Red Dead Redemption 2 is considered to be a divisive game, and it is easy to see why. A lot like Rockstar's own Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption 2 has a relentless and unflinching pursuit of its vision to the extent of even alienating its audiences to a large degree. I have spent a lot of time in this game, and after all this time, I am still not entirely sure whether my final takeaway from it is positive or negative. But one thing to me is axiomatically self evident: whether for good or for bad, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that sticks with you long after you are done with it.
A PINNACLE OF STORYTELLING
Where Red Dead Redemption 2 excels is in its storytelling. Indeed, I would argue that no other game to date has achieved storytelling to the extent and quality that Red Dead Redemption 2 so consistently does. Every single component of Red Dead Redemption 2 is in service to its central vision of an immersive tale of the dying west, now forever lost to the mists of time. And it is just as well, because Red Dead Redemption 2 pulls of its storytelling ambitions with aplomb and style.
The truly remarkable thing about the game is its writing, and the nuance and maturity that it displays at all time. The Housers are not my favorite writers, I will be honest. I have found their past works hackneyed, and lacking all manner of subtlety, as well as violating the chief rule of satire, which is to never punch down. Red Dead Redemption 2 could easily have gone wrong (and given how many sensitive themes it deals with, such as woman suffrage and racism, it's all too easy to imagine GTA5-style "satire" dismissing those issues for cheap laughs in the game). Instead, it's a surprisingly thoughtful treatment of that subject matter.
Figure 1: After how terribly hamfisted and hackneyed the writing and "satire" in Grand Theft Auto V was, fears about RDR2's writing were warranted
Equally important is the nuance the writing exhibits in other areas. Every single character in the game feels complex and dense, much like a real person would, and they talk, act, and interact like a real person would. The illusion is stunning, because it is all too easy to forget that Arthur and Charles and Sadie and Lenny and Dutch and John and so on are not real people and never were, but are lines of text created to populate this story. Any one of these could pass for a real person, so well fleshed out and developed they all are. The apex of this is, of course, Arthur Morgan himself, who is such an incredibly well written protagonist, and just such a great character overall, it's hard to believe he comes from the same minds who gave us Trevor or Franklin just a few years ago.
The actual narrative is remarkably well written, too - it carefully constructs its premise and stakes, taking the time to ensure that the player will have the time to care for these people and what happens to them, before it begins its descent into a deconstruction of Dutch's gang. In terms of pacing and approach, it actually reminds me a lot of Breaking Bad, which also similarly takes an almost excruciating amount of time to build things up, but rewards the patient viewer with the catharsis of incredible payoff.
Figure 2: Red Dead Redemption 2's approach to pacing, characterization, foreshadowing, and payoff, can best be compared - favorably - to Breaking Bad.
Beyond just writing, Red Dead Redemption 2 excels on the storytelling front in just about every other way - we have talked about the great graphics endlessly on this forum, and the game's visual excellence is truly instrumental in helping to convince its vision of the dying Old West, and making everything seem believable and have heft. More than the graphics, what stands out is the amazing cinematography in the game - it is striking and stunning, and runs circles around what I feel is every other game ever that attempts any similar thing. Some specific scenes, such as a memorable mid-game one where Dutch's gang rides in the night, and their silhouettes are juxtaposed against the rising full moon, are film-level.
That apart, the soundtrack, voice acting, framing, scene composition, foreshadowing and payoff, and even the game's emphasis on realism, I feel, all contribute to it feeling like such an accomplished story. The incredible achievement in Red Dead Redemption 2 is its storytelling. The whole world exists to frame the story, and give it believability. It exists to be a canvas for the player's story, melded with the Housers' vision for the story. It's something else.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54896947/d00445b4a48b2c0a2aa8beb8d6e0c9ff74e01ec6.0.jpg)
Figure 3: The cinematography in Red Dead Redemption 2 is stunning
BUT A RATHER TERRIBLE GAME
The problem with everything I have said so far is that all of that praise is extended to the game's story and storytelling, and nothing else. This is obviously a problem in a video game, where the game part should also be up to scratch - note, I don't say the game part should be fun, but that it should be substantively accomplished - and the issue with Red Dead Redemption 2 is that not only is the game part not "up to scratch", but it is actively bad. This is not hyperbole in the slightest. Actually playing Red Dead Redemption 2 is a miserable experience, that can turn the finely constructed story and storytelling mechanisms in the game into a veritable slog.
The most obvious failing the game has is the controls. Much has been said about how terrible they are, so I won't bother reiterating most of that, since I doubt I have much to say that others have not said better than me already. However, the terrible mapping of the controls, the finnicky input detection, horrible user interface paradigms such as tapping to run (yes, I know this can be turned off), to just the egregious input lag, can make playing the game an actively unpleasant experience. Given how much the game emphasizes active gameplay elements such as shooting and interacting with the environment, the controls only serve to exacerbate player frustrations, and I can safely tell you that no matter how much time you spend with the game, they never get better. To get to the things the game does well, you must put up with a fundamental failing of interactive entertainment.
Figure 4: For a game that wants its player to engage in action-oriented gameplay as often as Red Dead Redemption 2 does, the controls in the game are terrible
Red Dead Redemption 2 also fails as a game on multiple other levels, all of which have, again, been noted and discussed widely before - from its incredibly useless tutorials, to its terrible user interface and menus, to its bunch of extraneous systems all of which almost seem to exist in isolation outside of the core gameplay loop (I am personally of the Bruce Straley/Nintendo school of thought of "less is more, and do more with less" when it comes to game mechanics and systems), to even the irreconcilable chasm between the seeming openness of the game's world, and the extremely restrictive and railroaded nature of the missions (including insta-fail scenarios and forcing a specific solution upon the player). It gets to the point where the game part of the package is not just bad, it is outright terrible. I cannot think of a single thing Red Dead Redemption 2 tries as a "game" that it achieves well (except for the open world, which, as I have noted, I attribute more to the setting and storytelling part of things).
AN HBO PRESTIGE DRAMA
The takeaway I have from all this is that Red Dead Redemption 2 is a great monument to storytelling regardless of the medium, but a terrible game. It almost feels to me as though this should have been an HBO prestige drama, or something of the sort, because it would have been a slam dunk in such a scenario. Unlike games such as The Witcher 3, it is not even as though Red Dead Redemption 2 excels in interactive storytelling, which actively depends on player input. We have a pretty cut and dry vision of a story here that is presented to us, take it or leave it (albeit we do get variations on things based on some in-game decisions). As a game, I feel like its fundamental failings do drag down what would otherwise be an impeccable package.
And yet, in spite of all my noted complaints above, I think this game is a masterpiece, and deserving of that 97 Metascore, and that it is one of the best titles of this generation, and one that everyone should play at least once. It is an experiment in storytelling in this medium - one which spectacularly succeeds and fails, both at once.
****
Hi Era, this is my first thread ever, please go nice on me! If I did anything wrong, please do let me know!
A PINNACLE OF STORYTELLING
Where Red Dead Redemption 2 excels is in its storytelling. Indeed, I would argue that no other game to date has achieved storytelling to the extent and quality that Red Dead Redemption 2 so consistently does. Every single component of Red Dead Redemption 2 is in service to its central vision of an immersive tale of the dying west, now forever lost to the mists of time. And it is just as well, because Red Dead Redemption 2 pulls of its storytelling ambitions with aplomb and style.
The truly remarkable thing about the game is its writing, and the nuance and maturity that it displays at all time. The Housers are not my favorite writers, I will be honest. I have found their past works hackneyed, and lacking all manner of subtlety, as well as violating the chief rule of satire, which is to never punch down. Red Dead Redemption 2 could easily have gone wrong (and given how many sensitive themes it deals with, such as woman suffrage and racism, it's all too easy to imagine GTA5-style "satire" dismissing those issues for cheap laughs in the game). Instead, it's a surprisingly thoughtful treatment of that subject matter.
Figure 1: After how terribly hamfisted and hackneyed the writing and "satire" in Grand Theft Auto V was, fears about RDR2's writing were warranted
Equally important is the nuance the writing exhibits in other areas. Every single character in the game feels complex and dense, much like a real person would, and they talk, act, and interact like a real person would. The illusion is stunning, because it is all too easy to forget that Arthur and Charles and Sadie and Lenny and Dutch and John and so on are not real people and never were, but are lines of text created to populate this story. Any one of these could pass for a real person, so well fleshed out and developed they all are. The apex of this is, of course, Arthur Morgan himself, who is such an incredibly well written protagonist, and just such a great character overall, it's hard to believe he comes from the same minds who gave us Trevor or Franklin just a few years ago.
The actual narrative is remarkably well written, too - it carefully constructs its premise and stakes, taking the time to ensure that the player will have the time to care for these people and what happens to them, before it begins its descent into a deconstruction of Dutch's gang. In terms of pacing and approach, it actually reminds me a lot of Breaking Bad, which also similarly takes an almost excruciating amount of time to build things up, but rewards the patient viewer with the catharsis of incredible payoff.
Figure 2: Red Dead Redemption 2's approach to pacing, characterization, foreshadowing, and payoff, can best be compared - favorably - to Breaking Bad.
Beyond just writing, Red Dead Redemption 2 excels on the storytelling front in just about every other way - we have talked about the great graphics endlessly on this forum, and the game's visual excellence is truly instrumental in helping to convince its vision of the dying Old West, and making everything seem believable and have heft. More than the graphics, what stands out is the amazing cinematography in the game - it is striking and stunning, and runs circles around what I feel is every other game ever that attempts any similar thing. Some specific scenes, such as a memorable mid-game one where Dutch's gang rides in the night, and their silhouettes are juxtaposed against the rising full moon, are film-level.
That apart, the soundtrack, voice acting, framing, scene composition, foreshadowing and payoff, and even the game's emphasis on realism, I feel, all contribute to it feeling like such an accomplished story. The incredible achievement in Red Dead Redemption 2 is its storytelling. The whole world exists to frame the story, and give it believability. It exists to be a canvas for the player's story, melded with the Housers' vision for the story. It's something else.
Figure 3: The cinematography in Red Dead Redemption 2 is stunning
BUT A RATHER TERRIBLE GAME
The problem with everything I have said so far is that all of that praise is extended to the game's story and storytelling, and nothing else. This is obviously a problem in a video game, where the game part should also be up to scratch - note, I don't say the game part should be fun, but that it should be substantively accomplished - and the issue with Red Dead Redemption 2 is that not only is the game part not "up to scratch", but it is actively bad. This is not hyperbole in the slightest. Actually playing Red Dead Redemption 2 is a miserable experience, that can turn the finely constructed story and storytelling mechanisms in the game into a veritable slog.
The most obvious failing the game has is the controls. Much has been said about how terrible they are, so I won't bother reiterating most of that, since I doubt I have much to say that others have not said better than me already. However, the terrible mapping of the controls, the finnicky input detection, horrible user interface paradigms such as tapping to run (yes, I know this can be turned off), to just the egregious input lag, can make playing the game an actively unpleasant experience. Given how much the game emphasizes active gameplay elements such as shooting and interacting with the environment, the controls only serve to exacerbate player frustrations, and I can safely tell you that no matter how much time you spend with the game, they never get better. To get to the things the game does well, you must put up with a fundamental failing of interactive entertainment.
Figure 4: For a game that wants its player to engage in action-oriented gameplay as often as Red Dead Redemption 2 does, the controls in the game are terrible
Red Dead Redemption 2 also fails as a game on multiple other levels, all of which have, again, been noted and discussed widely before - from its incredibly useless tutorials, to its terrible user interface and menus, to its bunch of extraneous systems all of which almost seem to exist in isolation outside of the core gameplay loop (I am personally of the Bruce Straley/Nintendo school of thought of "less is more, and do more with less" when it comes to game mechanics and systems), to even the irreconcilable chasm between the seeming openness of the game's world, and the extremely restrictive and railroaded nature of the missions (including insta-fail scenarios and forcing a specific solution upon the player). It gets to the point where the game part of the package is not just bad, it is outright terrible. I cannot think of a single thing Red Dead Redemption 2 tries as a "game" that it achieves well (except for the open world, which, as I have noted, I attribute more to the setting and storytelling part of things).
AN HBO PRESTIGE DRAMA
The takeaway I have from all this is that Red Dead Redemption 2 is a great monument to storytelling regardless of the medium, but a terrible game. It almost feels to me as though this should have been an HBO prestige drama, or something of the sort, because it would have been a slam dunk in such a scenario. Unlike games such as The Witcher 3, it is not even as though Red Dead Redemption 2 excels in interactive storytelling, which actively depends on player input. We have a pretty cut and dry vision of a story here that is presented to us, take it or leave it (albeit we do get variations on things based on some in-game decisions). As a game, I feel like its fundamental failings do drag down what would otherwise be an impeccable package.
And yet, in spite of all my noted complaints above, I think this game is a masterpiece, and deserving of that 97 Metascore, and that it is one of the best titles of this generation, and one that everyone should play at least once. It is an experiment in storytelling in this medium - one which spectacularly succeeds and fails, both at once.
****
Hi Era, this is my first thread ever, please go nice on me! If I did anything wrong, please do let me know!
