Red Dead Redemption 2 Completionist Review

Let me just get it out there, I am a massive fan of 2010's Red Dead Redemption. It is one of my favorite game of all time. Building off the not-so-famous PS2 game Red Dead Revolver, Red Dead Redemption is truly one of video game's greatest dark horse. With virtually zero expectation from the gaming community, Rockstar San Diego has quietly created a masterpiece, perfectly juggling between compelling story, excellent writing/acting, addicting gameplay and a kickass soundtrack. This is the game that truly pushed the envelope of video game storytelling, cementing Rockstar's position as one of the top developer in the industry.

Fast forward eight years later to 2018, everything has changed, RDR became an instant classic following its release, GTA V is breaking all kinds of sales records making billions of dollars even years after its initial release. Rockstar now had to live with the burden of knowing that fans' expectation for RDR2 will be sky high. To this end, they had undoubtedly up their game, as evident by their own admission of working up to a hundred hours a week. Of course, crunching culture in the game industries is a whole other can of ethical worm worthy of it's own post, but the question remains, did they succeed? After pouring close to two hundred hours into the game, I think I may have some answer.

Story / Acting

When it comes to iconic moments in video games, I'm sure no one who has played RDR can forget the moment John walks out of his barn, his fate uncertain but all he can think of doing, is to buy time for Jack and Abigail to escape. He takes a deep breath, enter Dead Eye mode and... well, we don't talk about what happens next in this household. Anyway, for the sequel, how does Rockstar San Diego top that?

As it turns out, they don't. For the second game, Rockstar San Diego has crafted a story that are more complex thematically but also more anti-climatic and slow-burning than it's predecessor. In this story, you play as Arthur Morgan, one of the trusted lieutenant of the gang. As Arthur, you'll follow the gang as they move ever eastward across the map evading the law and witness first hand how the gang eventually comes apart with threats from without and within.

The main story missions is designed with one theme in mind - disillusionment, which is also Arthur's arc as he went from Dutch's loyal yes man at the beginning to eventually have doubt and later standing up for himself and openly opposing Dutch. During the beginning chapters, the main mission are designed in such a way that it lulls the player into a false sense of security. Confronted by the law, you can shoot up the entire town with minimal consequence to your gang. Robbing a bank in Valentine is also consequence free and rewards you with a big payday. This sense of invincibility combined with Dutch's idealistic speeches about his plan to "get our money back" and "Tahitian mangoes" hits all the right note, making sure that you as the player will stay in line with Dutch's order like the loyal Arthur would have.

Then, just as you begin to get comfortable, things will start to turn on you. During later chapter, a similar shoot-up-the-town mission will start with the sudden, gory death of one of your gang mate. Providing sniper cover during a peace negotiation with the O'Driscoll gang will get you kidnapped.  Dutch's plan to rob a bank will result in the death of several of your favourite characters. Between all these failures and Dutch still giving the same speech about "Have some goddamn faith in the plan", both Arthur and the player get to see just how oblivious Dutch is to the situation at hand. Then, there is the Guarma chapter where Dutch has lost all his power and he can't smooth talk his way out of shitty situation anymore, that is when his true nature is revealed to Arthur and by extension, the player. Underneath all the righteous words, he is just another a scared insecure paranoid mad man who would kill an innocent old lady on the off chance that she might betrays him.

This is when the main story missions start to feel annoying. You as the player would rather do anything else rather than approaching the mission markers with the letter D, just like how Arthur would feel about taking orders from Dutch. Technically, you could stop playing the game, but you are far too invested by now so that is not really an option. It isn't until the last chapter, where Arthur found out he is dying of TB that we were given more freedom to disobey Dutch's order in the main missions. That is when the player just like Arthur is liberated. One example of this, is rescuing John Marston from the prison against Dutch's will or when collecting debt for the gang, you can now decide whether to actually collect the debt or absolve it.

Remember the term "ludonarrative dissonance"? Back then we use to laugh at GTA4 where Niko says he wants to make the right decision in one second then we as the player proceed to crash our car into tons of pedestrians the next. With this game, it felt like Rockstar finally had its revenge. Creating a game where the main character can be so in sync with the player's intention and desire without being a silent protagonist is no small feat at all.

Another things worth complimenting is the camp. As a storytelling mechanic, the camp is genius. The camp first serves as place for the player to unwind, to just sit down and have some stew, get some sleep and replenish the stats as well as provisions. And while you are there, you'll inadvertently overheard conversations between gang members. A combination of curiosity and fear of missing out will leave you wanting to hear more, and before you realize you'll grow to like each gang member, checking up with everyone in the camp after every mission just to listen to what they might have to say. You can also run errands for your gang members, go out robbing a coach with them, go on a fishing trip together and make improvement to the camp surrounding so they can live more comfortably. All these interactions indirectly transforms the NPCs in your gang into well rounded characters you are emotionally invested in, making some character's death more hard hitting than usual.

Thanks to the excellent writing and acting, every conversations sounded natural, like an actual conversation between friends instead of objective filled dialogue meant for the player's ear. There are some fine acting here of course, Roger Clark's deep voice makes Arthur sounds sincere and instantly likable, Alex McKenna's slightly coarse voice naturally makes Sadie sounds tough like a lady you just don't want to mess with. Rob Wiethoff as a younger John Marston is great as expected especially in scenes with Cali Elizabeth Moore who is playing Abigail. That proposing scene between John and Abigail will make fans of the first game swoon while at the same time wishing the event of RDR1 didn't happen at all.

Rockstar being Rockstar, you know they'll push this to the next level, meaning the same high quality acting are also applied to random pedestrian NPCs walking around in the towns. Imagine my surprise as a Cantonese speaker when I heard pedestrian having conversation in Cantonese in the Saint Denis market. Another curiosity for me is that when you are far away from the NPC you are talking to, the characters will shout their lines instead of saying it in a normal voice. That makes me wonder, did they record a shouted and a normal version of every lines ?

And finally, let's talk about the MVP that is Benjamin Byron Davis as Dutch, which in my opinion is one of the best villain Rockstar has ever created. Why? Because a truly great villain should be someone we can identify with and Rockstar did just that with Dutch. For most of the game, you understand where Dutch is coming from, you'll actually like him. But when his plans all started to go sideways, and he no longer felt in control of the situation, that's when he start to reveal his true nature and actor Benjamin Byron Davis portrays his paranoia and insecurities perfectly. He is making bad decisions after bad decisions, taking revenge instead of walking away solely because he doesn't want to look like a fool in front of his people. His insecurities and ego got the better of him plus Micah stoking fire at his side, causing trust issue and eventually drove the gang to its doom. 

Dutch's descend into villain-hood is also happening slowly and gradually right in front of the us. Arthur, and by extension us the player tolerate it because he is the leader of the gang. When he said he wants to rob a bank in Saint Denis, Arthur knows it's a dumb idea, so do we, but we follow along, just like Arthur would. John tries to warn the gang, but he got dismissed and labelled as disloyal instead. Dutch van der Linde becomes a villain because Arthur and by extension us the player enable him to, to me this is truly some next level Stanford Prison Experiment stuff that prompts us to question our many decisions in real life. Furthermore, the thing that really gets to me is that his motive is not the usual self-righteous "revenge for dead daughter" or "sacrifice few to save the rest", but rather something as mundane and relatable as "I don't want to look like a fool in front of my friends". That's basically all of us at some point in our life. Honestly, I truly believe this character is going to go down as one of the best video game villain of all time. 

Gameplay

With a world so realistic, deep and interactive as RDR2, it is unavoidable that the control scheme will be complicated. In fact, it is amazing the UI developer are able to cramp all these different commands onto the Dualshock 4's limited amount of buttons at all.  A lesser developer would have resort to using QTE instead. The game's slow paced first chapter does a great job of easing the player to all the mechanics like tracking, hunting, shooting in dead eye mode and interacting with NPC. By the time chapter 2 starts, the control should already be second nature to most players.

Next it's the health system. In keeping with the overall realistic atmosphere of the game, RDR2 features a more realistic health system. There are five meters in total, 3 of them (health, stamina, and dead eye) are catered to the player's well being.  The other 2 are catered to your horse's health and stamina. Each meter have a core and ring surrounding it. The core will deplete over time, so the player have to eat food to restore it, which can be procure from hunting or bought from the grocery store. Some factors such as feeling overly cold or hot or getting sick will also accelerates the core's depletion. Then there is also the rings surrounding the three cores, which can be depleted when you get shot, run for a prolonged period, or use the dead eye. They can be restored or fortified by drinking tonics purchased from the general store or made using herbs in crafting, which can be done at the camp site. Doing various task such as hunting, crafting, drinking elixir or getting collectibles will also give experience which will level up the meters. Just like the control scheme, all of these can seem very overwhelming at first, but once you're used to it, you'll appreciate just how much more depth this health mechanism can add to the overall gameplay.

Another feature that sets this game apart from it's predecessor is the horse. Back in RDR1, the game is played more like Grand Theft Auto in the sense that you will tend to swap horses all the time, treating them basically like cars in GTA. But in this game, you will feel as though your horse is your in game pet, a loyal companion that you will spent most of the game with thanks to the bonding system. Just like a real horse, you won't be able to control it perfectly, when it got startled by predators, it will drop you off and take off on its own. You will feed it oatcakes when its stamina or health are low, brush it when it's dirty, pat it when it panics. And when you accidentally got your horse killed, you'll rather load the last save point and sacrifice all the progress made rather than getting a new horse. This relationship is truly one of the highlight of the game, making you feel like a real cowboy in the Old West.

But sometimes, realism can be a double edged sword. Case in point, to keep the arsenal period appropriate, the game will feature mostly low firing rate weapon. Although there are a few story missions that features a .30 cal machine gun, but when using normal weapons, the shooting can feel a bit clunky, as the low firing rate requires the player to readjust their aim after every shot, this is especially hard on horseback and in this game there are a lot of horseback shooting. So, if you are looking to score gold medal for the missions, auto aim mode is practically the only viable mode to play the game with. Also, it will be best to do all the collectibles mission first early in the game to level up your dead eye core. It will make dead eye mode last much longer and getting gold medal much easier.

Speaking about gold medals, here is where the game runs into trouble. The main missions are varied, well designed and generally quite fun, but it is also very cinematic and often times that means the game will slow you and your horse down while Arthur has conversation with whichever NPCs riding or walking along with you. This is perfectly fine for the first playthrough, but as you keep on replaying those missions over and over again for them pesky gold medals, it will turn into slow unskippable torture that will break your spirit as well as your X button.

And now we come to the part of the game which is downright broken, the mission replay system. First of all, there are no restart mission prompt when replaying mission, but that's fine, just cancel mission and select replay again from the pause menu. But there is a bigger issue here. Taking a page from Assassin's Creed (or maybe it's their own GTA4: Ballads of Gay Tony DLC), Rockstar has been padding the main missions with extra objectives, which are revealed only after completing the mission once. But unlike Assassin's Creed, which have pop-up message indicating whether the player passed or failed those extra objectives, RDR2 would have the player manually access the extra objectives checklist hidden deep inside the game log. It's problematic that none of this is explained in the game, I found out about this feature on reddit.

Finally, the biggest issue, player stats will be capped at a minimal level during mission replay, meaning you'll only have the minimum amount of health, stamina and dead eye and no money. Some extra objectives includes do twenty headshot, get 90% accuracy or get 10 dead eye kill. What is previously a challenging extra objectives now just become an impossible task. Then what's the point of this mission replay system?  The players are better off manually loading a previous save, and replay the mission over and over again, until they can pass all the extra objectives on the "first" try. Thankfully, I think even Rockstar realized this problem exist, which is why you are not required to get all gold medal for 100% completion. I can't believe I have to say, but Rockstar, you should learn from Ubisoft on how to make these mission replay thing.

With the main missions being such a hurdle, replay fatigue will eventually set in. So, the focus will be shifted to side quest like stranger missions, challenges, gambling minigames, camp activities, camp member fetch quest, camp decoration, hunting, fishing, watching shows, treasure hunting, solving murders, talking to NPC, collecting wall carving, dinosaur bones and cigarette cards, crafting weapons upgrade etc.

One moment you might be tracking a three star wolf, then a kidnapper with a girl on his horse might pass you by, the girl screaming for help, then you have to chase after the kidnapper to save that girl, on the way you might have pass by some dinosaur bones on the ground or a new type of animal you haven't inspect before, then you'll have to decide whether you should inspect those thing first. After you save that girl, you might accidentally aim your weapon at her, scaring her away. You'll curse at yourself for accidentally pressing L2 before holstering your weapon, just to realize the three star wolf is now nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, the whole world comes alive, the sandbox turns into a real place filled to the brim with emergent gameplay, letting the players live out their wildest cowboy fantasy, going wherever and doing whatever they want. The free exploration is honestly so addicting no player in their right mind will ever want to put down the controller, and by the time they do, the sun is probably already up and it's time to go to work. In many ways, this is the perfect demonstration of why Rockstar is still the king when it comes to designing an open world, bar none.

Last but not least, it is worth mentioning that as per usual, this game has excellent Rockstar Games Social Club support. Allowing you to track your in game progress, view your trophies, even going so far as to let you do online shopping for your in game materials, ordering from the catalogue book in the RDR2 game page, then your items will be delivered directly into your satchel in game. The companion app that acts as a second screen on a tablet device is also a nice touch, allowing players to use the map without pausing the screen, as well as reading the game manual, game guide or journal even after turning console off.

Graphics

When it comes the graphics, I think Rockstar just blow everyone out of the water. Just to establish, I played this game on a base PS4, running at 1080p on a 4K HDR screen. Based on the technical details alone, that would mean I am playing the second worst looking version of the game, stretch up to 4 times it's original resolution and you know what? It still looks fucking gorgeous, especially with HDR enabled.
Since I am not Richard Leadbetter and this is not the Digital Foundry, I will not be qualified to cover  advanced technical details like subsurface scattering (which is well implemented), texture filtering, anti-aliasing or screen space ambient occlusion. Rather, I will try to look at this from a layman's perspective.

It is obvious from the first glance that Rockstar spares no expense to make the game look great. The lighting, the landscape, Saint Denis at night, the flora and fauna all looks great from a distance, borderline photo-realistic, picturesque even. But what's really going to impressed people about this game, is the attention to even the smallest of details. I am talking about:

• The world will change gradually, you will see trees being cut down, dramatically changing how an area look, and later the same area will be reclaimed by nature. Also, there are railroad extension work in progress and houses being built. Some will eventually turn into a full fledged new building while some others will be left abandoned in a state of disrepair.
• Chinese railroad workers hammering individual nails into the rail road track, then stop to have a rest at the nearby camp when it started to rain.
• Water dripping along the ledge of the roof during and after the rain, their direction affected by which way the wind is blowing.
• Mud on the road and blood on dead enemy or animal carcass can stick your on your face and your shirt, and they will dry realistically. They can also be washed off when you go for a swim.
• Your weapon will also get visibly dirtier as you use it, although it doesn't really affect performance that much. You will even get to wipe it clean manually.
• Every page of Arthur's journal looks handwritten and every picture looks hand drawn with a pencil.
• No two houses are the same in this game, they even have different names on the map. Each house has unique NPCs you can meet or sometimes dead bodies inside, sometimes there are even letters or notes scattered around that give us clues on what happened in the house.
• The same is also true in Saint Denis, no two buildings or back alley are the same. Architecturally, they might look similar, but each building is decorated differently, with different furniture placed outside, unique signboard and unique paint job. Some looks to be in disrepair, some are in construction,  some looks brand new.
• Your horse will looks cleaner immediately after you brush it, you can also alter your horse's hair  color or give them braiding at the stables.
• You can take a bath, and even hire someone to scrub you clean.
• You can rob the store and injure the owner, the next time you show up, the store owner will be bandaged up. He will also recognize you if you didn't wear a mask during the robbery.
• That god ray when you are walking through foresty area in the game. Good god.
• There are dozens of plants, mushroom and flowers in the game and each one has a different picking animation.
• Animals will interact with each other, even when player is just spectating from afar, your body smell can alert them and when one animal is spooked and started running away, everyone will follow.
• That detailed skinning animation after you successfully killed an animal, and it is different for every animal.
• The stow skin on horseback animation, which will show the different layer of skin stacked up over each other. Also if you horse is already carrying something at the back, Arthur will gently slide the skin in underneath the object.
• Along with skinning, crafting, eating and drinking is also depicted in real time. Most game usually hide this process behind a menu, truly, I have never seen a video game so dedicated to small details that they actually show it in real time.

Of course, there are so much more details not listed here, if I don't stop here, this review will be 40 pages long. In short, all of these details comes together to make the world truly alive in such a way that no other video games have ever attempt before. That is not to say there are no compromise at all in this game. For example, there are certain terrains that is just impossible for the skinning or looting animation to take place, in those case, those animation will be skipped entirely, but those moments are few and far between..

Sound / Music

For starters, there are some really nice original score in the game, which helps enhance the overall atmosphere of the game. A few scenes where the score especially stand out is in:

• Pouring Forth Oil IV: The scene when Arthur, John, Charles and Sean wait the for the oncoming train after setting up an obstacle in the middle of the track, the score adds so much tension and eeriness to the scene, making it feel almost like a horror movie.
• Blood Feuds, Ancient and Modern: When the gang is riding up to the Braithewaite manor to rescue Jack, the slow beating drum really brings out the intensity of the situation, making you feel invincible like part of a powerful force, methodically destroying everything in your path in order to get revenge.
• My Last Boy: Later, when the gang teams up with Native American warriors to save someone in Heartland Oil Fields, similar slow beating drum will also be playing. Only this time there is some additional slow brooding trombone added to the background to give the scene a sinister undertone. Pairing this with the conversation going on between all the characters totally changed the overall tone of the mission, and as a result you'll no longer feel safe riding alongside your gang.

There are also quite a few nice original songs in the game. You can see Rockstar is trying a few times to replicate the soulful moments in RDR where you ride along to indie songs playing in the background. But in my personal opinion, they couldn't quite manage to recapture that magic here. Surprisingly, one of the musical moment that especially stand out for me, is in the epilogue. When you are building the Beecher's Hope ranch house as John with the help of Charles and Uncle. The song playing in the background is so nice and cheerful, for a moment there, it makes me forget about John's eventual fate four in-game years later . It is truly one of the most unexpectedly satisfying moment in the game.

And sometimes, there won't be any score playing in the background at all, like when you're out in the nature hunting and that's when you will notice the ambient noise in the game. Rockstar's OCD level of attention to details means the audio in this game is just as comprehensive as the visuals. Every place from the forest in the Grizzlies, the swamp in Bayou Nwa, the small town in Rhodes, the mining town in Annesburg to the city of Saint Denis all sounds different with their own unique characteristic. Put on a pair of headphone and you'll be able to hear the environment much better than you could see it, and it can often be your first warning against deadly animal prowling in the area or the first sign of strangers nearby needing your help.

Conclusion

All in all, RDR2 remains one of the most ambitious game I have ever play. Compared to the original RDR, Rockstar had upped their own game multiple times over, comfortably leaving most of the industry behind. Not that I endorse working a hundred hours a week, but it just goes to show that Rockstar magic is no magic at all, they don't have a special formula or a shortcut that helps them make their game so uniquely great. It's all sweat, blood and tears. Okay maybe not blood but no one can deny the toll that such a work schedule have on the developers physical and metal health. And just like every other art form, such is the price to pay for excellence.

While there are still some features that's somewhat broken or incomplete, the audio, graphics, gameplay and story all combined to make the overall package greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike most open world game out there that have you chasing number and experience point to level up, this is a game you play because you want to learn more about the world and its lore. And there is no element of micro-transaction whatsoever in the story mode, which made it extra praiseworthy. Red Dead Redemption 2 is truly a game worthy of the title Game of the Generation.