Red Dead Redemption 2

I too get the feeling Morgan's gonna be DED since he's part of the gang but wasn't mentioned at all in Redemption.

I believe it'll end like Blazing Saddles.

But Gene Wilder can't be in it ;_;

Woo. A prequel. So excited...

Yeah, I just... its hard to get excited. A prequel about Dutch's gang? We know where this story ends.

And Dutch's gang was kind of unsympathetic. We know the awful things that occur between now and the end of the original. We know that they're villains. And all of that as the backstory is what made them interesting. The gang had disbanded. John was trying to redeem himself for all the terrible things he'd done. That's what made in a great character.

You can't really do that here. Not to mention I'm really not the one who likes playing a villain and I rather enjoyed the early ranch hand parts of the first game and the latter ending sections where I was playing as a ranch owner and taking care of the usual jobs and etc of living on a ranch. This feels like its going to have the reverse with GTA 5's heist missions shoved in.

Actually, I'm pretty sure there were implications Dutch might have been actually viewable as having sympathetic causes and qualities, but he went off the deep end by the actual in-game point. Probably somewhere from anti-heroes into the villains we know them as.

edited 28th Sep '17 1:44:31 PM by VutherA

Ya can't go wrong with outlaws. If written well, villain protagonists tend to be some of the best stories ever.

Should be fun as hell robbing trains & shit.

I don't know. It feels contradictory. The first game had such a build up of 'these are the bad guys and terrible people because they rob trains and kill people and its fun' and now we have a sequel game that says 'These are fun characters who you like because they rob trains and kill people'. Bit confusing, no?

I guess my worst case situation to this worry is that they'll be the protagonists of GTA 5; crazy awesome assholes who kill people and are utimately unsympathetic and terrible individuals. I get that people like that in their video games, but I hold the original Red Dead Redemption to a higher standard of writing.

I honestly took more of Dutch's sympathetic aspects (or what I remember of them, its been years since I last had a chance to play the game) as John simply having been roped into the way of life and thus unable to totally disasociate himself with it and also a level of nostalgia for that time in his life when things were 'simple'. Not that he was actually sympathetic. My only sympathy for him was the dialogue before he died.

edited 28th Sep '17 2:07:27 PM by InkDagger

I'm underwhelmed - I loved RDR. I liked the viewpoint character - a surly, curmudgeonly and yet still likeable MC.

This guy just sounds and looks NASTY. And Cruel. And that's tricky. Yes, Rockstar love their nihilism and misanthropy - Trevor was an outlet for that. A whole game with a Trevor-like who lacks any "Wacky" mediation?

Now, if the protag was maybe something other than a snarling white male... that could maybe push this. You could tell a fascinating story from a different perspective. Imagine a black cowboy (Django!) or a Native American (Take the AC 3 idea and run with it) or a Chinese man brought over to work the railroads... but who becomes something else.

You could do so much. And this just seems to be treading familiar territory.

But it does look pretty and I'd like to see gameplay and a bit more context beyond the sneering MC.

Not to mention you could take the opportunity to deconstruct a lot of the Wild West tropes that are just blatantly un true. For example, WELL over half of the cowboys out there were either black or hispanic. White cowboys were actually the minority. And women who started brothels were often the main money makers who built up the old west towns we know of today rather than the men.

There's so many tropes you could subvert to be simultaniously interesting, diverse, and historically accurate and I wish they'd do it.

I get the impression that the Housers Write What You Know a lot of the time. And for all their "yeah we poke fun at the systemic tropes of gaming and media" they fall victim to the stereotype as much as any.

Like the fact we've never had a female protag - they had two black ones, but they ticked every stereotype going - ghetto, friends who it turns out are all loud sassy "examples" of the culture. There were some interesting twists with both CJ and Franlin. But they both hit that "wanna be the rich kid in the hills" aspiration. But then again I can hardly comment on that culture vibe, being Anglo-white British...

I would like to see the cultures explored in a satirical way - I mean, we're getting a female gunslinger, but that smacks of The Smurfette a little.

Well Dutch was a Warrior Poet who believed in a kind of free spirit anarchy in the Wild West which he felt the US government was going to destroy along with the Native Americans (which was true) but he's completely outmatched and not accomplishing anything other than being an ineffective terrorist.

The boys he raised include Bill Williamson who created a small army that terrorized a region and Javier who managed to become the 3rd in command of the Mexican military. Marsden was the third of Dutch's "sons."

The thing is, while Williamson is a piece of crap and a rapist, neither Javier or Dutch is really "evil" given the Mexican Civil War is a Grey-and-Gray Morality clusterfuck while I don't think anyone can say the Natives are unjustified in fighting back.

John wasn't the "good guy" there as he was only doing it because he was blackmailed into it.

I don't see any problem with flipping the script on the player.

Mind you, JM was such a nice guy it always felt weird to be the bad guy and an Honorless dick.

They might be making a more balanced character to encourage mayhem.

Of course, JM was also something of a hypocrite because he was always acting like he WASN'T a former bank robber and stagecoachman.

edited 22nd Dec '17 6:52:36 AM by CharlesPhipps

I don't mind flipping the script, especially if it proves a point that the first installment over looked.

I have a problem with the same thing being used as shorthand for 'evil' in the last one is the shorthand for 'fun' and 'our heroes' in this one. It feels like one should have come before the other. I feel like its going to set me up for the 'Huh, maybe robbing trains and stealing from people will get us killed' ending that we're all kind of expecting and the first game already showed that. They gave us that from John's perspective of going out and trying to redeem himself of all the sins we'll no doubt watch him commit in this game.

Like, when you have a deconstruction, you don't jump straight back to using the trope, well, stright without having to do the reconstruction first.

You do know all we have are trailers right?

As well as the fact that its common practice for trailers to show the more fun, adventurous side before they blindside you with some really dark & brutal story shit in the actual main game.

I mean seriously all we have is literally one fucking trailer, there obviously not gonna show everything in again one Goddamn trailer.

edited 22nd Dec '17 5:42:40 PM by slimcoder

Honestly, I half expect Morgan to be John in all but name and the only reason we're not playing John in a prequel is his VA retired.

Necro: Trailer 3 out at 11 am EDT May 2nd.

I hope we get to murder The Klan ex-Confederates in the New Bourdeux section of the game.

This is a weird need by me as a Southerner.

Oops. Beaten to the punch.

edited 30th Apr '18 11:24:07 AM by AnotherGuy

Oh, just show John Marston already Rockstar.

Or is this going to be "pre-order for John Marston outfit in multiplayer!"

edited 2nd May '18 12:07:47 PM by Soble

I gotta say I'm not a fan of Morgan so far.

I like Dutch but I'm not necessarily of the mind the group is anything close to a group of True Companions or worth a story about the Breaking the Fellowship. Williamson and Javier, at least both seem to have been genuine scumbags from the get go.

edited 2nd May '18 12:21:04 PM by CharlesPhipps

People change.

That was him at the end with a knife to his head, wasn't it?

edited 2nd May '18 2:00:09 PM by Dirtyblue929