
How the West Was Digitized: The Making of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 - pcestrada
http://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games-red-dead-redemption-2.html
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tkiley
I haven't played a big-budget game in years, but I decided to give RDR2 a try,
specifically because reviewers described it as slow and boring.

I think it's great, for the exact reason that other people think it's slow and
boring. It's specifically designed to quash your tendency to speedrun or
minmax: It _requires_ you to simply come along for the ride.

On the one hand, this is a bit annoying sometimes. On the other hand, it
revives the sense of wonder that I haven't felt since I learned to treat games
as something to win rather than something to get lost in.

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abledon
I feel the Internet has quashed my enjoyment of single player games ... it’s
like I gotta have a multiplayer competitive at all times , if a tree falls in
the forest and no one hears , Meh who cares not fun haha

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frabert
Interestingly, the Internet has quashed my enjoyment of multiplayer games: so
many people are playing them, there's no chance I am going to be able to
compete, given that I only play occasionally. When "multiplayer" meant "lan
party" or "friends come together and play a skirmish" you actually had a
chance, but now? Not so much.

I really prefer single player games with a nice story and an action that's not
too hectic that I can enjoy at my own pace.

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stone-monkey
This is why for me, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft were my fondest memories of
playing online games. The standard multiplayer was always going to be
competitive, but the real wonder was in the custom games. This was before the
big wave of indie game creators, so you had a bunch of people churning out
interesting and creative games with the WC3 editor. The custom games were most
famous for DOTA, but you had genres like Tower Defense which blew up in a big
way in the custom game scene.

You had maps like wilderness survival and troll tribes, which, if you've
played Don't Starve, feels largely derivative. Footmen Frenzy, Dark Deeds,
Sheep Tag, Uther Party (Mario Party ripoff), LAOP, Parasite, Mars Survival,
Risk knockoffs, etc. It didn't matter if you sucked at these games, because
most people sucked at them; the playerbase for each custom game was pretty
small. A good time for novelty - I'm hoping reforged brings back some of that
magic from that scene. I played LOL after moving on from Blizzard games (Wow
was never my thing), but it wasn't the same. Also, very toxic. Not a great
game for casual players.

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empath75
I’m sort of ambivalent about the game and it’s largely because I have two
young kids at home and have maybe an hour at a time to play and the amount of
what I would call ‘empty’ time in the game really stands out.

There have been times where I’ve done all the work I need to do to get some
unbroken alone time, spent 40 minutes playing and gotten absolute nothing
accomplished which really sucks given that it might be the only time I could
play that week.

I get that it’s atmospheric but as a dad game it just sucks.

I’d like to be able to load the game and play through a couple of missions
quickly without all the faffing about brushing my horse and crafting and
hunting and what not.

Basically my life is full of enough chores that I don’t need games that
simulate doing more chores.

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dweekly
Request for service: Dad Game Reviews. Games that are fun to play and more
engaging than the mindless idlers and puzzles that are out there today but
support meaningful episodes of 30-40 minutes.

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sosborn
I think Wired used to have a column like that.

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dweekly
Called what?

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sosborn
Geek Dad.

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cletus
Lots of respect for Rockstar but... Add FL I alone on that I thought GTAV was
at best soulless and at worst terrible. I almost stopped playing when Trevor
became available.

Whereas GTA4 was genuine satire (Republican space rangers anyone?) the sequel
had poor characters and I honestly have never gone back to it since finishing
the main storyline, the first time this was true in the series.

Anyway RDR2 Looks amazing. I bought an Xbox just to play it. Who knows how
long it'll take to get to PC but I'll buy it again when it does.

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culot
I don't think the last one ever made it to PC, I assumed this one also would
never get there.

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giobox
While it’s true RDR 1 never made it to PC, with GTA V rockstar invested a lot
optimising their tech stack for PC - it’s a huge leap in quality over the
pretty poor port of GTA IV.

GTA V’s PC port was also financially an enormous success, it cemented a place
in Steams top seller list for _years_ thanks to the success of GTA Online.

Couple this with the leaked RDR 2 PC developer job titles that have been
discovered via oversharing Rockstar employees on LinkedIn, I think there is a
good chance RDR2 follows the GTA V release model and a PC version hits 12-18
months after console release.

I bet a significant number of gamers ended up buying GTA V twice at full price
thanks to the staggered release schedule last time (I and many friends
certainly did), I’d not be surprised at all if this factors in their
decisions.

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shocks
The game is good but the controls are so bad it's comical.

Don't try and get on your horse if someone is standing near it because
triangle is also "get into a fight with that person". You can back out of the
fight, but not with the circle button (which is so often the "go back" button)
- this time circle is the punch button!

Basically the core game loop is: move a bit, look in the bottom right to see
if you can press some buttons to do a thing, do a thing or move a bit more.

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mlthoughts2018
RDR2 starts out almost as an anti-game, then progresses through a phase that
feels like a stereotype of old westerns. I think it jerks you between the two
extremes to set up the second half of the game, which involves much more
drama, racial overtones, and more examination of the death of outlaw life that
the game’s promise is built on.

There are two main criticisms to me.

(1) the dialogue is very cheesy and superficial too often when it would be
better to just not have it at all. More segments of deep sparsity, even when
other characters are around you (think Shadow of the Collossus) would make it
even more desolate and impactful.

(2) The mechanics of the controls and indicated special instructions are
sometimes clunky to the point that you fail missions or miss out on things
accidentally just due to the control system. I know this will never be
perfect, but it is frequently so bad in RDR2 that you are very aware of it and
frustrated by it as you complete tasks.

Despite this, it’s easily one of the best games I’ve ever played on multiple
dimensions.

It makes me very excited for Death Stranding as well, which I think will be
something of a sci-fi / dystopian variation of what RDR2 is.

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onlyfortoday2
what exactly makes it one of the best games you have ever played?

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mlthoughts2018
Several things.

The scale of technical achievement is by far more impressive than anything
that came before. Metal Gear Solid 5 might be the closest thing in terms of
open world technology, but RDR2 is far superior to it.

The anti-game aspects create a very different dramatic experience than most
games. Sometimes you just ride along with another character and do nothing but
observe what happens. Other times your plans get derailed in an Inception sort
of way and you end up halfway acrosd the map doing something you never
intended, none of which has anything to do with the story. This happens in
ways that are much more organic and natural than previous similar mechanisms
in e.g. GTA games.

The story deals with a lot of themes that have more impact because of coming
across them in an open world (stumbling into KKK meetings, seeing lynched
bodies hanging in swamplands, tracking down a gang that tortures animals,
finding evidence of families split by slave trade, and many more).

The main story is compelling and well crafted, but the fuller picture from the
pastiche of stuff in the world makes it feel effective, and the scenes of
blood-thirsty wild west action feel more like uncommon punctuation marks than
important aspects of the plot.

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defen
> The scale of technical achievement is by far more impressive than anything
> that came before. Metal Gear Solid 5 might be the closest thing in terms of
> open world technology, but RDR2 is far superior to it.

Yep. MGSV has better graphics and far better controls, but the open world in
MGSV always felt dead, especially as you got away from enemy bases or
outposts. RDR2 does a much better job of always giving you something to _do_
out in the open world that isn't necessarily mission based. MGSV also
basically has no friendly or neutral NPCs in the mission areas, which further
contributes to breaking the immersion of being in an actual world.

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mlthoughts2018
RDR2 does an impressive job of making the stuff seem to organically happen.
Smoke signals from random camp sites, animal movements, strangers, other
riders on the roads. I’m sure future games will make it even smoother and more
integrated, but it’s already impressive in RDR2.

You can also completely ignore these interactions, but you risk missing out on
things that will be much harder to do if you wait and come back later, or
which might not reappear as options, like helping a stranger or looting a
specific enemy camp.

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pier25
Just today I started playing it, and it's really impressive. It's like being
in a Cormac McCarty novel.

I imagine the pacing, realism, and atmosphere is not for everyone, but if it
is your cup of tea this is (so far) a masterpiece in single player gaming.

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monochromatic
I see it as more like being in Westworld.

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pier25
Good point!

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kordlessagain
I used a video's frames of myself playing RDR2 to train a neural network. I
then showed it a photo my son took of some cows at the in-law's place. Here's
what happened:
[https://photos.app.goo.gl/sDTofashQdDSUJMdA](https://photos.app.goo.gl/sDTofashQdDSUJMdA)

The network was trained with [https://nanonets.com](https://nanonets.com), if
anyone is interested. Interesting stuff, given the knowledge came from
synthesized horses.

I did not train or segment any other entities other than Arthur and his horse.
Labels were 'horse' and 'human'.

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e_proxus
There are cows in the game too. Did you use those in your training set?

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corysama
If you like this, you can find more at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/)

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cpeterso
GDC posts videos of game postmortem presentations from the games' developers,
including classic games like Bard's Tale and Another World:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2e4mYbwSTbbiX2uwspn0...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2e4mYbwSTbbiX2uwspn0xiYb8_P_cTAr)

