4/5 ★ – pinksteady's review of Red Dead Redemption II.

I suspect Red Dead Redemption has come close to giving me a similar sort of experience that players of death-grind games like Sekiro and Bloodborne talk about. The idea that through endurance and perseverance, often against your own better instincts, you can experience something even greater and more rewarding. It took me until about 50% through the story (at about 40 hours of gameplay) to realise something that changed the game significantly for me. I realised that this game is actually two games in one. On the face of it, it is a typical open-world, choose-your-own-adventure action-RPG like all the others, but obviously presented on a grander scale and of incredible technical proficiency. But because this element of the game is so poorly executed and simply not fun, a splinter is unavoidably created in the game, whereby the story itself, the characters, the acting and the overall plot, which are simply brilliant, exist in their own dimension in the same game. Up until the 50% point, I had been taking my usual approach to this sort of game. Do a story mission, then a few side quests and maybe a bit of ‘personal development’ (i.e. collecting/hunting shit for XP/upgrades etc), then do another story mission or two, and repeat. In most other games, this tends to allow me to enjoy most of what is on offer while still making progress to the end of the story without getting so bored doing everything else. Unfortunately with RDR2, the story is SO long, and the side quests SO repetitive and boring, that it was only when I read an article (after Googling “should I finish RDR2?” - that’s how bad it was getting) that recommended focussing purely on story missions only, that things started looking up. Essentially, the key to enjoying this game was, for me, to start looking at it as a glorified walking sim. Suddenly, everything made sense. The monotonous and often mundane tasks, the repetitive mission structures, the lack of any sort of ‘fun’... these all started to not only make sense but become ok, when seen as mechanics to tell a story (rather than mechanics designers to induce fun). I stopped being annoyed by the boring missions and started soaking in the story and the characters, and started to really enjoy the game for the first time. Up until this point, I knew I loved the story, the characters, the acting, but I REALLY started to enjoy and appreciate those elements once I stopped thinking of RDR2 as a typical game and more of a walking sim on steroids. And boy is the story good. Specifically, the characters, dialogue and acting are sublime and incredibly memorable. I was endlessly impressed with how each of the characters developed, interacted with each other, spoke... it was literally perfection. There were moments of genuine hilarity, and, as the game progressed, frequent moments of sadness as the game takes it dark turn. To watch the relationships unravel, and see how each of the characters handles the challenging and changing events, was fascinating. Just like an engrossing book that you have to find out what happens, I started binging on the story to keep it going. I’m very grateful for the advice of that article that told me to stop doing side quests and just grind the story, as it elevated my experience of the game out of one of frustration and monotony to one of fascination and enjoyment. It is a shame that this had to be the case. To enjoy RDR2, I had to deliberately ignore every single part of the game that wasn’t the story - the side quests, the random encounters, the hunting, the crafting, the upgrading, the exploring, the everything that RDR2 also offers. What a shame then that Rockstar couldn’t create a game where both of these elements could co-exist and co-operate with each other, as opposed what we have which feels more like a game with a split personality disorder, with each personality fighting for attention at the expense of the other. To elaborate on the failings of the action/adventure ‘personality’ of the game, it basically triggered my “is it actually fun” radar. It is the ultimate expression of prioritising technical prowess and simulator-like realism at the expense of fun, and that is a very hard thing to pull off. RDR2 takes everything that should be fun and makes it boring, in the interests of realism. Even fighting is boring, with every gun fight literally identical to every other (you hide, you auto-aim, you drag upwards a little bit to aim at the head, you fire, you repeat). It isn’t challenging enough to make you vary your play styles or experiment. Talking of experimenting, the game does this infuriating thing of presenting you with loads of random encounters and opportunities for what should be fun, and then ruthlessly punishes you for trying them out. Every single time I took the game up on an offer of some high-jinx, I ended up in prison, wanted, fined or some other punishment. I ended up basically avoiding any random encounter as it was so frustrating. Even the awkward control schemes contributed to this as all too often I’d try and negotiate with someone and end up shooting them (or even drawing my gun by mistake, immediately failing whatever encounter I was trying to pursue). A review of this game obviously can’t go without mentioning the incredible visuals. The game world is exquisitely realised. It is enormous, and beautiful. Every ride you take offers almost jaw-dropping landscapes that you almost feel don’t deserve to be in a game. Weather, clouds, vegetation, animals scurrying around, streams, lakes and mountains - it has it all and it is all completely explorable. The towns are intricate and bustling, and I almost felt bad for Rockstar that I didn’t fully explore every nook and cranny. I can’t imagine the time and work that must have gone in to creating this world, and the results speak for themselves. All in all, despite all my misgivings, after the credits rolled I wanted to keep on playing. I had invested 60 or so hours and there was so much more to do, and I was almost a bit addicted to being in the world. I ended up firing up the Online mode, which looks hugely promising, but casting my mind back to the life-sink that was GTA Online, I have chosen to take a step back for some fresh air before deciding on whether now’s the time for that, or whether I should move on to something new. If you want to experience a world-class interactive and hyper-realistic will west story, with Oscar-worthy acting and writing, then focus on the story and wallow in the immersion. If you want to experience an engrossing and enjoyable open world action-adventure-RPG game, probably give this one a pass.