I’ve been playing on and off, but the deliberateness of travel (certainly a feature and not a bug) is making it hard for me to get much time in. RDR2 is not a “pick up and play for a few minutes” kind of experience.
As an example of this, take hunting. The last open-world games I’ve played that featured hunting were Assassin’s Creed games. In those games, once you’ve explored an area, there will be icons on the map showing animals which exist in that area. If you travel to the exact spot on the map marked with the animal icon you’re almost guaranteed to find one of those animals in sight. You shoot it, and you’ve got the supplies you need. Done. In RDR 2, the only thing that shows up on the map is a sketch of an animal if you have previously encountered that animal in that location. Even then, if you travel back to the location, there’s no guarantee that there will be one of those animals anywhere nearby. And for crafting supplies, you need a perfect pelt, so you need to find a perfect animal. There have been times in this game I’ve decided I wanted to, say, upgrade my satchel, for which I needed a perfect bison pelt, went to a location where I’ve encountered bison before, spent half an hour looking for one, didn’t find one, went to a different bison location, spent almost half an hour looking for one, finally found one, but it was only good and not perfect. Then I realize in real life that it’s late and I have to go to bed. I’ve spent an hour playing the game, and made absolutely zero progress in it. That’s a little too realistic, if you ask me.
And speaking of controls, has anyone ever had “rob” actually accomplish anything? I’m playing mostly as a good guy, but every time I’ve ever tried to rob someone, the NPC’s response is to pull out their own gun and start shooting me, leaving me with no choice but to kill them or, if I’m thinking quickly enough, whip out my lasso and hog-tie them. Not that I blame a person for trying to defend themselves, but if there is zero chance of a person giving in and handing over their money peacefully, why does the “rob” option exist?
So far, I think it is. Given that I had to buy a PS4 to play it, it was not an insignificant expenditure for me, and I’m happy I did it. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the game that I’ve never seen before, and that’s enough of a reason for me.
Curious if you can you make female characters?
To upgrade the satchel to the legendary level, I literally spent 7-10 days of real life gaming (at about the same rate you’re talking about here) hunting animals in and around Big Valley, simply to get about 3 or 4 perfect animal pelts. The cougars in particular were a pain in the arse - it looks like only one cougar will spawn at a time, and if it’s not a perfect animal to start with, you’re not going to be able to use it. And then, once killed, I had to haul the thing back to camp across much of the map (I wound up using trains to do this) to bank it and reset the area so another cougar would spawn.
It was just about worth it to never really have to worry anymore about space when looting, but it wasn’t exactly easy or non-time consuming. On the plus side I also killed a lot of more mundane wildlife which I was able to craft some of the unique clothing with.
There is a female option, though I didn’t try it - unsure if they’re as snaggle-toothed and unappealing as the male avatars.
I’ve been assuming that animals have to be killed ‘perfectly’ (e.g. with an arrow through the eye) to yield a ‘perfect’ carcass - but are some animals spawned perfect? I should just look it up on the Internet I suppose…
To get a perfect pelt, you need to:
- Have a perfect animal (when aimed at it’s got three little white dots next to the name of the animal in the bottom right hand corner of the screen- as opposed to one or two)
- Kill it with the “right” weapon - i.e. whatever the game suggests is the best weapon to kill it with when you push L1 (on PS4 - or is it R1 - I don’t remember right now) when looking at the animal
- One shot kill it
It doesn’t matter how or with what you kill Legendary animals - they’ll always yield the pelt and it doesn’t change the ability to craft with it.
If you go and find/kill the Legendary Buck first, and craft the trinket from it at a Fence, the perk gives you better quality animal skins, which allows you some leeway on these conditions (e.g. after getting it, I’d find a 3 point snake, mess up killing it with the right weapon, so when dead, it was a 2 point carcass, but on skinning it, get a three point skin).
If you look at an animal with your binoculars, aim at it with your gun, or are tracking it, you will see a number of stars next to its name. 3 stars indicates a perfect animal, 2 good, and 1 poor. They do have to be killed perfectly but they also have to be perfect to begin with. You can downgrade the quality of an animal with a “bad” kill, but never upgrade it with a “good” kill. So, for example, if the animal is of good quality to begin with, and you kill it with a single headshot with the “correct” kind of weapon mentioned in its description in the compendium, it will be a good carcass/pelt, but if you kill it with a bunch of shotgun blasts to the body, it will be a poor one. The only way to get a perfect carcass/pelt is to kill a perfect animal with a clean, quick kill with the correct kind of weapon. (Also, for animals you can lasso, lassoing the animal and killing it with your knife will always count as the cleanest possible kill.)
Also, if you kill the legendary buck, you can get the fence to craft the buck antler Trinket, which makes it easier to get a perfect animal product. The exact mechanics aren’t clear, but it lowers the threshold required to count as a clean kill. That is, it doesn’t make perfect animals spawn more often and you still need to kill a perfect animal to get a perfect animal product.
ETA: ninja’d
This is a little more accurate than what I have posted - a clean kill in the right area prevents degradation. The elk trinket prevents you from losing a perfect pelt off a less than perfect kill.
Later in the game, Dead Eye levelling improvements lead to showing all the vulnerable areas of a target which allows you to aim at something other than the head (if your angle isn’t right) and keep your skin level high.
Also, if you lasso something and kill it with your knife, you won’t degrade the pelt ever. Some animals can’t be lassoed though.
Is this true – is there really no auto-aim? Like, at all? I’m not sure I could deal with that; I’m not real good at hitting a moving target.
Sorry; I was a bit unclear. There’s loads of auto-aim if you want it (this is quite customisable). It’s my own stubborn choice to switch auto-aim off completely, then whinge about not being any good at shooting. But the way I’m thinking, I’m not going to improve unless I’m manually aiming/missing.
I am not a horse rider in real life, and assumed that part of horse riding was being able to rely on the horse using its own eyes. My horse is an asshole who will run head on into a tree or a pole, knocking itself out for a minute.
I REALLY want this to come out on PC.
The tip I heard is to not be pressing the X button (PS4-type) - if you just have the stick pointing in the direction you want to go, your horse will avoid trees. Also, if you lay off the X button, you won’t be prompted to jump onto someone else’s horse, or a wagon as you’re passing by.
I really started enjoying this after a rough start. I did have a few set backs. I had a save game set up so I could run my gold bar scam that I overwrote by accident, so I’ll have to find a new way to cheat. I also forgot that I should manually save often. I ran two missions one morning and then just let my PS4 go to sleep for the day. When I went to pick it back up at the end of the day, an update file needed to be loaded, which restarted my game and I lost all the progress on the those two missions. Arg.
That said, I haven’t been really playing that much. I just don’t have the time it would require - that and when I do have time, I’ve got ten other new video games or so (new from Steam sales, or old games I reloaded). When I game, I’m usually looking for maybe 20 or 30 minutes a go and I’m good. This game needs more attention I think. I believe I’m on Chapter 3 at this point, but the last few times I picked it up I just concentrated on hunting/crafting/accomplishments type things.
My horse was totally sprinting. I’m also on chapter 3, and was trying to quickly cross the wanted dead or alive zone where Blackwater is. To get to the other side. Those lawmen/bounty hunters over there mean business, so we were moving. They were hard enough to avoid without me and my horse both being laid out after running smack into a tree. Maybe I’ll rename my horse Bertha.
See, I don’t like riding horses in real life because I prefer for my mode of transportation to not have a mind of its own, and I don’t like riding horses in this game because my mode of transportation doesn’t have enough of a mind of its own.
I think you’re right in how to avoid horse collisions, though I almost always find falling off my horse, down steps and off small cliffs in first person quite amusing (not IRL). I’m also on Chapter 3 and rarely find the time to put the hours in, which I mainly spend noodling about and exploring. It’'s strange how the missions are my least favourite bit by some margin, while still enjoyable. And it beggars belief, the prospect of acquiring so many Perfect small animal carcasses to make all the fancy clothes in this. I haven’t even seen a robin or a badger, much less skilfully terminated a prime specimen.
Finally started getting more into the game, and I still think it’s fallen into the “bigger is better” trap. Perhaps I’d be proven wrong if I started playing Red Dead Redemption again after all these years, but the whole thing seems more complicated and more like work than the previous game.
Amusingly, Securitas AB, who now own the Pinkerton trademark, have decided that Rockstar owes them money. My favorite part is that Securitas AB “claimed [Rockstar] was trading on the ‘goodwill’ associated with the company’s trademarks, creating a false impression that the game was made by or connected with Pinkerton.”
Considering the history of Pinkerton National Detective Agency, I find it hilarious to suggest that the name has any actual goodwill in the modern world. Both in the business sense of goodwill and in the normal sense.
OK, I’m pretty sure I have completed the main story line and I am unhappy with a few things. (The completion percentage is at 75%, so I’ll withhold judgement for now.)
By the way, the song May I Stand Unshaken is pretty good.
That’s the song at the conclusion of Morgan’s tale? You really liked it? I don’t know if it’s better in the evil version, but I could barely stand listening to it with the good ending. Too croony, it reminded me of a 90’s Seal B-side more than a conclusion to a western epic filled with betrayal, revenge and redemption.
I didn’t realize that there were different endings. If choices I make determine which ending I get, I need a sledgehammer subtle notice like in Falout 4. “Warning: if you do this thing…”