When I think about Read Dead Redemption II’s virtues, the cutscenes aren’t the first or even second or third thing that come to mind, but they tend to be what one thinks about when discussing the “story” of a game like it; and discussion of a game like it often devolves into assessment of “the story” and “the gameplay” as though they could be separated. Falsely dividing the game into discrete categories overemphasizes the cutscenes in one and the missions in another, and loses track of the other 75% of the game along with all that makes it interesting. The cutscenes and writing are fine, but are in and of themselves largely unremarkable. The missions often pleasantly deviate from their repetitive and combat-centered precedents in the first Redemption, but do not any more than the cutscenes compose the whole experience.
Not to get carried away addressing strawman arguments; it’s difficult to talk about these things because of what our shared vocabulary has come to mean, but all I’m saying is Red Dead Redemption II is a nuanced object, and it moved me.
Home
Among RDR II’s most worthwhile designs is the base camp. Your big odd family is there milling around, chatting, fishing, arguing, singing, and so on. Sometimes they ask Arthur’s advice, to which he can give one of two responses. This, more than the flashy movie scenes, is the preferred use case for voice acting in video games. Walking around your home base talking to the party in Suikoden or Final Fantasy VI or Persona 3 can be as much of a pleasure, but is necessarily less dynamic. Red Dead Redemption II expands on the foundation more recently set by Wolfenstein: The New Order and Mass Effect (what are some earlier games with walking, talking characters at home base?) wherein the player walks in and out of conversations in progress.
That the player and the camp travel together from one chapter to the next contribute to the latter’s power. Over the course of a year and across six locations, the camp changes, and the gang with it. Your companions bring you new problems; you offer solutions knowing you won’t change whatever fate the plot has written for them.
The game asks that you contribute to the camp’s supplies, though in my playthrough nothing of much consequence happened in times of feast or famine. In any case Arthur hunted for food and donated too little of his obscene wealth to the camp coffer, in the absence of which I suspected Arthur’s companions would go hungry and lack comfortable living space—something Arthur could not abide.
Howdy Button
The context-sensitive interactions you can have with every NPC are so thin that one might ask why they’re here at all. Doesn’t their transparent flatness undo the pageantry and dense illusion the game otherwise tries hard to sustain with its drama, score, graphics, detailed store catalogues, newspapers, and horse anatomy?
NPC conversations are driven by what I’ll call the Howdy Button, which necessarily puts the marionette strings at the center of the player’s focus. Drawing attention to the world’s artifice is the inherent vice of the player’s participation in it. Where many games ask you to pass through their amusement park–like choreographed drama, Red Dead Redemption II asks you to reach out and touch it. We often understand “play” in video games in the context of physical action, running and jumping and shooting—of which there is obviously plenty in RDR II—but less often does it apply to the act of conversation. Certainly many, many RPGs involve the player in conversations, but no matter how good the dialogue is, these are most often a means of delivering information to the player. In The Witcher III, every conversation brings the player closer to the conclusion of a quest, or else informs the player’s idea about people, places, and concepts within the world. In something like Pokémon the NPC dialogue / informatic is often redundant instruction to the player, and in Dragon Quest it’s often humorous. The grand majority of NPC conversations in Red Dead Redemption II offer no information to the player whatsoever, nor are they very amusing; the game simply gives the player the opportunity, for its own sake, to make the dolls talk to each other. You can Greet or Antagonize, and can often continue Arthur’s line of thinking by pushing the button more than once. Different combinations like “Greet —> Greet” or “Greet —> Greet —> Antagonize” produce varied results.
None of these interactions in RDR II are much deeper than what’s typical of RPGs, but it does strike me differently to have the agency to approach, contribute to, and then walk away from conversations with strangers, or even an ongoing interaction between Arthur’s companions, without bringing up a CRPG dialogue window. The Howdy Button facilitates all of this.
Clothes
I lament that Red Dead Redemption II only allows you to dress Arthur (and John). That the clothing options are so robust and the NPC outfits themselves distinct make me yearn for an Infinity Nikki in this world, though I can’t understate how much the waRDRobe options it does give you improve the game. I am not Arthur Morgan; even as I am able to Greet or Antagonize citizens of Valentine and Rhodes and St. Denis at my leisure, he is his own man, but I can imagine how he would dress and whether he might shave for those and other occasions in those places. He will dress differently to meet his old ex as he will to go hunting with Hosea as he will to break a friend out of prison. He will shave to better hide his face with a bandana, or let the beard grow during the rainy season.
Numbers
There are a few gauges, meters, attributes, etc. that the game supposedly expects the player to understand and keep track of. I did not, and consequently did not make decisions with the aim of influencing them.
Indika first makes you, and later gives you the choice, to perform tasks which yield points, though it’s immediately clear from the character-building skill tree thing that the points are worthless (the loading screen tells you point-blank that this is the case). These tasks consist of slowly walking to retrieve a basket of potatoes, slowly walking and turning a crank to fill a bucket, and so on. One way to earn points is by lighting candles in small, sad graveyards. Beyond the goofy video game points, everything about the environment suggests your actions will make no difference to anyone, living or dead. These graves are in the middle of nowhere, the landscape is barren, every person you meet is dying or will be soon, and all this in a world which becomes the more absurd the more you see of it.
I lit all of the candles assuming it was useless. At the time I didn’t know exactly how the game would end—maybe the loading screens lie to test Indika’s faith; or even if they’re truthful about the points, the game could didactically make some other point about the use in doing a good deed when there is no tangible or even a known reward. Indika the game understands these are on some level the hopes or assumptions of Indika the character, and the ending of the game gives her/you as many points as you want to make absolutely clear that it’s all a waste of your time and thought. It acknowledges nothing you ever did to gain the points, and you’re left looking in a mirror wondering what any of it was worth. Nevertheless, when I play it again I will light every one of those candles, for the same reason I always tranq the enemies in Metal Gear, and for the same reason that I contributed to the camp supplies in Red Dead Redemption II.
Red Dead Redemption II doesn’t have the same things on its mind as Indika, but I played it in a similar way. The points are nearly useless, but to forego the tasks tied to the point balance would be to give up on the whole thing.
After Arthur’s tuberculosis worsens considerably, I made him eat more often, and paid more attention to what kind of food it was. I had him sleep more often and not push himself too hard. I knew he would die and that there was no way to alter the course of the plot, but nevertheless I needed to do these things.
Horse , Graphics
I’m human, I like snazzy looking games that run well. However, I have a huge chip on my shoulder about “photorealistic” graphics in video games and the relationship between hardware manufacturers, publishers, and players which perpetuates that set of aesthetic priorities.
i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i’m not kidding
What Red Dead Redemption II achieves in lighting and environment design almost justifies the twenty-years-and-counting chase for realism we’re still stuck in. It doesn’t, and it goes without saying it doesn’t justify the working conditions imposed on the game’s makers, but that it comes close attests to what it’s like riding around the map and taking in the clouds, mountains, and open fields. Shadow of the Colossus covers some of this same territory, but it’s nice to have more than one game on the subject of horse wandering. RDR II’s environmental graphics and design come close enough to real life that the sky itself is meaningful.
I bought one horse at the beginning of the game and stuck with her till the end. Stella <3
Movies and Missions
Among the scripted action, I acknowledge:
- Sadie Adler rocks
- Mary :)
- Mary :(
- Micah is an unnecessary GTA character who robs Dutch’s fall from grace of most of its subtlety and humanity
- more Charles, Hosea, and Rains Fall would only have been a good thing
Epilogue
(spoilers)
The John Marston epilogues disappoint somewhat—they’re overlong, overstuffed with combat that is too difficult, and too often pause to pay homage to the first Redemption—but nevertheless maintain the sense of Shenmue-ness that make the game worthwhile. As John you go to the bank to buy land; you go to the lumber yard to buy a prefab house; you participate in a music video rhythm game house-building minigame. Later, you take Abigail into town to get a couples photo taken before rowing out onto the lake to propose to her.
Epilogue 2
Chapter 4 is nearly a whole new video game from the one presented in chapters 1-3.
The soundtrack is great.
I have not played Red Dead Online. Perhaps a decade from now, when the servers go offline and I still haven’t played it, I’ll regret it.
I have typed all this and neglected to mention what I spent 65% of my time doing: taking screenshots.