I loved the GTA games, especially GTA 3 but also Vice City and San Andreas. Why is that relevant? Because I think Rockstar Games have never matched those games since.
Red Dead Redemption felt like GTA but in the wild west and it kinda worked. I played it a long time ago and don't remember that much. But some of the missions were fun, the world was huge, the graphics were good and it was fun to explore and play around in. But it wasn't as fun or rewarding as the earlier GTA games.
Even GTA 4 and 5 felt disappointing compared to the earlier ones. 4 was pretty good but the constant text messages and man dates were very annoying. And having multiple endings felt like a gimmick which undermines the story rather than supporting it. The mini games like bowling didn't help. 5 was huge but boring. I didn't care for the characters and by having multiple characters, it lessens my investment in each of them. It divides the game in a negative way. A lot of it felt meaningless. They prioritised shock over a sense of progression. And the physics were far worse than the earlier games.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is also very disappointing but in other ways. The graphics are very impressive overall, the world is huge and detailed. The characters seem pretty well formed and there's plenty of story to follow. But it's lost the freedom and sense of fun. It felt like a chore to get through.
RDR2 is far too punishing for crimes. You knock someone with your horse, either accidentally or just for fun, and instantly you're a wanted criminal. Not only that, but every policeman in a 1km radius knows somehow and chases you. Apparently they have mobile phones and already planted a GPS device on your horse. You're in the 1800s, they're from the 2100s. Even if you get away, you now have a $10 bounty on your head. And that's not that cheap back in the day, especially when it can happen so easily and add up.
This makes no sense and also ruins the game. How on Earth in the wild west of the late 1800s was it so easy for criminals to get noticed and tracked like this? Crime should be way easier in RDR than in GTA. That's common sense. It should be easy to commit tonnes of crimes and never get caught.
But RDR2 always has eyes on you. The police are supernatural. The result is that you start avoiding people altogether. I no longer want to mess with people or play with the game's mechanics, I'm now just leaving people alone, because otherwise I have to go to jail, flee the police, kill bounty hunters or pay the bounty myself. It's extremely lame and goes completely against the whole point of such a game. I'm slowing down and gently finding my way through the crowd in a game where I'm meant to be some tough outlaw.
RDR2 works against itself like this in multiple ways. It tries to be realistic but that ends up being its biggest weakness. It becomes dull. I play games for escapism, not for humdrum reality. It's way too easy to die after you've hunted an animal and lose the pelt and meat. Or for the animal to get damaged and lose quality. That's just annoying. Riding around is mildly fun at first but can get tedious.
Many animations take way too long. And the game takes control away from you way too often, often forcing you to walk rather than run in various places or restricting you in other ways. I would often want to steal from dead bodies, but the game would force me to go on. Sometimes I'd be busy exploring and fail a mission because apparently I was meant to be in a rush to get somewhere - I didn't know!
It tries to blend gameplay into cut scenes, perhaps for "immersion", but it just creates ambiguity. I think I'm about to play, but no, it's just more cut scenes. Or I sit back, relax and watch when suddenly I realise I'm meant to be moving the character or doing something.
Missions are too controlled and linear. You have no freedom. You're told exactly what to do as if you're a toddler and can't be trusted to think for yourself. The earlier games would set up their mechanics for you, let you learn how they work, and then give you the freedom to tackle missions in lots of different, interesting, funny ways. Maybe you use a sniper rifle or bazooka, maybe a fast car or a fire engine, maybe you corner the enemy or ram them off a cliff. Whatever works.
RDR2's controls are very annoying at times. I would take something to replenish my "dead eye" and then Arthur has put away his gun for some dumb reason and take forever to get it out again and I'd get shot. Most of my deaths were due to bad, laggy, clunky controls rather than skill or strategy, which is super frustrating.
The best part of RDR2 was probably the big, epic missions which started to feel like being part of an action adventure movie - like the Uncharted games. Except the irony is that these missions leaned heavily on the weakest aspects of RDR2 - the buggy physics, the terrible shooting system, laggy controls and everything feeling too scripted and easy. In other words, it was worse than the Uncharted series (and similar games) in every possible way.
What should be RDR2's strength is the huge, open world. But so many parts of the game work against that. Being wanted in an area just makes it a pain to go there. Hunting is kinda fun but you're limited in how much you can carry and it's risky to carry too much for too long. And the trappers (who buy the pelt) are too spread out. So it's tedious. A lot of the world is empty so there's not much to do. It's also hard to tell what can be interacted with. You see an interesting rock formation, no, nothing's there. Other times, Arthur draws a cute picture in a diary. So? That's it? Is that important? My goodness.
There's not much sense of progression. You get access to various weapons right at the start of the game. They're as deadly as they need to be. I found myself using basically the same weapons the whole time. Upgrading the settlement didn't seem to do much. I guess it made resources more easily available and maybe the characters have different dialogue cues. But that bores me. I want to feel like I'm actually getting access to new abilities or tools, levelling up, achieving something. But I felt like none of that really changed. Everything's just there from the start. I can ride fast horsies from start to finish - what changed?
SPOILER ALERT
The fact that Arthur gets sick really crossed a line for me. It's so stupid. I want to play a game, not watch a lecture. Imagine if Mario or Sonic got sick in their next game and had to keep taking a break, coughing, sneezing or losing health. Maybe a few levels involve slowly walking around a hospital and getting more bad news from a doctor. Seriously? HOW FUN.
I want a main character who has energy, skills, a likeable but neutral personality so that I can project onto them and then I want to explore the world and do cool things with that character. I know what it's like to be sick and games are one way to live a more exciting life. But no, the game designers want to lecture me about what it's like to be sick. Now food and other power-ups don't work sometimes. Great. I'm so glad I took all that time to collect and buy objects I might need...
By killing the main character off, I lose interest as well. Playing as another character - what was the point of investing in Arthur? All the stuff I had looted, now it's just gone. Any leveling up, gone. It's an unwritten but obvious rule - never kill the main character. Video games are meant to give you unlimited play time. They have lots of sequels. Your character constantly "dies" but comes right back. You have save points. You never actually die. And when the main story is finished, and hopefully was kinda cool and satisfying, you can optionally go around and complete all the side missions, collect everything, etc. But now my main guy is dead, why should I care? Great, your story has lectured me, but it ruins the game.
The last section of the game feels like Farming Simulator 2018. Why am I having to press X to hammer in nails? Am I halucinating? And then I'm milking a cow, carrying wood, taking a kid fishing, etc? How fun! Maybe the point of the game is to bore you so much you actually go outside and doing something productive with your life.
Where are these games going? Are they gonna start having poo and wee meters? Will we have to refill the tank after stealing a car in GTA 6? Are we gonna have to pay taxes? Brush our teeth? Shower, etc? When will Rockstar realise that their strength was not realism but freedom. We need a big world full of interesting things to do. Trains, planes and automobiles are much more fun than horsies. In fact, just add horsies to the GTA games! That's actually a great idea. Guns and explosions are fun. Archetypes - exagerrated stereotypes of people - those are much more fun than a realistic world where everyone blurs together. And why would I play dominoes, poker or watch a theatre show INSIDE a video game? Especially with slow animations every time and little or no consequence outside the activity?
The story is decent, I guess. But I don't play games for story. I watch TV shows and movies or read books for stories. It makes no sense for the story to be a game's main draw when most of my time will spent doing things like riding a horse, shooting, buying/selling, etc. Make the actual game fun. Keep the story simple. Or else make a TV show and leave the games to someone else. Plenty of games have a great story AND great gameplay. FF6 comes to mind. But a good or epic story is no excuse for bad gameplay. RDR2's story is alright while the gameplay is frustrating, so where does that leave us?
Also, what's the point of hiring actors, recording their voices, tracking their actions and then using tonnes of fancy computer hardware and software just to try to simulate a realistic version of them? Just use live action! You're going in circles. 3D video games have so much potential it just feels like a waste to try to be grounded in realism. You can have aliens, monsters, cool, crazy characters and costumes, etc. Fantasy, horror and sci-fi games make use of this to great effect. But no, RDR2 is just a lot of people talking, walking, riding, etc. And the amazing graphics are undermined by some of the glitchy or repetitive animation.
Another problem is the attempted morality system. I tried to be good. Fine. Being bad was too costly anyway. But then I do a main mission and break someone out of prison or rob a bank or rob a train and end up killing 58 police officers in some shootout - because the game forced me to. Wow, I really feel immersed now, roleplaying as a good guy cowboy. Meanwhile, once I reached fully good on the scale, I figured I may as well start being bad. I just kill people or refuse to help them. It's kinda fun. But then I do a mission and have to help a widow or be kind to people in other ways. Yay, really fits my new bad guy cowboy image.
In other words, I have no control. Nothing matters. The game will have me do good or bad things whether I like it or not. And if I'm trying to be clean so I can roam freely without bounty hunters or police attacking me, well, too bad, 'cause the next mission is a bank robbery and I'll be wanted dead or alive on half the map now. Fan. Tastic.
It also fails because I end up not liking any of the characters much. None of them are good people. They're all either violent, stupid or selfish. Being nice once or twice doesn't make up for committing several massacres, especially the cops. It seems to be a gimmick now, to have morally ambiguous characters. But it's just lame. I like none of them. Batman vs. the Joker is way more interesting - good vs. evil. It's about intelligence, strategy and psychology, rather than good and bad blurring together.
In general, RDR2 way overstays it's welcome. It takes my time and attention for granted. But in reality, I was constantly sighing, groaning and wanting to get it over with. All while it took its sweet time to get to the point. Why did I play the whole thing? Maybe it was a sunken cost and I should have just dropped it. I didn't hate everything about it, but it just dragged and kept frustrating me. It felt like things were put in to limit me and lecture me rather than to give me cool, fun things to do. My main hope was knowing I could write a scathing review once I was done and nobody could accuse me of not experiencing the full thing.