Finally played Red Dead Redemption. It sucks

[maximaz]

RDR has been my must play for years, and I finally got around to it. To be honest, the game is shockingly shit.

Writing, setting, visual style, voice acting all top notch, as one would expect from Rockstar, but the rest is just awful. Half way through, it became a chore to play and actually made me appreciate Fallout 4 more.

- Gameplay is barely passable. Nearly every ingame activity is so poorly done and explained, I had to google half of them and found countless forum threads with people asking how the hell to duel, break a horse, throw a horseshoe, arm wrestle, etc., and none of them became fun after that. Controls are unresponsive and autoaim is basically a must (try to engage in a shootout on horseback without autoaim).

- Quests/missions are boring and repetitive. I couldn't help but think back to the radiant quests of Fallout 4 and actually thought they were done better than any RDR missions. Basically, watch a cutscene, ride somewhere, shoot up an army of clones and ride back to watch another cutscene (also cattle herding). The entire game structure is straight out of the PS1 era.

- Story is stupid. I like the setup and the ending is interesting but the story makes no sense. Characters pop up, give you their series of missions and you have to do them without an evident motivator, other than to move on to the next series of missions.

- Exploration is nothing but tedious. The world has a ton of style but there is nothing to do. No secret places or quests to discover and only a handful of real characters to meet, whom the game interacts with for you, without your input. The repeating random mini encounters are all meaningless and pointless (not even the monetary rewards are high enough). There could easily be just one hub town in the game with the few characters and minigames in it. The rest of the world just delays you getting to the next chore.

- Bugs.

Mind blown that this game is so praised. It's all the worst of GTA, without the fun of driving fast cars to good tunes and causing mayhem in a crowded city.

Being completely honest, for all its' serious faults, as a standalone game, Fallout 4 shits all over RDR. I know it's a different type of game but the similar elements are done so much better in Fallout 4, it's not even close. Would be genuinely interested to read a counter to this.

 

[Big No]

I love RDR so I absolutely don't agree with most of this. The game does explain things like breaking horses and a game of horseshoes but they do it in text boxes. If you miss them then just pause the game and they should be under "journal". Call it flawed but that's how all Rockstar games give instructions so it's not exclusive to RDR. The controls are fine by me if a bit twitchy at times, but they're not much different than any other Rockstar title and Rockstar titles have pretty tight controls. MP3's was slightly worse however since Max would sometimes run around everywhere if he got caught on something.

Fallout 4 quests were better than RDR's? Something like Kid in a Fridge or Macready's personal quest being better than John and Dutch's rivalry or the war in Mexico is something I'll never agree with. The radiant events always gives me something to do which is good since I don't expect the world to be bustling the same way a GTA city does. In Fallout 4, almost everything is scripted. Traveling to the PoC outpost there will always be Vertibirds fighting raiders. The road from Armadillo to the farm, who knows what you'll stumble into. I have no idea how many bugs you've experienced but RDR is way, way, way less buggy than Fallout 4.

RDR is mean't to be a love letter to westerns and it shows with the three regions you enter. New Austin is classic western, Nuevo Parasio is spaghetti western and West Elizabeth is modern western. All that in mind I'd say the fanbase got what they wanted, I know I did.

I know this isn't much of a counter but I love the game nonetheless, probably the best western game out there. RDR probably just isn't for you but to say Fallout 4 is better, ugh. Like I enjoy Fallout 4 but... no.

 

[maximaz]

Did notice the instructional boxes but thought they weren't clear at all. They tell you the buttons but do not explain anything clearly. I've noticed a lot of people mention that in game help threads if that says anything. Most importantly though, none of those extra activities/minigames were any fun, except for the gambling games.

You might be right about controls being similar to other Rockstar games but they've mostly sucked haven't they? Save for the awful floaty movement and melee combat, they are fine if you use the game's hard lock autoaim but that really takes away any challenge. I could take enemies out without even clearly seeing them. Without the autoaim though, some sequences were ridiculous, like when someone chases you on horseback and randomly jerks side to side to avoid obstacles (bad physics).

I agree 100% that Fallout 4 had a ton of dumbass quests (most of them). And like I said, the writing in RDR is great. When I say quests were better though, I mean the actual quests, not the setup around them. You can name a number of mission cutscenes from RDR that were better than a lot of F4 quest setups but most of the missions were almost exactly the same boring shit (watch scene with zero input, ride, kill a number of clones, ride back). And when they weren't, they sucked even more (cattle herding, mounted gun sequences, driving a slow coach somewhere, etc).

With F4, you might encounter an unexpected enemy, environment, situation, or a character as part of the quest, etc. And I'm saying this despite considering Fallout 4 quests to be the most repetitive, predictably combat focused quests in the series.

I agree regarding the style (the homage, the love letter, whatever you want to call it). I just think it's not enough. The game they put in this very well done setting/atmosphere is a chore to play. My biggest gripe is probably the bland plain old 'watch cutscene, engage in shootout' structure of the game which feels cheap for the lack of a better word.

 

[Mr Fish]

Yeah I loathe RDR.

The combat, which is the only actual meat of the game as I'll go into later, is repetitive as all hell. Since most of the time I end up being long or mid-range away from enemies it means that the shotgun is useless. I played on Xbox 360 so the sniper felt like shit to use. Throwables felt pointless as most of the time enemies were kinda scattered enough to not be close enough for an AOE weapon. So why use anything but the pistol and the rifle? And everyone felt the same. Shooting bandits is the same as shooting mexican army as far as I remember. So what variety is there? Shoot with a rifle from the horse or shoot with a rifle from the ground.

The exploration aspect of the game felt hollow. They managed to make a desert feel like a desert. Great. Problem is... A desert is fucking empty and boring as shit. Not to mention how damn annoying it is to traverse the roads, especially down in Mehico.

The horse... The god damn horse... Right, so in order to get proper speed you need to stick to the road. The moment I steered just slightly off the road the horse slowed down. And in order to keep the horse at good speed I had to mash the run button, but not mash it too much or the horse would throw me off. So I had to constantly switch from looking at the road to looking at the compass for directions to looking at the run meter to back to the road and it just wasn't fun.

Fuck the mash the run button shit Rockstar constantly does. My thumb fucking hurts just thinking about one of their damn games.

You meet the same encounters over and over on the roadside and considering how little content there is in the desert it baffles me how they didn't focus more on designing as many and as unique a encounters as possible to make traveling the road truly unpredictable.

MarsTom felt inconsistent as a character as well. First he's all macho tough guy and says he'll beat the shit out of someone but through the mere act of asking him nicely he goes and does bitchwork for everyone else.

Once I got to MexicanaLand the story just stopped making sense to me. Granted, it's been years since I played the game so I barely remember anything but from what I recall it never felt focused. One moment he's after Billy Bob Thorton from the first act and the next he's after his ol' melanin-enriched hombre. He keeps running around in circles just trying to get answers and everyone exploits him like the dumbass he is. It just felt like filler. Oh and I didn't like any of the characters. Not in terms of being nice people, but just as characters. Everyone just felt like a piece of shit to me and I couldn't get into any of them.

And the ending.... Jesus christ the ending was so bad... For those who haven't played it and don't know what happens: Imagine a highschool film where at the end the main guy gets the girl at the house party he throws and his friend gets revenge on a bully and the girly boy comes out as a tranny cause current year and people cheer the new her on. Everything ends nicely, right? Right. Then the movie continues for 5 minutes on and it's the day after and they're just cleaning up. Nothing interesting happens. No jokes, no montage of them cleaning even. Just them cleaning up. And then a twist happens right at the very end where the main character gets swallowed whole by the tranny.

I'm sorry, how is this a good ending? That's far from climactic. It fucking ends WITH BUSYWORK!!

The whole game has felt like busywork. Like MartianTommygun has been a bitchboi to everyone he meets. The ultimate nu-male. And it ends with him doing chores. CHORES!

The game is gorgeous.
Voice acting and facial animations are pretty damn good.
Undead Nightmare was a blast.

The end.

I fucking hate RDR though.
Absolutely loathe it.

 

[Big No]

MarsTom felt inconsistent as a character as well. First he's all macho tough guy and says he'll beat the shit out of someone but through the mere act of asking him nicely he goes and does bitchwork for everyone else.

Once I got to MexicanaLand the story just stopped making sense to me. Granted, it's been years since I played the game so I barely remember anything but from what I recall it never felt focused. One moment he's after Billy Bob Thorton from the first act and the next he's after his ol' melanin-enriched hombre. He keeps running around in circles just trying to get answers and everyone exploits him like the dumbass he is. It just felt like filler. Oh and I didn't like any of the characters. Not in terms of being nice people, but just as characters. Everyone just felt like a piece of shit to me and I couldn't get into any of them.

And the ending.... Jesus christ the ending was so bad... For those who haven't played it and don't know what happens: Imagine a highschool film where at the end the main guy gets the girl at the house party he throws and his friend gets revenge on a bully and the girly boy comes out as a tranny cause current year and people cheer the new her on. Everything ends nicely, right? Right. Then the movie continues for 5 minutes on and it's the day after and they're just cleaning up. Nothing interesting happens. No jokes, no montage of them cleaning even. Just them cleaning up. And then a twist happens right at the very end where the main character gets swallowed whole by the tranny.

I'm sorry, how is this a good ending? That's far from climactic. It fucking ends WITH BUSYWORK!!

I wouldn't say Marston is inconsistent. He's the straight man in a world full of lunatics. He does what he needs to do so he can stop his old friends so he'll get his family back. He's pretty rough with Dickens, Irish and Seth because he doesn't want his time wasted, but at the same time he needs their help to get into Fort Mercer so bullying them with nothing in return probably wouldn't be the best bet. And despite his roughness, John is pretty fair. He even made Ross let Dickens go when he was arrested long after Dickens outlived his usefulness.

The reason why Marston flip flopped from the Mexican army to the rebels is because in addition to Bill Williamson, John also needed to find his old pal Javier with him. Only a select few individuals knew where they were and the General was one of them. Whether John trusted the General or not he had few options. John was only really "used" by the Mexican army by the way. The rebels were friendly to him all the way after his defection and he had no real choice with Ross, what with his family and all that. In fact, once John kills Bill, the General and (optionally) Javier, John leaves Mexico even when Reyes suggests he continue helping them with their revolution. Somebody who lets everyone use them wouldn't walk away like John did to that offer.

The "busywork" at the end is largely take-it-or-leave-it, but quite a few people enjoyed it from what I understand. Throughout the game John wants to leave the life behind but is denied that by Ross. Once the dirtywork is done, John is allowed to leave in peace and start fresh. We see that first hand, we killed hundreds throughout the game and we see John try to turn over a new leaf with his family. That's largely what the homestead missions are for. John dying by Ross symbolizes how the old west died once modernization kicked in with Ross's forces representing that. In-story, Ross is pretty smug about being more "moral" than John and was also a gloryhound. Probably thought killing John would be his way of "punishing" John and become famous, which the post story newspapers confirm.

Like I said, the ending is pretty much take-it-or-leave-it, but this is what I got out of it.

 

[maximaz]

I wouldn't say Marston is inconsistent. He's the straight man in a world full of lunatics. He does what he needs to do so he can stop his old friends so he'll get his family back. He's pretty rough with Dickens, Irish and Seth because he doesn't want his time wasted, but at the same time he needs their help to get into Fort Mercer so bullying them with nothing in return probably wouldn't be the best bet. And despite his roughness, John is pretty fair. He even made Ross let Dickens go when he was arrested long after Dickens outlived his usefulness.

The reason why Marston flip flopped from the Mexican army to the rebels is because in addition to Bill Williamson, John also needed to find his old pal Javier with him. Only a select few individuals knew where they were and the General was one of them. Whether John trusted the General or not he had few options. John was only really "used" by the Mexican army by the way. The rebels were friendly to him all the way after his defection and he had no real choice with Ross, what with his family and all that. In fact, once John kills Bill, the General and (optionally) Javier, John leaves Mexico even when Reyes suggests he continue helping them with their revolution. Somebody who lets everyone use them wouldn't walk away like John did to that offer.

The "busywork" at the end is largely take-it-or-leave-it, but quite a few people enjoyed it from what I understand. Throughout the game John wants to leave the life behind but is denied that by Ross. Once the dirtywork is done, John is allowed to leave in peace and start fresh. We see that first hand, we killed hundreds throughout the game and we see John try to turn over a new leaf with his family. That's largely what the homestead missions are for. John dying by Ross symbolizes how the old west died once modernization kicked in with Ross's forces representing that. In-story, Ross is pretty smug about being more "moral" than John and was also a gloryhound. Probably thought killing John would be his way of "punishing" John and become famous, which the post story newspapers confirm.

Like I said, the ending is pretty much take-it-or-leave-it, but this is what I got out of it.

Marston is massively inconsistent. Throughout most of the game's character scenes, he takes the moral high ground, reacting with sarcasm and even anger when someone says/does something shady. As you said, despite twisting a few arms, he is overall pretty fair.

Then, without much resistance, he goes along on multiple killing sprees with the Mexican army, even assisting in burning down a village and taking away their women as sex slaves, no questions asked. He had few options but going that far and without much resistance? It would have been the perfect point to have him turn and try to get help from someone else but the game offers no flexibility there, even though there is a perfectly good alternate 'faction' that it forces you to join very soon anyway.

I have no problem with the ending, even though it made no sense to me (why wouldn't Ross kill Marston and his family earlier when it was much easier?) Did hate the busy work though. It was a sequence after sequence of the least enjoyable activities in the game. Based on my humgle google skills, people absolutely hated cattle herding and breaking horses and having to ride a cart across empty planes for a millionth time and all that crap.

The entire game felt like busy work. Ride to the other end of the map, across emptiness and some randomly generated NPC's, engage in a painfully repetitive firefight, ride back. Repeat 100 times.

 

[Big No]

Marston is massively inconsistent. Throughout most of the game's character scenes, he takes the moral high ground, reacting with sarcasm and even anger when someone says/does something shady. As you said, despite twisting a few arms, he is overall pretty fair.

Then, without much resistance, he goes along on multiple killing sprees with the Mexican army, even assisting in burning down a village and taking away their women as sex slaves, no questions asked. He had few options but going that far and without much resistance? It would have been the perfect point to have him turn and try to get help from someone else but the game offers no flexibility there, even though there is a perfectly good alternate 'faction' that it forces you to join very soon anyway.

John is clearly uncomfortable with the acts he does throughout the missions he does for the army and backing out would be a hard sell since they had hard evidence on Bill and Javier's whereabouts. The rebels are really the only others he could turn too for info on the two but he doesn't know that at first and had it not have been for Luisa, they wouldn't have been option what with attacking them and all. In fact, the way the wide open sandbox nature of the game may bring this issue about in a more obvious light. Mission dialogue within the missions imply that John does the mexican army stuff first before helping Luisa which helps him get into the rebels good graces. This can result in John looking "all over the place". This is why the mission order below tends to be the most Favorited amongst fans.
https://gtaforums.com/topic/866787-red-dead-redemption-mission-order/

 

[maximaz]

John is clearly uncomfortable with the acts he does throughout the missions he does for the army and backing out would be a hard sell since they had hard evidence on Bill and Javier's whereabouts. The rebels are really the only others he could turn too for info on the two but he doesn't know that at first and had it not have been for Luisa, they wouldn't have been option what with attacking them and all. In fact, the way the wide open sandbox nature of the game may bring this issue about in a more obvious light. Mission dialogue within the missions imply that John does the mexican army stuff first before helping Luisa which helps him get into the rebels good graces. This can result in John looking "all over the place". This is why the mission order below tends to be the most Favorited amongst fans.
https://gtaforums.com/topic/866787-red-dead-redemption-mission-order/

Maybe clearly slightly uncomfortable. I certainly did not get that he was deeply conflicted over doing something so awful, even though he keeps expressing regret over his old days of killing and robbing throughout the game. I get the point of showing him feeling forced to kill despite a desire to escape his violent past, pulling at him so to speak, but there are some massive swings left and right for the character. It's too extreme to stay consistent and I'm surprised anyone would disagree to be honest.

I know that the way missions are setup or for their sequence it was too early to switch. They shouldn't have set them that way if it meant going that route. How hard would it have been to change the switch there and offer an option at least?

All this may be just my perception, having just played the game. Maybe it needs to marinate. But you can't tell me that the sort of character John is for the first half of the game, that being a conflicted outlaw with a heart of gold, would go along with killing and raping for a bunch of scumbags, making up for it with a sad face, even with something important on the line. Come on. For his idea of honor, he risks his life and thus his family's future repeatedly (the game even starts that way) before and after that.

I like the voice acting and the dialogue in the game but the story is a complete mess unless it's just too unique for mere mortals to understand. That was not my main issue though, as previously mentioned.

 

[Fizzycswag]

I love RDR so I'd definitely diagree with the Fallout 4 thing.

 

[Big No]

I know that the way missions are setup or for their sequence it was too early to switch. They shouldn't have set them that way if it meant going that route. How hard would it have been to change the switch there and offer an option at least?

Well, Rockstar have never been ones for creating story missions that the player can just ignore and abandon. Last time Rockstar did that was I think GTA 3 when you could fail all the mob/Kenji missions and I think that was more because of oversight. Mission chronologically has been mostly good for Rockstar though GTA V had a bad case where characters can seem bipolar due to mission structure (Hood Safari has Trevor nice to Franklin yet you can do the Merryweather Heist afterwards which has him skeptical) so I'm not really surprised by the Mexico missions being a bit "flip-flop". I know that's a handwave but we all tend to overlook small flaws like that when we enjoy a product a lot.