⛺️🤠 Why I Love Red Dead Redemption 2 🤠⛺️ #RDR2

I awake in my bed and stare into the wilderness. My bed is adjacent to Flat Iron Lake in all its splendour.

As I sit on my bed I look across the Lake and think about what happened yesterday and what I’ll be doing today.

The first thing to focus on is picking up a few bales of hay and getting those horses fed.

Then I’ll head over to the wood pile and chop a few more logs.

After that, I’ll chat with a few people around the camp to see what they’re up to.

I mustn’t forget to make sure I donate some money to camp funds and see what other items I can donate to camp that may be of use.

Once I’ve done all that I think I’ll head out on my trusty horse “Mushy Peas” and see if we can locate Albert Mason to help him with his wildlife photography.

Assuming all goes well with Albert and that he doesn’t get consumed by the local wildlife, I’ll probably pitch up camp and craft a few items in the wilderness.

If the ride back to camp is too long then I’ll sleep in the Wilderness and head back on over to camp in the morning. Hopefully, I’ll get the opportunity to catch up with Dutch to see what his thoughts are on our next steps for the camp and where we go from here. I’m sure there will be plenty of things that need doing in that respect…

There you have a typical day in Red Dead Redemption 2...

Red Dead Redemption 2 has surprised me in a way that I never thought it would. 

It has made me want to role-play the character of Arthur Morgan. When I started out, I expected something different. I expected this to be a game that was essentially a badass cowboy sim. I thought it was going to be a game that I just went around causing havoc in whilst pushing the story along by chasing down markers on the map. But the game has made me play it in a different way. I have grown to understand each character a little more each time I play. I’m totally invested in the character I play (Arthur Morgan) and it feels like I am actually playing as Arthur in a film like setting. It’s pretty much a gritty western tale with light-hearted moments and flawed characters where you are playing the lead role and your co-lead star is Dutch.

Because of this realisation, I have been playing this game not to complete it but to be immersed within it and live out the life. There’ll be days where I do nothing more than head out and get things for the camp and discover some interesting locations before I head home. These days will mean that the story doesn’t move along at all and I’m okay with that. I think that it’s all a part of this overall experience.

My favourite game of all time is probably Fallout 3. It’s the type of game that hands you a blank piece of paper and says “go and write your own story” from beginning to the middle to the end it is your own personal experience with very few set pieces to get in the way.

RDR2 is different to that as it has the set pieces and story missions that drive things along but it also has the same sense of wonder that Fallout 3 has or LOZ BOTW has when you wander its landscapes and discover little stories and details that are dotted around the vast landscapes.

It was never in doubt that this was going to be a great game but what has surprised me has been how much I actually care about the characters and am invested in their backstories and journeys (something that Fallout 3 may actually lack).

I think this sentiment was summed up perfectly by Brad Shoemaker from GB when he said in his Top 10 Games Of 2018:

"For me, it's the first game to effectively synthesize elements of all those types of games, giving me a playground of seemingly impossible vastness and historical detail, an intricately cinematic presentation, and a character whose fate I cared so much about that I wanted to engage with every bit of what the game allowed me do, up to and including taking a bath whenever I felt like I was dirty or treating myself to a haircut and some new clothes after my heart was broken. 

I did chores around camp, chatted with gang members, went fishing to unwind, made camp when it got dark. Everything I did to engage with the absurd, obsessive level of mechanical detail was to support my innate sense of what I felt was natural for my character to do given his state of mind and the events of the story."

Source: 💣 (Brad Shoemaker - Giant Bomb) 💣

Rich