4d ago

Day 231 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games l've been playing until l forget to post Screenshots

I continued working my way through Red Dead Redemption 2 today. I did the Bank Heist in Valentine and did a stage coach robbery camp activity too.

The game looks really gorgeous now that i don't have to worry about FSR muddling everything up.

One example is the mentioned robbery mission. The whole quest had raindrop falling from the roof that i just couldn't see before. Not to mention the way the bricks and stuff were wet from it.

I've done this robbery mission so many times now (in all honesty it's probably about 4 though) that it feels like second nature. Usually i just blow the safes open. But this time i decided to pick them all. I made off with $3000.

While on my way back from this mission, i had to stop to do the Second part of the Downes quest. I stopped at their farm, and before talking to them i went and played with their animals. They had this adorable dog chilling in the back by the goats.

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I love this guy, I was irrationally a hater at first but this guy's a gamers gamer.

Looks gorgeous. Can you explain how you made your graphics so clean to a tech moron?
- Recently i have a fancy gaming PC to handle all the heavy work loads. Before that though (as in last january), i was limited to my Steam Deck as my only gaming device. The thing i learned then is that the hard part is finding a good balance between resolution and Graphic Levels.
  This isn't formal advice from an expert or anything (i'm a Computer Science student who learned this stuff by messing with it), but I'd also advise to stay away from anything like DLSS and FSR unless you need them or you can drive them at high resolutions. They are kind of like AI upscaling for your game from what i know. If you have a low powered device, it's a miracle worker but it also muddys the picture. I've also heard people say this same thing about TAA, but i don't know about that one.
  If you're doing screenshots on steam i'd also advice going into settings, and telling it to save screenshots as an uncompressed copy. Steam will save it as a JPG which can crunch the hell out of it.
  Another thing though is that i've noticed that when i do these screenshots it looks a lot better then what they look like in gameplay, so that's something i'd keep in mind too

I love this game. It has several drawbacks, some of the physics make things feel like you’re underwater the whole time, the wanted system can be extremely irritating at the worst moments, and for a game with a world that is extremely alive the missions are extremely on rails where often even doing something slightly off the developers intended path will fail you
But despite that I still love it. The game is gorgeous years later. They put so much effort into the world. It’s not just the graphics, it’s every detail that just makes it feel so alive. Walking around the town the npcs are so thought out, have so much dialogue. The animals too. I remember playing other open world games after and just noticing more so how lifeless they felt in comparison; that npcs would repeat dialogue after 2 or 3 lines, animals would run in circles, etc. and the story is great.
I hope that once gta6 is done they turn to rdr3. Its overall a much better series with a stronger narrative, better characters, etc. with red dead they seem to not be as overly concerned with shitting it up with online bullshit and microtransactions though so the series might be done for
- I've heard some really compelling ideas to continue Red Dead Redemption either spiritually (as in with a different or slight altered cast) or literally (take Jack at the end of 1 and do something with it or tell a prequel story to RDR2). I'm really hoping Rockstar does make a 3, the franchise is too amazing to let it just die like that.
  
  I remember so many people being furious at rockstar for not releasing dlc on the scope of gta4 but honestly with this game I don’t know what form that narrative would take that could be satisfying.
  The main narrative is concluded decisively obviously. It’s a prequel so continuing with John would just be rdr1. Another undead nightmare is eh, zombies are so played out. I guess you could fill in what went on with Dutch or some of the others that show up in rdr1 but frankly I don’t really want to play as them. I suppose you could intro some new character that’s part of their new gang. I dunno. I get why they didn’t prioritize it (well that and more so that dlc costs a ton to develop for a pitiful return relative to something like gta online, which is kind of sad)

I'll get through the RDR2 story one day. I played it for two stints last year but I just space out and lose immersion every time the main story forces you to kill one hundred lawmen in the middle of a town. For a game that put so much effort into making the open world vibrant, alive and dynamic you face very little consequences for committing what can only be classified as genocide in the main story.
- I mean it is an era where up and moving 100 miles basically meant you started your life over. But that was kind of the plot: they were a gang of that era where they could run in a town, wreak havoc, disappear, and the infrastructure didn’t yet exist to reliably track them across the gigantic land mass that is North america.
  But by the time the game rolls around the beginnings of the modern federal government are happening and agencies to track people like them across the country are in full swing. So all of a sudden their way of life is coming to a close, quickly. Instead of just some pissing off a sheriff in a town and never being able to go back there, occasionally having a bounty hunter after you, you now have a huge team of people with the resources of a government coming for you.
  I think part of it that’s understated is the size of the map. The map is obviously big for a game but it’s supposed to be a huge chunk of America. When you compare the geography of the map to America it’s somewhat clear that it’s supposed to be a gigantic swath of America, from like Montana down to Louisiana and across to Texas. You can ride across the map in 20 min but obviously this would take months irl. Obviously this is about gameplay balance but as a result you lose the sense that Arthur is going extremely far away when he’s going from valentine to st denis, when in reality that would be like a month of riding and crossing several states. Even if he did a genocide that would probably shake the heat for a little while back then
  They did obviously play it up of course. If you literally murdered everyone in a town back then there would probably be more of a response from the surrounding towns to find you. But gamers like violence and it’s again about balancing gameplay vs authenticity. usually gameplay wins because otherwise you end up with a boring game
- You spend the entire game moving from place to place because the gang keeps getting into too much trouble.
  
  It might well be a me-problem. I had the same issue with Sleeping Dogs that I just finished last week. So I might just have a fundamental problem with the type of gameplay design these kinds of games go for and the fundamental ludonarrative dissonance you have to be able to look past to enjoy them. I just have a hard time squaring off war crime levels of mass murder as "getting into a little too much trouble". Killing a lawman or two as things get out of hand in Valentine? That's getting into a bit too much trouble. But Arthur Morgan literally kills hundreds upon hundreds of people and that just breaks my immersion.

I just finished my second full story playthrough a few days ago! It drags a bit at the end but is totally worth it.
- That's definitely the vibe i was getting towards the end when i first tried to play through. It felt like it was dragging on a bit. I almost wonder if all the cut content would have made it drag on longer or if it would help with the pacing

i'm still amazed every time i see shots of this game from 2018. everything else, even other great games, seem halfass by comparison
- All the time it spent in the oven was definitely good for it. There's very few games i feel like i can say feel the same way as what you describe.

Petting the dogs is my favorite part. Especially now, with the highest settings at 4k and ~50 FPS with a 7800XT.
- Any game that lets me pet dogs or cats earns an instant point in my book. It's such a trivial detail but one that really makes my day

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