is some weird stuff hidden around the map, worth checking everything out!

There seem to be only 2 type of people in the game, dead or soon to be dead. Outside towns people just open fire on you for trying to talk to them. At a stable I was simply studying the horses behind the barn and the idiot starts shooting me. Apparently you can still buy stuff from a dead stable owner. Oh and beware of crocs. I got eaten 5 times today, too lazy to go around, I'll risk it. Chance of success, 20%, yet with a bit of luck you spawn on the other side anyway :)

My horse died again jumping off a 3 foot cliff. You find plenty horse revival tonics so that's easily fixed. He seems to have gotten better at avoiding trees, still trips a lot. It's a race horse that can't handle his own speed.

There's still so much I must have missed though. I've only found 25 or so cigarette cards so far, got a couple treasure maps yet can't make any sense out of them and tons of flora and fauna missing from my compendium. There are more places to get into yet I suspect those to be involved in a story mission at some point. Couple more small spots to investigate and then really back to the story, maybe.

I just love the atmosphere in the game, can't get enough of it.




And yep, you named my two favorite story missions so far. Why do they work so well? Because you don't get taken out of the immersion by having to shoot 50 goons spawning in from every direction!

(I use imgur to upload gifs. You tube does any length clips, can always use that)

HAHA, your gang goes looking for you? That's hilarious, because the entire game I was thinking: "damn, Arthur won't shut up about John leaving for a year ... I wonder what will happen if I stay away too long?" I was on the fence about whether Rockstar would make the game that detailed, I'm not surprised there's a mechanic like that though

By the way .. while that video is funny, you didn't technical have to do all that, right? Most of those witnesses, if not all, were just investigating. If you just ran out of the area in time you wouldn't have been given a bounty. Or am I wrong? I don't know - seems like you spent more time with the game than me, haha I will say the mask/bandanna actually comes in real handy. 

I agree with you about the story missions by the way - I personally am very slightly disappointed that half of them involve a huge shootout and/or using a wagon of some sorts. But I have to say, still, this game has a lot more variety than what I remember from the original Red Dead. In that game, it was like the first hour was these really cute small missions that immersed you in the world, and then everything after that was just killing over and over again. There was some variations (like I believe the fraud medicine man missions), but it made me never finish the game even after getting pretty far into it. 

I love the fact that the two legendary hunting missions I've done (one being a main story mission and one being from a tax collection "main mission" of sorts, although it might have been optional i'm not sure) have both been like horror films - particularly the second one. I have almost never been so scared in a game as I have going into a Cougar den in Red Dead. 

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT

I just found a letter to Bonnie Macfarlane from a dead stranger washed up on the beach. Even after not playing red dead one for years that INSTANTLY perked my eyebrows

It's the second time already that a gang member came after me and offers a ride back to camp. Perhaps R* thinks I'm too stupid to find it myself :)

If you can leave fast enough you can usually get away from the witness. However it doesn't always work and I had not saved for a while. Not to risk a bounty, all witnesses had to die! Why is that road so damn busy. Wild west rush hour. The two legendary ones were a horror film alright, mostly because of the auto put away gun nonsense when you run around then when you try to shoot he takes out the useless cattleman revolver! However fighting off a legendary bear proved a lot easier than a couple nasty wolves at night, or one bite from a croc. Legendary teddy bear!

The gang didn't find me tonight as I got majorly sidetracked exploring a way to go white water canoeing down Dakota River. First step, find a boat and a place where to save that on reload the boat will be back. You can't save and keep the boat nor camp near a boat as both will simply move you to some pre selected spot and anything you had with you will be gone. Which means I had to do it all in one take. That turned out to be impossible. The Cumberland falls are too high and will always sink the boat, if you even make it that far. Luckily I found another canoe halfway and rowed it all the way up to edit it together into one single trip. It's actually 3 trips as the canoe got stuck in one.

It was an amazing journey down all the rapids, in the rain, fog, rainbow coming out., birds scattering, deer going through the water, even an eagle fishing, ending with the sun setting at the end of the river.

I edited all the failures together after the journey, a blooper reel. All the painful deaths start at 21:20. Each death meant reload and start from the top! 3 hours of gameplay lol. However pretty insane that it is possible at all.

Tomorrow down the other river, if I can find another boat. I will boat every piece of water!

20 minutes driving a canoe...

I'm starting to admit that probably i will have to eat my words with this game. The gunplay is still average and the more the game distances itself from shootings the better, but everything else is a 10....audiovisuals, story and characters presentation, open world game design, content, physics, .... After playing some more you start accepting its gameplay mechanics and you start focusing in the world and...man this world is beautiful and huge, full of interesting things that come to you organically if you play carefully with the correct mindset. It really makes you feel you're living for survival in the "old west". I love how the game makes it hard to you to make the "good" decision all the time showing you how difficult is to be a good person when everything is against you, and i will admit is good fun being bad sometimes....XD.

It's still not a 10 for me, but this game is becoming one of my favorite games this gen quickly...So, if in the end it becomes my favorite game this gen i will glady eat the biggest crow because of my words.

Im loving the world still not loving as much as breath of the wild or witcher 3 but will probably be my 3rd fave game this gen after the previous 2

We'll end rating this game the same at this pace, even if we started from opposite sides...XD. I want to give my final impression when the game is over, but considering i'm still on ch.2, there's a lot left to do and discover yet.

But it seems it will end alongside God of War, The Witcher III, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne and Uncharted 4 as my games of the generation (i only own a PS4 by the way).