| <br>The release of the original _ Red Dead Redemption _ in 2010, along with the _ Undead Nightmare _ expansion, left players wanting more of everything. More shootouts and saloon fights. More eccentric and wily characters. More riding horseback through the vast, open world of the western frontier. And while it was a long eight years, Rockstar made sure that the wait was well worth it – albeit not without some controversy . _ Red Dead Redemption 2 _ immerses players in the grueling world of the wild west with familiar gameplay dynamics that have been taken to the next level to not only make _ Red Dead Redemption 2 _ an easy favorite for game of the year, but also Rockstar’s crowning achievement to d<br><br>Like I'm sure many of you have been doing, I've spent a portion of my weekend playing that new cowboy game everyone has been talking about. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been the game of choice in my off-time these past two days and even though I'm surely not as far into it as some others are, it's easy to see after any amount of playtime just how gorgeous its open-world is.<br><br> <br>Shigeru Miyamoto famously said, "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever." There are examples both for and against this in the games industry, but with the recent delay of Red Dead Redemption 2 , many have wondered what this might mean for the title. While most turn to this quote and hope for the best, there is still a chance that things aren’t as good as they seem over at Rockstar. The company is famously tight-lipped. Even if there was trouble, we would never hear about it. With so many secrets still up in the air, we set about taking a different angle on the game’s de<br><br> <br>Players take on the role of Arthur Morgan, who starts the game as the right-hand man to gang leader Dutch van der Linde. After a ferry heist goes awry, the gang is forced to flee the town of Blackwater and live a life on the run from the law and others hellbent on seeing the gangs’ demise. The gang performs various odd jobs and heists to fund their survival, but Dutch’s leadership and decisions eventually begin to take their toll on Arthur, who starts to question Dutch's intentions. _ Red Dead Redemption _ _ 2 _ features many of the characters from the first game – including primary protagonist, John Marston – with the story ultimately tying into the beginning of the original game _<br><br>Let's be honest, life can be pretty boring at times. In fact, more often than not, what you do in a given week is lame. Sure, there are highlights and moments in everyone's life that you think back on frequently but most of the time, what you do in a day isn't exciting. Think about it: every morning you surely wake up, take a shower, go to work, eat some food, come home and go to bed.<br><br> <br>What adds to the wariness is the fact that Rockstar - a Take-Two Interactive subsidiary - had originally intended on releasing DLC for _ GTA V’s _ story mode, which never actually came to fruition. Then, when asked about the planned release of the DLC during a 2015 earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that story-based DLC was never discussed. In 2017, Rockstar finally shed some light on the lack of story-mode DLC, when Director of Design, Imran Sarwar, stated that, "it was not really a conscious decision, it’s just what happened." Sarwar went on to state, "At Rockstar, we will always have bandwidth issues because we are perfectionists and to make huge complex games takes a lot of time and resources. Not everything is always possible, but we still love single-player open-world games more than anything." The latter sentence gives some hope that _ Red Dead Redemption 2 _ will receive the attention and treatment that it rightfully deserves, but while any game is in development, the mention of studio "bandwidth issues" is sure to send shivers down gamers’ spi<br><br>The same can be said for Arthur Morgan. Are there moments of intense excitement in his life such as when he's robbing a train or watching the sunset over the plains? Absolutely. But even in the life of an outlaw on the run, you still have to make small decisions about whether or not you should take a bath or shave your face.<br><br> <br>GTA IV had a great multiplayer mode, but the greatest thing Rockstar did was release two single player expansions for the game. Red Dead Redemption received a fantastic standalone adventure in Undead Nightmare, and GTA V got nothing. Instead, Rockstar focused on improving the game’s online after launch, going so far as to launch it as its own separate product. Rockstar has been putting more and more focus on multiplayer modes, which is a shame because their stories are some of the best in the industry. The move away from single player content could completely change what Rockstar is about, we want them to continue making the games they are great at making while innovating as they have been for ye<br><br> <br>2017 is shaping up to be a landmark year for video games. Not only do we have the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , Horizon: Zero Dawn , and Persona 5 already released, but Wolfenstein: The New Colossus , Crackdown 3 , Far Cry 5 , and God of War are all set to release before spring 2018. Red Dead may be a beloved game, but it doesn’t have the name recognition of Rockstar’s other big open-world crime game, or the popularity of some of the other games coming out. Even with this delay moving it away from the likes of Call of Duty WW2 and [https://Www.Openworldpilot.com/articles/black-myth-zhong-kui-game-science-s-surprising-creative-rebirth.html Black Myth Zhong Kui] Battlefront 2 , the game still has to go up against some of the most highly anticipated titles of the past couple of ye<br> | | <br>Even having only played the game for a brief amount of time, seeing the level of interaction with the NPCs in Red Dead Redemption 2 already showed what I think will be one of its most fascinating elements. With so many options now opened up to engage with the characters throughout the world, it gave me a thrill that, by and large, any NPC in Red Dead Redemption 2 could potentially give players something new to draw from the world. As Rockstar noted, characters in the game have their own set schedules and paths, which could lead to players finding some NPCs at specific locations at certain times of the day. When the Van der Linde gang sets up camp, some of Arthur's gang members can even appear randomly at nearby towns or locations, such as when we heard Arthur got into a fist fight with some locals at the saloon, only for Bill and Javier to show up and lend a hand.<br>Many of these interactions with the game's NPCs will likely result in finding new missions and quests, such as a late night trip to a nearby saloon, where one character wanted me to go out on a mission and take photographs with an early 1900s-era flash camera. Other interactions can get hostile, such as another instance where I tried to rob an incoming traveler on horseback, only to see him still watching me -- warily, gun drawn -- as I rode on past him. And yet, some of these interactions can be completely unexpected, or even downright hilarious. In what was easily the funniest moment of our demo, I had Arthur greet a fellow traveler, only to see his horse get startled, kick the man in the head, and [https://WWW.Openworldpilot.com/articles/farewell-ps4-my-tearful-goodbye-to-genshin-impact-on-my-dusty-console.html mihoyo playstation 4 support end] up leaving him dead on the road; this left an audible gasp from myself and the Rockstar reps with us during the demo, only to bust out laughing after.<br><br> <br>We all know that GTA V 's online multiplayer community is one of the largest and most complex communities to ever exist, containing a grand number of players all vying to be the biggest, baddest and richest. Between online missions and heists, building yourself up from the ground in-game can be a daunting and lengthy experience. Starting out with nothing up against people who have everything, you begin to ask yourself: how? How can these people have so much when you have been grinding away just to buy yourself a crappy little garage on the bad side of town. Two words: Shark Cards. A common theme in multiplayer games these days is the ability to buy in game add-ons to give yourself an advantage against opponents. GTA V is no stranger to this tactic, making purchasable Shark Cards available to boost your in-game cash for real life tender. Although many people may think this is fair game, a large number of players who aren't willing to part with their hard earned cash have voiced their distaste for the use of the Shark Cards, as it means they are not able to compete with those who use t<br><br> <br>When 2 am hits, you'll know. As long as you're in the building, a UFO is going to appear right above you, hovering and basking the whole room in green light. Shooting at the flying saucer yields no result, and it will simply leave after a couple of in-game hours, or as soon as you leave the build<br><br>[pullquote]"The level of interactivity, mechanics, and systems available to players make Red Dead Redemption 2 as close as we can get to the living, breathing Western world that Rockstar is aiming to deliver."[/pullquote]<br><br> <br>In Rockstar’s effort to create a realistic game, like horses that have packages that shrink in cold weather, they certainly didn't go all the way in some regards. For example, you can somehow store a near infinite amount of random items in your beginning pouch, but heaven forbid you to put more than one animal carcass on your horse. Also, somehow, you can store an army of guns on your sidesaddle, but not on Arthur's person. There are a lot of inconsistencies, but hey, that's video ga<br><br>What Rockstar has built with Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't just a vast world of splendor and beauty within which they have place random mission markers and enemy bases to go clear. Instead, this is a place that they're legitimately wanting you to live in. Can it be tedious at times? Sure. But more often than not, I think it gives me a stronger sense of intimacy with both Arthur and this setting of the Wild West, and that's something I haven't felt in an open-world title in quite awhile.<br><br> <br>The sense of discovery that video games offer is a feeling almost unmatched by any other form of entertainment. Deep down, you know that a developer went out of their way to create a mystery for the player to solve, or to put in a cool reference to another work of art. But in the heat of the moment, in the thrill of the chase, you feel like a detective pulling at a thread, ready to unveil whatever may be behind the curtain. There are few developers better at eliciting this feeling than Rockstar , and the Easter Eggs in Red Dead Redemption 2 certainly keep their reputation alive. Here's what we've found so far in Red Dead Redemptio<br> |