I’m surprised no one has mentioned the hilarious dialog moment when Marston and the Sheriff and the card players all stand up and point guns at each other. Someone says “You know what we have here?..” (of course the obvious answer is literally “A Mexican Standoff!” But Marston doesn’t say that; he answers with something like “yeah… a difficult situation is what we have here.”
Hilarious. I’m sure someone will come along with the exact dialog.
It’s not the sheriff. It the guy slinger and it happens in Mexico 
It’s something like.
The German Guy: There must be a name for this.
Marston : … Yeah …, an impasse.
I did get a giggle out of it I have to say.
A question for anyone who has completed the game: Can you still do stranger missions and such after the main storyline is complete like GTAIV?
I’m starting to get close to the end and I’d like to know if I should just take the time now. It’s been tough though because the story is good and I keep wanting to push the plot forward.
Does picking all the good or all the bad options give you anything in the I Know You stranger mission?
The former would still explain why he’s bulletproof, but would mean that John’s gone a bit loopy and is seeing things. I missed him outside the barn at first, dressed in black he kinda mixes in with the Bureau agents. He’s the only one not pointing a gun, as far as I can see.
@ MichaelEmouse, it affects his dialogue in the next encounter - I discouraged the man from cheating, to which he replied something like “…curious, you kill people yet honour the vows of marriage…”
@ capeo; (very minor spoiler alert);
You can still freeroam after the main quest, although I haven’t done any stranger quests after it. I know of only one stranger quest you definitely can’t do after the main quest has ended, that of the one I harp on about above. You can still do bounties, minigames, all that stuff.
Brilliant. Thank you.
I love how animals seem to die of old age. Some coyote walked slowly to the middle of a dirt road near me and just died there for no apparent reason.
Best part of dialog in the entire game.
So I just beat the game tonight. All in all this game has the best voice acting of any game I’ve ever played, bar none. John Marston was a great character and was very believable, though sometimes he was forced to play along for the sake of the video game by doing tasks for people etc… The facial expressions was outstanding throughout. I was a little let down by the ending, only because everyone hyped it up so much. Now for some spoiler stuff (don’t read unless you beat the game. Major spoilers within:
[spoiler] The showdown with Dutch was very anti climactic. When he throws himself off the cliff with no explanation as to why he went crazy I was let down.
When I say I was let down by the ending I’m specifically referring to the massive amount of boring ranch shit you have to do with Abbi, Jake and Uncle. I made a point of avoiding all of the cattle herding, horse breaking and hunting during the game because I didn’t enjoy it, then it was forced on me for over an hour before the final showdown. I realize that it was there so you could build a bond with this family before the finale but I was just mentally ready for it all to be over and that chapter just went on and on.
I did like the finale scenes where Jake takes over for his Dad. Leaves room for a sequel.
[/spoiler]
Never tried any multiplayer.
Random encounters were VERY few and far between for me. Don’t know why. Riding from place to place got really boring because I was never having random encounters.
The interface needs work. I particularly disliked having to set a way point, find a bare spot, set up camp and THEN choose to travel to destination. There should have been a way to mark the way point on the map and choose immediately to travel to the way point.
The graphics and scenery were spectacular. No complaints there.
John Marston was incredibly well done, both by the voice actor as well as the animators.
All in all a great game and the first Rockstar game I’ve actually played all the way through to the end.
Yep, I’m done with it and I’m sending it to someone for $40. That’s more than I can get for it at GameStop and less than he can get for it new.
Good game. I thought that how they came in to kill John was pretty contrived. Why would they do that? Just because they could? I didn’t think it quite fit in, even though the Feds were pretty much psychopaths.
I was slightly annoyed at John’s [spoiler]decision - he spots a firing squad in front of the barn, walks out the front door and pulls and gun. Bam, goodnight John. If he’d have gone round the back the fight would still be hard, but not as suicidal.
On why the Feds still came from him, Ross pretty much tells Jack at the end - “Your father killed himself with the life he lived.”
The Feds constantly remind John that they know of his criminal misdoings and can put him away at any time. The paper lumps John in with Dutch and Williamson as gang members killed by Ross (even if you’re a legendary hero, which annoyed me).[/spoiler]
I liked the ending:
[spoiler] You knew they really couldn’t let John live. He was a murderer and you knew they were just using him. That’s why John just walks out to be killed. He has to die or they’re never going to leave his family alone. It’s a pretty standard Western trope actually.
I also especially love how you don’t see the end credits until you track down Ross as Jake. That was epic.[/spoiler]
All the way through the ranching missions I was expecting to come back and find the family dead. I’m glad it bucked my expectations…although I still want to know what Abi died of 3 years later.
I suppose. And yeah, there were some Western stereotypes and tropes running about, but it wasn’t nearly as steeped in stereotype as previous Rockstar games are/were.
I just polished up the story last night, and while I loved this game I have one major bitch about the ending.
[spoiler]I can live with the fact that John dies in the end. Immediately, though, I was struck with … now what the fuck do I do about all the side missions I’ve been ignoring. Having Jack pick up where John left off just blew the whole continuum for me. Not like we were dealing with hyper-reality here … I must have killed 1000 people in a week and half as John … but having Jack age to an adult and nobody else ages a day killed it for me.
For example … I started the Daedalus and Sons mission (the guy with the flying machine); I took forever to collect all the stuff he wanted and then got the “Return in a couple of days for the maiden flight” message … which I ignored because I wanted to finish the story.
Cut to … how many years later? … and Jack shows up where this guy has apparently been just hanging out on the side of a cliff for John to show up. But Jack gets to meet him instead and it’s like nothing out of the ordinary is afoot.
Not to mention that I didn’t get to play dress-up with John because I didn’t go for any Outfit challenges before the end either.[/spoiler]
I hated that.
Wanted to resurrect this thread just to give it some props - while I’m nowhere near the and yet, I’ve found this game amazingly immersive.
Aside from the flatout beautiful visuals (riding through Tall Trees with the setting sun angling through the forest; the vast desert sky on a clear night; the sight of a mustang cresting a hill at dawn), there have been some very amazing random encounters.
Riding in the backroads near McFarlane’s Ranch, I came across a woman’s body, with a distraught man standing over her, sobbing. I got off my horse and approached him to see if this was a mission, but no interactive prompt appeared. So I got off my horse and started to ride away - then behind me I heard a single gunshot that quite simply shocked the hell out of me. I turned around, and the man had shot himself. I was quite shaken - was she killed by wildlife, and her husband couldn’t go on? Or did he kill her, and was unable to deal with the grief? If I’d have lassoed him and rode him into town, would he have still killed himself? I actually wanted to know more about this random little encounter that took no more than 30 seconds.
Another one - I had found and broken a black horse, which apparently are fairly rare. It was a beautiful horse, and I became quite fond of it - it seemed less afraid of dead things and predators than the other horses (although that could have just been because I was bonded with it), and it had stamina for days.
I had gotten off the horse to pick some herbs, and in the middle of the loot animation heard a train coming. “Oh, well, I thought, I’m not on the tracks.” But my horse was. As I frantically mashed the buttons to call my horse, the train bore down in what seemed like slow-motion. When it hit, the horse simply exploded. It was funny, shocking, and horrifying all at the same time - made double worse by the fact that my 7-year old daughter was watching (I let the kids watch when I’m just riding around). I felt awful, but I couldn’t go back to a save point because I had just spent a couple hours collecting the raw materials for a mission. I now regret not going back to a save point, because I haven’t found a horse like that again.
Not to mention the surprise bear attacks, the random horse-jackings, and the neat little moraility system (note: not all good deeds go unpunished - the moral choices they throw at you are compelling) - this game is quite impressive.
As for glitches, the closest I came to one (besides a lock-up or two) was one mission where I had to defend the gates of Espiwhatchamacallit and then meet the guy (I can never remember side character names) back up on the porch. But when I got there he had wedged himself in between a planter and the railing and no matter how much I punched him in the head, he just stayed there jogging in place – I had to reboot to get out of it.
But I did have a great random grizzly attack. I was traipsing through the woods in Tall Trees after a bounty. I thought I was being all smart and stealthy sneaking into the camp … and bam! … grizzly out of nowhere. It startled the hell out of me. I did manage to kill it, but by then I was in a full-on firefight with my bounty’s minions. Once I dispatched all of them, I had to take off on horse for the bounty. Unfortunately, I just tore off after him in a straight line and ended up at the edge of a cliff watching him ride off below. Just as I turned my horse around to find a way down … bam! … grizzly number 2 (I’m assuming the mate of the first one I killed) totally ambushes me, flinging me and my horse off and over the cliff.
I made it, but poor Ol’ Paint bit the big one.
And my bounty got away.
I laughed.
It’s killing me not to read the spoilers until I’ve finished the game. I just got back from vacation and haven’t played in over a week. I’m not sure what the above quote means… “Stranger quest?”
As I type this it has suddenly dawned on me that “stranger quest” is the quest that I get sent on by the stranger who knows things about me, like he’s trying to determine my morality (or at least get me to prove my morality).
But to be sure… “stranger quest” isn’t some other sort of character I’ll control is it? Sort of like Mona in Max Payne 2.
So a few questions for you people who have more experience with this game.
1)If a bounty gets away, do you get a chance to get him later? (like will his bounty poster ever be displayed again?
2) How do you guys handle the hooker (and others) who call for help, but only steal your horse? I tried having my gun ready to shoot her off the horse when she pulled me off it, but the game didn’t really let me as it kind of went to a cut-scene where I watched the bitch ride away on my horse.
3) Who do you help when you hear gunshots or yelling? Sometimes I get there too late. Sometimes I kill the wrong person.
I’ve been quite enjoying it. I’ve finished up single player* and started on multiplayer. It’s actually the first time I’ve played a multiplayer PS3 game (and the first time I’ve played on-line since… oh, about 2005 or so.) I’ve been quite liking the multiplayer, even if it is very much in need of a patch.
*That is as far as it’s possible to, so I have 98% complete or thereabouts. Rockstar botched the programming so that it’s impossible for people playing the game on Asian/Japanese PS3’s to play the arm wrestling minigame by forgetting that the X/O inputs are different on them. Oops.