I take it Dutch is the main villain of the original game? I did not know that, but they did a great job increasing my hatred of him over the course of the game.
Yes and no. Some federal agents blackmail John Marston into hunting down the scattered remnants of Dutch and his gang but then they renege on their deal and kill him; John’s son kills the agents in an epilogue.
When you noted that Dutch is a bad guy, I imagined someone watching Star Wars: Episode 2 and saying “This Anakin Skywalker kid is kind of an asshole.”
Yeah, I mean they did a much better job at making a relevant prequel than the Star Wars movies did. I played only RDRD2 and I did not feel all the advertising pushed the fact that Dutch was bad. I had never heard of him before playing the game.
I tend to think that in the end, he would always abandon all of them if he could get the cash to himself. His dream of Tahiti was always only for him, really.
I am on “Epilogue Part 2”, the final chapter of the game. My thoughts on the epilogue section so far:
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Was this made out of some kind of pressure to make more content featuring John, the lead character of the original?
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This feels like extremely high quality DLC, like Blood and Wine for Witcher 3. I…guess it is an epilogue, but I’m surprised and kind of impressed they included this as the main game.
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I am glad that Arthur’s weapons transfered over to John, though I did not realize they had until we had a proper shelter/camp setup. I think perhaps once I have a weapons locker again, that is the moment I got the old weapon cache Arthur had. I believe my weapons are identical to what I had. I wish I had inherited Arthur’s supplies as well, including all tonics and so forth. I know it makes no sense, but I kind of wanted to continue with all my stuff.
Is the epilogue boring? In parts, yes. I do think it is going to wrap up by letting me be John and wander the world hunting and surviving, which means I don’t need an old save with Arthur. It’s a very unusual way to end the game, but I find that I am enjoying it OK.
I’m doing the whole epilogue here but it is becoming less interesting to me. I’m sure(?) the missions are just as good as the main game, but I was more invested in that game’s story. Notice I now refer Arthur’s section as its own game. Come on, it basically is.
Looks like this will end and I will be John with open access to the world. I guess that is fine. I would have preferred Arthur at the end, but I’ll probably hunt with John.
I did find myself sighing and thinking, “Move it along, game, move it along,” for the first time since snowy Chapter 1. I mean…come on, keep it going. I’m kind of wrapping up the main story missions and will be very satisfied when it ends.
I’ve just started and the gang just got to the camp outside Valentine. On my first visit there, I was just walking around when suddenly I was in a fistfight with someone. All of a sudden the law was chasing me and I was dead. I certainly hadn’t tried to start anything.
The game is impressive so far, but I admit the interface isn’t as easy to sue as I’d hoped. The wheel menus still seem a little opaque and maybe it’s the port-to-PC thing but I’ll be damned if I can find an in game explanation of what keys do what. How do I whistle for my horse? I wasn’t writing this shit down as the tutorial missions went along.
It just beat it(credits just finished) and my answers are:
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Play with Mouse and Keyboard if you aren’t. Mouse lets you aim better and once you figure out dead-eye and also buy a bunch of provisions, you will be able to heal and maintain health better.
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“H” is the default key for calling your horse.
It’s a ton to learn for the first 10+ hours, but the back 40+ hours feel very smooth once you learn it. I had to turn off “Sticky Keys” or something on my Windows 10 because the left shift activates them once you push it 3-times fast and I did that a LOT.
- I will admit, I bumped a few people accidentally and had a full-blown fight break out over nothing. I re-loaded a couple times because of this. More than a couple, most likely.
I felt basically the same way about the epilogue-with-different-character from RDR 1.
Some final thoughts on the story campaign, which I spent most of my time with. Hunting, fishing, surviving out in the wild, that is what I can do next now that I am John and the main mission is over.
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This was one of the longest action-adventure open world games I’ve played in terms of main story. Breath of the Wild and Witcher 3 were long as well, but not even close if you focused on the main quest. This game was really huge. I loved it.
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Great story. I know they are all terrible people who kill a bunch of people, but I still felt for both John and Arthur by the end. I think having Arthur picked up as a kid and essentially raised by Dutch helps us empathize somewhat with him as a character. When he finally wisened up, it was pretty satisfying to see.
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I know it all goes afoul, but I love that John’s story basically had a happy ending. Sadie lived, too, right? I did not catch every sequence in the closing credits(off to youtube to see them), but I took it that she lived. Is that right? Sadie was one of my favorite characters.
I won’t be playing Red Dead 1 anytime soon, but it is sad to learn that John’s ranch is not the happy-ever-after we hope for. Looks like his son walks away from a life in crime in the end? I hope so. Jack is clearly more inclined to education.
Great game. I would recommend it to almost anyone, but would warn that:
A. The opening 5-7 hours are pretty hard to get through. Not like you die a lot, but it is a very slow build. Very slow. Tons to learn.
B. That epilogue was nice, but really did begin to drag on a bit as I played it. I definitely got to the “come on, let’s move it!” phase a few times there. Never got tired of Arthur’s story, though.
I found this kind of thing pretty annoying.
I love that about RDR2. I am a fan of the Watch Dogs series, but it just annoys the hell out of me that you’re allowed to plow innocent people over left and right without consequence. Takes me out of the game. I don’t know if it’s just laziness on the developer’s part, or a desire to make the game easier for lazy players.
As a side note, I am in the middle of an RDR2 game play, just scraped up enough cash to buy an Arabian (I think $1050), and he got killed a few minutes later. I don’t even know how he got killed. I think i didn’t park him properly and he got run over by a trolly in Saint Denis maybe while I was doing something else. NOT fun times.
Well, do you have a save? Death is not permanent for horses if you buy the Horse Reviver bottles from the general store. They are about $9 each, but I bought 5-6 of them. My horse only “died” a few times, but it was very helpful to be able to revive him right on the spot. He just gets back up with partial health, but is fine otherwise.
I’m taking a break and playing another game I never played. Grand Theft Auto V. Only playing single-player. I’m hoping it is fun and good. I have heard good things.
I had only played GTA 1 and 2 on PC back in the day. I looked at GTA III for a few minutes back when it debuted on PS2.
No, I had no recent saves. I found the body, but got killed in a shootout. By the time i got to him again there was only a saddle, no option to revive. I checked the stable to see if maybe he was there, no dice. Maybe it was a bug.
Not being in the stable is no bug. Death is permanent if you don’t revive them. Saddle being the only thing left? I’m not sure. That could be a glitch, but I don’t think my horse ever died AND I died, so I don’t know how the reload works on that. I would have guessed if you both die, it reloads for you and your horse would be with you when it reloads.
There’s a white Arabian that runs wild up around Lake Isabella, it doesn’t cost anything to catch her. I stumbled upon her in a snow storm and managed to tame her. She was my main horse for the latter part of the game.
I heard about this, but never went up there. I actually did not find my ~$500 horse to be all too bad. I never had a mission or event where I needed anything faster or better. Is the Arabian simply amazing in all categories?
Not that I particularly noticed, though I think its stats are very good. Like you, I didn’t find my old work horse to be a liability at all, I could win races with him, run away from gangs, chase down people, he was just fine and I was happy with him. I didn’t go searching for the white Arabian, I just happened across her as I was exploring, a white horse all alone in a blizzard, looking at me from between a few trees. It was only after I caught her that I subsequently discovered she was a rare elite horse. I think it’s a testament to the skill of the game’s developers that they gave the horse an aura of specialness that prompted me to go out of my way to tame her when I’d never bothered before with all the other nags hanging around in the fields.
I bought & downloaded the XBone version on release day but finally got around to playing while waiting for content to be added to Watch Dogs: Legion.
This would explain why Arthur became WANTED after looting that one body on the porch of the O’Driscoll cabin in the woods. Somebody must’ve seen that from the road.
UGH! I hated it when I looted some remote bodies way out and a crime was reported. In a game about survival, I needed to feel more allowed to loot bodies after a big shootout. To be fair, I went back to aggressive looting later and I was not detected all the time.
I ended the main story game with something like $4000. Is that pretty typical? I spent money, saved money, and more or less did not make making money my main goal.