Been playing this on One X and got a few days of playtime in.

I will say that it's an amazingly created game...yet also a depressing game in a lot of ways. If you are looking for a good action / shooting game, dont bother with this. Controls are pretty clunky, shooting is so so, and enemy AI is meh.

On the other hand, if you almost want a Cowboy simulator...this is the Falcon 4 version of it. Think if it as this sim makes you do every little thing with very little short cuts provided for quality of life. Even looting a body is going to take you like 10 to 15 seconds. You have to maintain your guns. You have to take a bath and scrub every part of your body clean. You have to eat...and eat a well balanced diet. You have to wear appropriate clothing for weather. Etc., Even the missions are like riding for 10 minutes for 2 minutes of action or a cut scene. Rockstar wants you to live in their world...more so than play the game missions.

So if you are looking to get into a living breathing world and just want to enjoy hanging out in your own Western, this game will be an amazing escape. If you just want a fun game with tight controls and good action, you are going to hate it.

^ LOL, that sounds a bit like Kingdom Come in the Wild West.

Much much bigger budget and maybe not quite as hardcore

I get the difference, but the clothing, bathing, eating, maintaining part sounded a tad like KCD

Does anyone actually know why they keep this a console exclusive? Deals with Microsoft and Sony?

I do think given that GTA5 and GTA Online did very well for them on PC they won't get around the need to port this over eventually.

The only reason the first RDR didnt get a PC port was because the code was such a mess that they couldnt figure out how to port it over without redoing the whole game. The game almost had to be canceled as a console port but they barely made the code work and then just left it alone. All of the GTA games made it to PC as well as almost every other Rockstar game except the first RDR. So there is a good possibility it will make a PC release. It's just a matter of when and if you can hold off on it without having the whole game spoiled.

new consoles will be announced next year, there are too many good games this year, and every time this happens it means end of cicle, so i can actually see them remaking the first game to coincide with RDR2 for pc and the next next next next gen release.

This game is great. I have to disagree though in that this game does have great action. However the game mechanics and controls are very nuanced with a lot of depth and it is quite challenging. That's my own experience. I'm loving it, including the combat however it is difficult. You have options to turn of any auto aim assists which I normally do in games but while I'm still trying to get my head around the varied controls and combat and what you can do I may have to turn it on. The cool thing though is that even these control settings have detailed settings. You can turn assist to a normal, narrow and wide setting and then move a slider up and down for assist strength. On top of that you then have camera sensitivity, acceleration and dead zone settings.

Horses are just amazingly well done in this. The riding and controls and animations are smooth and seamless and the horse truly feels alive and animated now. Last night all of a sudden my horse controls mysteriously started to retard and the horse became somewhat uncontrollable and its because he got agitated by a nearby predator. Not only that he visibly will give you ques as to its disposition and the controller has subtle and beautifully time vibration ques. All of this then has me now trained to pay attention and immediately meet the needs of my horse. I've now learned to side step with the horse and its a beautiful thing. Today I was playing and I made are sharp turn to get onto a road to head a different direction and it has a fairly steep incline. I thought that I could cut part of this off and do a little jump with my horse however my horse slipped and we both went sideways sliding down the rocky road and at the end of the tumble I got ejected. Very cool. I had not seen this kind of spill yet except for the rear end I mentioned earlier in this thread. I also love the physics within vegetation and the vibration you feel when you ride through it and how your horse can get agitated when going through thick brush.

I find the game amazing and undoubtedly overwhelming. I almost don't know what to do. But I'm glad this game is like this. This game is hitting point for point everything I've ever wanted and dreamed about having played the first game. As is I'm still focused on the initial area around Valentine and I love getting familiar with the land and landmarks. On my first official hunt out on my own in an attempt to bring food back to camp I made a huge mistake. I thought I saw two deer across a river. I shot one with a bow and then all of a sudden I see it rear and then this long tail swoosh. I accidentally shot some poor guy's horse and he ran up the river shooting at me. I'm seeing new stuff all the time. I got yanked out of the saddle by two O'Driscoll boys. I'm not very good at combat yet or the controls but I'm loving it. I've had a couple of those cinematic slo-mo kill shots too which is cool. And that's the other thing about this game. Even when in-game in real time every little aspect is cinematic. Camera angles will subtly and creatively change to accommodate some sort of context going on such as when you ride up on a mystery. The animation work is just so cool to from getting shot at on horseback and watching Arthur dodge or watch his countenance change when he's hurt or tired or simply becoming a little bent over and ware when he starts to track something. A few times in a mission I would just let the enemy take me down to see and feel the impact of their rounds on the character model. Its pretty impactful. I just discovered more powerful ammunition for the Army .45 that has a noticeably stronger impact on enemies causing them to snap back more when hit.

I'm still not quite understanding some of the inventory elements yet. I'm a bit confused about provisions. Some are in your radial inventory that you can take on the fly but then there's the game you aquire from hunting but that seems to only be edible from a campfire for restoring health and other cores. I'm still a bit confused on some of the concepts. For this game it would actually be worth having the strategy guide to I think.

I've been a PC only player for almost 30 years. Everything that interested me the most was a PC game so i never needed a console. But RDR2 is the first game that i'am considering getting one. If there is no confirmation of a PC version in the next couple of months, i think i will finally cave.

Well Cowboys don't eat raw meat so you got to cook it first at campfire. Canned stuff you can eat whenever. Tonics restore your immediate values of health, stamins, etc., on the fly.

Food restores your cores which determine the rate that your health and stamina replenish after getting hurt for example. The cores drain on their oen like ever hour so you have to ear eat regularly.

The controls are clunky. I have tested everything from dead zone to acceleration to free aim. No excuse for that.

Action wise....enemies run up to you. Stay in cover...pop them off when they charge. Not much to it. Thats what i mean by lack of good action.

Your horse reaction to predators etc., is what I would call part of the realism and world building. That's not action.

Good write up.

Yup, lots of busy work and kludge interface, although I am admittedly way out of practice in using a controller.

I don't mind the pacing though, there are other games if you want constant combat and fighting was not really a constant state of affairs in either the real or the fictional Old West.

Oh and as a BTW, video game relative duder says that there was a estimated $800M spent on this game between marketing and development. No wonder that companies are now mostly risk adverse when it comes to AAA titles with that kind of money at stake.

They posted some results, saying that sales for the first 3 days has exceeded $750M
And right now, you can get the Xbox X or Xbox S for $100 discount with purchase of RDR2

They will easily make some cash on this game...

Well, except from YOU Crane Hunter. HA!

I am gonna get my copy with my MS Reward Points later this week.

I think this one is no more "clunky" then previous Rockstar titles on consoles. I'm a PC guy but I have an Xbox One for sports games...just the original Xbox One, not the One X that runs this game in 4k. Still looks pretty good to me and runs pretty smooth. The AI gunfights can be somewhat easy...if you have cover. Last night I got caught out in the open with some baddies overwhelming me and I was sprinting to a rock for cover but didn't make it. Some of the missions can be tedious with long travel time...but I'm having a blast and think it's a well done title. Glad I have a console.

That quoted figure can't be right. The most expensive single Hollywood film to date only had a budget of 275 million!

Well "only" $400M was for the development itself, the rest was marketing.

The thing to understand is that unlike movies, major game titles take a long time to develop, 8 years in RDR2's case. That's 8 years of using lots of expensive specialized labor that there's a chronic shortage of and that's difficult to retain.

Movies are easy by comparison, even tiny little studios from nowhere can make a passable film these days, but making a AAA game title is a long and costly grind.

Nah its not you getting used to controller. I always played both console and PC...ever since NES days. Even with the elite controller that let you change and experiment with the stick settings etc., I cannot really make RDR2 control better. My first reaction was almost like I felt i was playing a Playstation 1 game where movement was done in squares sometimes.

Especially when you contrast it to other games with much smoother movement kike Assasin Creed that just came out like 1 month earlier, the difference is really jarring.

Still a great game overall and every moment you played it, you definitely feel the attention to detail they paid to this world. Like you literally feel that 400 million or whatever they spent developing this.

At the same time, i think they could have done away with some of that realism...like do you really need to make the player hold down a button for 5 seconds which then triggers the animation to open a drawer whcih takes like another 10 seconds..which then prompt you to take a cigar out of a drawed...by pdesson doen a button for 5 seconds...then another 5 seconds of holding down a button to loot a dollar bill in the draw...i mean they could have just asked you to hit a button and then let you take both things for example...simple quality of life things that doesn't really detract from realism.

I mean if they really want to go for that realism, why not add bathroom breaks before a robbery. Arthur is probably inhis 40s...maybe he cannot get a full night sleep without having to get up to per for that matter.

I think the controls and some simple quality of life improvements could have made this game perfect.

Its about right. They released that their marketing budget for RDR2 was 250m alone.

Yeah really.

I'm surprised you aren't expected to manually control your breathing in this game.

I think its fine for what it is. This is more role playing heavy than in the past. Its meant to be experienced and to spend a lot of time with. It would be nicer to have a bit tighter and precise control sensitivity but rarely does a non-mouse and keyboard console shooter get it perfect. Some get close and I think RDR2 could be better but its fine. I'm using a little aim assistance to keep me from getting too frustrated and while I'm still learning combat. I'm finding quite a few quality of life things that every time I see one I think, man more games should do this. One I like is while in a menu you can hold down the "back out button" to get back to the main menu in one click as opposed to having to back out through multiple layers of menu screens though you can go through each one if you want. I can understand folks wanting more streamed lined looting but like I said, I think they very much intended for this to be more roleplaying-centric. Not only that I really like the ability to pick up and examine items. You can do this in things like L.A. Noir and The Order: 1886 which I find a really cool feature. Its great for subtle world building and for guys like me who like to get a close look at and appreciate objects in game and see how they were made and textured.

I'm having a great time with this one. I really enjoy using the cinematic camera while riding and I just discovered that you can use it while on foot too.

Oh man...that interface is another klunker. Thats another thing they could have done a lot better. Pressing down a button to go back to game would not be needed if they had looked at the interface design for more modern games. They would have implemented a tabbed interface that gives you access to everything and you can escape out in one button. Again...I am comparing it to something like Assasin Creed since the two games are released about the same time.

Its almost like Rockstar is stuck in 8 year old design for game interface.

But i still like the game. Its a great game vs what could have been a perfect game.