attika
There's always a sense of impending doom in Red Dead Redemption II. Even the most light-hearted scenes have a melancholic air precisely because of it. The air of dread is palpable because we know that Rockstar does not play nice. We are aware that once upon a time it all came tumbling down for them. But this prequel asks you to hope that maybe --just for a moment-- things could be different.
Rockstar gives you a family painted in vivid yet subtle strokes of hopes, dreams, loves and --delusions. Over the course of this game, you watch people you love slowly become people you resent, despise and eventually fear. What makes this game existentially terrifying beyond any other game is simply that these characters never change. They were always these people. But you won't be the same person at the end of this. And in the end, you will leave this world tired, scared, confused and alone.
The death of the Wild West is upon us. But maybe, for one last moment, not yet.
Gameplay-wise, it's the ultimate cowboy simulator. If you can meet the granularity of its gameplay and systems half-way, it rewards you with a world you can inhabit with awe. This world has been realized in such a wonderful and beautiful way that you'll never want to leave.
What Rockstar has created here is beyond any standard game industry lingo or buzzwords. They've created something truly monumental, akin to a foundational American myth. Everyone should experience this.
Rockstar gives you a family painted in vivid yet subtle strokes of hopes, dreams, loves and --delusions. Over the course of this game, you watch people you love slowly become people you resent, despise and eventually fear. What makes this game existentially terrifying beyond any other game is simply that these characters never change. They were always these people. But you won't be the same person at the end of this. And in the end, you will leave this world tired, scared, confused and alone.
The death of the Wild West is upon us. But maybe, for one last moment, not yet.
Gameplay-wise, it's the ultimate cowboy simulator. If you can meet the granularity of its gameplay and systems half-way, it rewards you with a world you can inhabit with awe. This world has been realized in such a wonderful and beautiful way that you'll never want to leave.
What Rockstar has created here is beyond any standard game industry lingo or buzzwords. They've created something truly monumental, akin to a foundational American myth. Everyone should experience this.
2013
The game's greatest trick is giving us protagonists with somewhat relatable motivations and then spending the entire final act ripping that motivation to shreds. It's masterfully vicious satire about a pretentious, aesthetics obsessed version of Los Santos that lets these people be exactly who they believe themselves to be --but won't save them from the consequences.
An objectively well-made game with extremely good cinematic presentation and voice acting, paired with an absolute atrocity of a story and one of the worst-implemented branching narratives ever put in a AAA game.