Red Dead Redemption 2 Review

Played on Xbox One (base)

Developed by Rockstar Games

Released 26th October 2018

Rockstar Games has easily become one of the most well-respected gaming studios in the industry due to the high quality of their outputs. With ‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ finally being announced not too long ago, it's crazy to think how it'll potentially be 12 years in between Grand Theft Auto titles. However, it's not like Rockstar remained silent during this time as they pooled all of its subsidiary studios into one big effort for a small, indie title that I doubt you would've heard of: 'Red Dead Redemption 2'. Other than it being a contender for one of the best narratives in video game history, going toe-to-toe with ‘God of War’ at the 2018 Game Awards for Game of the Year and being the 8th best-rated game of all time on Metacritic, well, it's actually done a lot more. Explaining who Rockstar is, is fairly redundant, but to do the same for RDR2 is ridiculous. This game's notoriety and success is so astronomical that not only is it the 8th most-awarded GOTY title (with 178 GOTY awards), but it had the largest opening weekend in the history of entertainment, making over $725 million in revenue in three days, and over 17 million copies shipped in two weeks, exceeding the lifetime sales of its predecessor.

My circumstances with this game are most likely very similar to most people's. While I knew of the raging adoration for the first game, I never desperately wanted to play it, leaving it in my exponentially increasing backlog. That is, until its sequel (technically a prequel), came out and was marked as a classic, straight from the get-go. After many instances of persuasion and convincing from my friends, I finally booted this game up and as I'm writing this review, I'm itching to get into the first game to see how the tale continues to unravel.

The choice to make the follow-up game a prequel, despite the deceiving "2" in its title, was made early in the game's development cycle. This cycle began soon after the first game launched but didn't reach full throttle until the finalising phases of GTA 5 in late 2012. There are quite a few interesting approaches that were taken by the developers such as stripping away any resemblance they shared with contemporary works to circumvent anyone accusing them of stealing ideas, or how the history behind real-life locations inspired the team to assist them in creating an accurate reflection of the game's set period. All of this effort to create an unforgettable experience resulted in what the game's writer Dan Houser has stated to be a script that would be 8 feet tall had the pages been stacked.

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Story

The story of ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ offers much more than what its synopsis states. A quick and easy summary of this would be that you follow Arthur Morgan, an outlaw who, with his Van der Linde gang, must deal with the decline of the Wild West as rival gangs, law enforcement and more try to rip them apart. However, as you play through this 40-hour narrative, you'll come to realise that it's much more than that, and I don't mean it in some spiritual, enlightenment type of way. The tale that you, the player, are confronted with; a tale of a family splitting apart; a tale of friends spiralling out into hopelessness; a tale of relationships, is the true driving force of this story. There's a reason why this segment of the review is so short compared to the others despite the game being so heavily focused on its storytelling, and that being the highlight of it all. It's because the story isn't a nuanced unravelling of events like in ‘The Witcher 3’, another narratively-praised open world, where the flow and direction of the story are dictated by the grandeur moments that shift the narrative into its next chapter. Instead, RDR2's story is more akin to ‘The Last of Us’ or ‘God of War (2018)’, where the characters and personalities that get injected into the world make up the scope and progress of the story and the significant plot points like meeting Baldur in ‘God of War’, or Joel getting injured in ‘The Last of Us’, instead, act as catalysts for the character development. I'm not saying one game's story is better than the other because of how it structures itself, I'm saying that there's no reason for me to critique the story for a page and a half when it would make more sense to critique the characters, who essentially make up the foundations of such story.

That being said, there still is something left for me to observe within this segment and that is the pacing. This potentially might be the only flaw I had seen during my cinematic experience with the game as, no matter how great it is in the middle or the end, the beginning suffers. The game is ridiculously slow for its first 10 or so hours. Playing it and talking to my friend about it was like the conversation equivalent of "Trust me dude, it gets good in season 5". The story in the first 2 chapters is great, there's no denying that, but if you want to immerse yourself into the story that so many people praise, you're going to have to play for a couple of sessions before that's going to happen. As a whole, it feels like these beginning moments don't offer much in terms of captivation, and even though it's used predominantly to flesh out its cast of characters, it does leave more to be desired.

Gameplay

The gameplay's strive for realism makes for an immersive journey that is strung along with some awkward-feeling moments of downtime. ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ is of a very similar DNA to that of other Rockstar games where you are positioned in a sprawling open world, with a third-person and first-person camera option and focus on gunfights in between your relentless travelling. RDR2 adds onto its already standard mechanics by also including fairly baseline survival features like tracking your hunger, temperature, stamina core, etc. For the open world, it's fantastical. This massive environment is beautiful (more on that later), and its populated locations feel lively with plenty of in-game events occurring like a beggar pretending to be blind, a women's rights activist asking for your vote, a thieving prostitute leading you to an ambush, the KKK initiating a new member and so many more. All of this interactivity and humanity within the game's NPCs nail that realistic and immersive aesthetic which had me in awe constantly. It all felt organic all the way through and if you're someone who loves wandering around a game's occupied world and seeing all the things that make it tick outside of the scripted moments, then RDR2 is the prime showcase for this.

For the firefights, it all felt smooth, albeit slightly janky at times. The act of shooting, reloading and taking cover was all fine generally, providing that cinematic flair with gun smoke flaring out for every shot, or enemies having animated deaths. The attention to detail behind reloading every single round or blood splattering was also great, but once you remove all that eye candy, you have a gameplay cycle that feels quite early in its development stages. It just felt odd; maybe it was the cumbersome details like tripping over a rock way too easily, having to spam A to sprint constantly, or the cover button simply not working as intended in some dire situations. Maybe it just simply was that the shooting wasn't as polished as we've come to expect from shooters nowadays, feeling no different than the shooting of, for example, GTA 4, from 2008. Whether it is awkward or outdated design, the game's prioritisation of realism over pure adrenaline-filling entertainment still works wonders as it fits the whole vibe that it's going for, rather than if it tried to emulate the intense action of shooter-heavy titles like Gears of War or Call of Duty. At the end of the day, RDR2 is primarily an adventure game, and even with that in the way, it still manages to make firefights feel fresh and enjoyable and I believe that is due to its Deadeye mechanic. This feature allows the player to slow down time to get more accurate shots and perform some grade-A Hollywood shooting as, after marking your targets, real-time resumes and your queued-up shots get released into this badass flurry. If the shooting aspect of the game didn't have this Deadeye, it would quickly become quite numbing to play, but being able to gun sling your way through like a one-man army is quite brilliant and never gets tiresome.

RDR2 offers so many ways to interact with its world: poker, heavy gun customisation, fishing, robbing a train, hunting, going drinking, getting a haircut, taking a bath, buying new fashion, watching a film, and so many more. This level of "doing whatever you want" is something that can be seen regularly in something like GTA 5, or ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, and while it's always incredible, RDR2 buries quite a lot of this fun and high detail with an insane amount of control mapping. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that you'll be learning what each button and action does until the very end of your playthrough just with how much there is, and while it can be quite daunting initially, this truly is a small flaw in the grand scheme of things given how much livelier it makes the game feel.

Nearly everything in RDR2 is polished to a surreal degree and for every 3 steps forward you have to have fun with the game, there is always 1 step back you have to take due to the game's overt focus on realism, like the aforementioned odd-feeling shooting or abundance of mechanics/controls.

Characters

I am, like many others, going to die fighting on this hill that ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ has some of the best-written characters in the industry, alongside the other storytelling giants like ‘The Last of Us’ or ‘God of War (2018)’. Every interaction, character, storyline, personality; everything about them felt so natural, human and overall well-written. RDR2 is no stranger to emotional moments and while that is normally the easiest way to present a character as human or relatable, RDR2 not only excels in them but also makes a point of having such high-quality writing outside of these tear-jerking scenes. The organic moments where the characters joke, bicker or even simply have regular conversations felt so natural that it was like I was there with the characters engaging in their talks rather than just spectating and listening in. Because how these characters are structured from the very beginning, it makes the story all the better; it excuses the drawn-out, slow build-up and it amplifies every major turning point, all the way to the end. You bond with these characters to the point you become empathetic to them and react similarly as they do. The Van der Linde gang's acceptance of anyone into their family of hoodlums and wrong-doers extends out to the player, so as we watch them disperse and break apart, it affects the player as well in that regard. Three games have made my heart sink with only their dialogue and RDR2 is one of them, as the cumulation of the story's focus on honour and moral dilemmas, with the voice acting behind protagonist Arthur Morgan (performed by Roger Clark), made for some of the most heart-shattering lines I've heard during my whole life - and that was during a side quest.

Dutch, Arthur, John, Sadie, Abigail, Bill, Charles, Hosea, Reverend Swanson, Javier, Mary-Beth, Leopold, Micah, Rains Fall, Eagle Flies, Susan, Sean, Uncle, Molly; all of these characters and more contribute to the story, they make each significant plot point all the more potent and when you have characters that you treat like actual humans act as the high stakes for the storytelling, you end up with an indomitable narrative that will stick with you for as long as possible. Each loss or hardship a character faces is perfectly imprinted into the story, and the same goes for each success and celebration.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere of this game is immaculate. Throughout this whole review, I've mentioned this game's relentless attempt at being realistic and nothing can express that more than its graphical fidelity. The heavy attention to detail of the most minuscule elements in the game's world is otherworldly, like the slight indenting in mud, the slow melting of snow near light sources, the rusting of weaponry and the decaying paint on wooden structures. The beautiful presentation of the environment is also awe-inspiring: valleys, flat-end fields, an industrialised city, dense forests, murky swamps, snow-peaked mountains and more. This entire game is dead gorgeous in every artistic measure and holds up to be one of, if not the best-looking game out there, even after Naughty Dog pushed onto those technical boundaries 2 years later with ‘The Last of Us Part II’.

The audio is also on a similar level, although it doesn't leave as much of an imprint on your memory as the visuals do. The soundtrack is enjoyable to listen to and it adds to the scenes greatly, conveying the emotions of the moment without ever exaggerating itself. A blood-boiling Western, cowboy anthem or a heartfelt plucking of the notes for a character's send-off, the music never steps out of line in being too present or too unnoticed. However, it's not like the music sticks with you strongly after the 50 hours you spend playing, only enough to have you reminisce about the game a week after completion, but no more. Additionally, the sound effects protruded through my headphones in the best way possible and, similarly to the music, added on to the moment.

Technically, there were a couple of bugs, mostly concerning the textures, such as the fabric of coats randomly darkening or pixelating when in contact with high-contrast shadows or rain. However, I wouldn't be surprised if these shader issues had to do with my Xbox One, which has been on life support for the past 2 years of its 8 year lifespan.

Story - 9/10

Gameplay - 8/10

Characters - 11/10

Atmosphere - 9.5/10

NEAR-PERFECT

One of the best games I've ever played.