Review for Red Dead Redemption 2. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 26/10/2018 The version for PC came out on 05/11/2019
Version for Google Stadia from 19/11/2019
If Sergio Leone had ever thought of creating a video game to represent the West, he probably would have imagined Red Dead Redemption 2. The epic of Arthur Morgan and the Dutch Van Der Linde gang is as close to a Western movie as has ever been created: a product that not only resizes the very concept of videogames, but that finally raises the bar of fusion between interactive and linear narrative. Red Dead Redemption 2 is essentially the materialization of the "future video game" imagined until a few years ago by everyone, professionals and not. Here, therefore, we are ready to tell you about our incredible experience in the Frontier of 1899.
Before talking about plot, narrative and all those concepts that shift attention from the mere playful part, let's try to frame and outline what are the guidelines of Rockstar Games about this second chapter. Red Dead Redemption 2 is basically an action video game, playable in third or first person, set in a vast and lively open world. Your character, Arthur Morgan, will have to be handled as if he were a real person (in what we can categorize as a survival component, if we want), so he will have to get food to eat, dress warmly if in the presence of a freezing climate and vice versa, dress lightly in moments of hot weather, as well as sleep and wash with regularity. Even the management of beard and hair is in the player's hand but, unlike all the previous elements, it is not essential to maintaining the character's health.
An example of the social relations with the world around Arthur? It is easy to say: walking dirty with mud in a town will make people react badly, while not caring about food could make your character fatigue and subsequently sick. What may seem like a system at first tedious is instead a fair simulation of life in the West that remains contextualized in Rockstar's ambitions, that is to create a unique and unforgettable experience (attention to words, experience is very different from wanting to create a video game inserted in the classic canons of this medium) that represents life in the Wild West. In the long run, we don't deny that hunting, cooking and eating can actually create a feeling of fatigue in the player, but everything Rockstar has created to address this possible problem will allow you to forget about it very quickly.
Last but not least is the horse: your steed will be looked after, fed, cleaned and pampered as if it were a second main character. Its role is very important and justifies the time devoted to its care. The horse, in fact, will be a real appendix of the inventory: you can load weapons, food, clothes, hunted prey and / or people, as well as allowing you to move much faster than on foot and much more economically than by diligence. Alongside all this survival component, Red Dead Redemption 2 combines a solid, monstrously diverse and incredibly satisfying combat system and gunplay. Firing quickly with a revolver or relying on the devastating but very slow shots of a shotgun will give you different sensations and even layered approaches to confrontations.
Arthur's life can be improved with various upgrades to physical conditions or with the use of tonics but, being faced with a simulation of the West, it will take a few well-placed shots by the enemies and you will perish. The management of the covers, the maintenance of the weapons and their effectiveness will decide the fate of the clashes, so consider your choices well. In short, Rockstar has combined in Red Dead Redemption 2 all the experiences gained with the publication of all its titles: from GTA San Andreas, through Bully, the first Red Dead Redemption and up to GTA V, thus creating its definitive experience able to satisfy all palates also from the point of view of gameplay.
If then the component of the gameplay is a mixture of many different elements, also coming from environments unrelated to the action genre, but united in a credible and satisfying context; it is in the narrative and freedom of the player component that Rockstar excels and pushes this experience to the next level. The work on the settings, on the creation of a living and credible game world are the foundations on which Rockstar has set its "narrative revolution". To better explain this revolution we will start from interaction and to do so we will talk about passive and active interaction. The passive interaction, in essence, provides that the entire map that can be explored by the player has a life of its own, both in terms of flora and fauna, population and climatic conditions. All this interacts passively with the player: if you pass in front of the inhabitants they will greet you, if you pass in front of a dog it will bark at you and follow you; if you pass in front of a citizen you have already met he will remember you, just as if you pass on horseback in the midst of a herd of cows they will be frightened and run away; and again, to give one last example, if you are caught in a storm the wind will slow down your pace.
All the elements mentioned are examples of passive interaction. As for the active one, however, the player will have (by pressing the L2 or LB key) the complete management of voluntary interactions with the environment. Approaching a character the drop-down menu will allow you to speak, threaten, rob and / or provoke him. Animals can be praised, stroked, chased away and so on. Each action will have effects not only on your honor (being a righteous gunfighter or brutal outlaw will change the world's perception of you) but also immediate effects such as creating a dispute, rather than the emergence of a discussion about the weather of the day. The interaction, therefore, in all its forms, plays a central role in the experience of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Along with the interaction, however, Rockstar's narrative revolution, as the name suggests, provides a great focus on the plot and this is perhaps the point that unites all the various elements described so far, making them unique in their kind. Telling a story set in the West is perhaps one of the most difficult ambitions that you can have in the entertainment world today. The Western genre, as we have also seen in the column Let's ride together, is anchored in every form of entertainment with truly monumental foundations that have made it one of the most used and abused genres ever. Falling into cliché is therefore a constant danger that accompanies the pen of whoever writes the script or the voice of whoever interprets it. Red Dead Redemption 2 succeeds without any reservations in praising, maximizing and reinterpreting the Western genre of Leone, Ford or Peckinpah, combining their cinematic vision with the skills of the New York house in the creation of cult video games.
Arthur Morgan and the Van Der Linde gang perfectly embody the difficulties of the bandits hunted by the law and the doubts that pervaded the cowboys of the time in the choice of lifestyle, and will allow you to live an epic between breathtaking chases and masterfully choreographed shootings. Telling you even just the beginning of this epic would mean ruining a lot of the experience; just think, however, that the directorial direction between secondary and primary missions and random events is identical and wants to consciously eliminate the distinctions between them. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a hymn to narration, it is a colossal tribute to writing, to the novels of the past, to the ballads of heroes in front of the hearth. It is the spirit of the West and cannot fail to be underestimated.
Gameplay, interaction and storytelling - the three pillars of the Red Dead Redemption 2 experience are these. To complete the magnificence of the experience, however, there are the details: whether small or large for you, dubbing (and characterization of the characters), soundtrack and everything that surrounds the aforementioned spine are essential for the excellent success of this Rockstar experience: Red Dead Redemption 2 sees a dubbing in simply masterful English language in which every single voice, even the most insignificant, has a dubbing capable of enhancing and personalizing it. Every accent, every grimace, every little nuance is represented and conveys the immersion of the experience towards a level truly comparable to that of a cinematic colossal; just think that the Wapiti tribe or the characters actually speak in their language to make the context coherent and credible.
Activities such as poker or dominoes, rather than the possibility of buying goods through catalogs that are truly faithful to the time (early 1900s) are all outline details which, however, expand the gaming experience making it really similar to reality. Finally the soundtrack; Ennio Morricone was one of the proponents of the success of Sergio Leone's films, music has the ability to completely divert the listener from reality, immersing him in a dream world that broadens all the senses. Here, all the moments of Red Dead Redemption 2 are accompanied by a masterful soundtrack, which projects the dream world of the title into reality, making a real difference. Even a single moment of travel becomes memorable thanks to the sound of the title, an intimate experience that the player experiences with himself and with the game. The possibility in these moments to use the dynamic view with the single press of a button, moreover, truly creates magical moments that must be kept as a precious treasure.
This is what a normal review would tell you, this is what everyone for good or bad has told you. How can a review a week after the game - and many other reviews - add, introduce, diversify what is already online? In our opinion, trying to get out of the classic schemes, telling you what Red Dead Redemption 2 was for us through the story of a game moment, putting in writing what the game made us live.
The sun is hot, red, the horizon almost seems to burn. Yet the verdant expanses of fields on the Gray Estate in Lemoyne don't seem to burn. Indeed, the shadow of the tobacco plantation almost seems to thank the sun that hides behind the horizon. It hasn't rained for weeks here in Lemoyne, yet Arthur doesn't feel the heat: his embroidered legion vest just pulls forward to shelter from the wind as he rides in search of money. Money, always money, only money. Dutch seems obsessed, keeps repeating that he has a plan. There is always a plan, yet who knows why in the end it always fails and you have to escape. The Pinkertons are hunting them but, thanks to Charles the Indian, they have found refuge in that old abandoned house that they cleaned up of dissidents a few weeks ago. What is faith? Unconditional stupidity or a dispassionate love for ideals? Dutch preaches the faith, but it's hard to have faith when you spend a lifetime running away from the law, the bounty hunters and the O'Driscolls, damned O'Driscolls.
The gang, however, is synonymous with family, they have been riding together for years now and faith, perhaps, fades into the background when you turn around and see nothing but the gang. Neither a father, nor a mother, nor wives or children. If Dutch believes it, everyone should believe it. On the other hand, when no one was there he gave hope to everyone in a world that at the time granted the luxury of life only to those who survived the harsh law of nature. We pass by the gunsmith before heading to the established point: ammunition is scarce and Arthur with that empty bandolier looks like an idiot rather than a cowboy. With weapons loaded he rides to the train, it is evening now and Dutch waits. Because there is faith and because there is a train loaded with loot, there is always another damned train but sooner or later luck will run out and we will find ourselves facing the demons of a past that is increasingly present.
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't perfection, because perfection simply doesn't exist. What exists, however, is the magnificence of an experience, the simplicity of striking the heart with narrative, with a piece of music or with a simple dialogue. Red Dead Redemption 2 is not, as many think, a concentrate of trinkets that embellish a trivial experience if taken in its essence. The Rockstar title wants to show that perhaps over the years we have let ourselves be influenced by so many pomp that have obscured the essence of entertainment, that is to tell a story capable of moving those who write it and those who live it. The vote you will find here is the son of a philosophy, the one that each game must be contextualized and judged for what it wants to offer in the original idea. Red Dead Redemption 2 wants to take you to the West, in a world of outlaws and civilization, in a world where man has lived an incredible moment of his evolution and let you experience it firsthand through an exciting and unforgettable story. For us this intent is amply fulfilled, thus deserving the reward of excellence.
► Red Dead Redemption 2 is an Adventure-Action type game developed and published by Rockstar Games for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 26/10/2018 The version for PC came out on 05/11/2019
Version for Google Stadia from 19/11/2019
