Five manuscript problems & # 39; Red Dead Redemption 2 & # 39;

Red Dead Redemption 2 This is one of the generation games. This is for many reasons including, as we said in our analysis, highlighting one of the most lively, organic and credible open worlds ever made in the middle and a step forward, at the maturation and depth level, in a playable model. from the studio sandbox.

There are still many good things that make the final work Rockstar game in titles that are important and very easy to recommend but, unfortunately, the studio has not reached the same level of maturity in the narrative aspect and cannot justify its prequel status because of the scenario problem. We review it.

Pay attention spoiler: In this article we talk, with all kinds of details, about plots Red Dead Redemption 2 and finally

Irregular manuscripts that fall

The beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2 Very weird. Far from being an intense and direct prologue GTA V which presents the facts where conflicts between Trevor and Michael will be built or kinematics Red Dead Redemption which explains the simple but effective premise, first chapter RDR2 contribute nothing at the narrative level and, in fact, this conveys the feeling of starting right after a truly important event has occurred.

Constant mention in conversation with NPC or the writing in Arthur's diary explains that to us what happened at Blackwater has changed, in one way or another, to the band. But up there. We don't see or play anything like that. What follows are two and a half chapters of what is purest, based on routine mission that functions as a tutorial and that, taking us from here to there, they have no clear direction in the narrative. The premise continues to be money to travel to other places when the time comes. Not only is there no sense of urgency but that everything feels too wide.

Nor does it help that a giant map is hardly used in what should be an important part of the odyssey, transfers from the band: it is rather ridiculous to see how this is solved by a scene from several minutes where Arthur always does something else and, most importantly, how the group moved only a few meters away. So, the game never transmits the feeling of travel or flight in an accurate way and be careful enough, often, to make it clear to you in several dialogues or scenes that the band is in a compromised situation.

And if the first three chapters can be rather boring and, above all, don't match at the plot level and what they want to say, the following is a rare mixture: there comes a point in history, when we finally begin to enjoy missions and more or less moments memorable, RDR2 start to open fronts and cause threats in an accelerated manner: Angelo Bronte, O & # 39; Driscoll, the struggle between Indians and soldiers, Gray and Braithwaite, Pinkerton and the band's conflicts themselves began to blend and, too often, everything closes rather unsatisfactorily.

And in the case of a slow and uninteresting start and results that are somewhat hampered because having lots of things to tell in a short time is not enough, fifth chapter, although surprising and refreshing, eventually becomes a quasi-independent fragment in the narrative not advance the plot, sort of spin-off or individual episodes. There are many, too many, when it seems that from Rockstar they don't know what to say or where to go.

A protagonist who runs away

Interpretation of Arthur and the characters we see at cinematic are easy to remember, maybe the best Rockstar has been done in that. The problem is clear dissonance between the characters we control and what is reflected in the scene and what is written in the diary.

To begin with, Arthur is a character without initiative and without clear objectives. We spend most of the video games going forward and completing assignments with one goal of getting more money and continuing to escape when we make orders from the Netherlands. From the Netherlands and from all over the world, really: RDR2 take crime criminals to another level, Forgiving himself in the condition of implementing the band's arm Arthur.

There are many, too many, the main mission where Arthur meets most tasks and routine goals how to make a purchase, bring a letter to the post office, bring some friends to town or go from point A to point B to reach the destination they have marked for you. Too, The number of times a mission starts with a plan or an action that is already running is very surprising, always designed by one or more band members, of which Arthur was aiming at the last moment, everything happened in a hurry and seemed to be improvised (quite the opposite that the main mission of GTA V, without going further). There is no glimpse of your own initiative and you feel dragged by what your colleague is doing, whether you agree or not, constantly.

And at the level of internal development, spend tens of hours until we have a little idea of ​​what Arthur's desires, goals, and ambitions are and also relevant information such as when he has a daughter. Only the reflexive parts at the end of several missions and what he wrote to his diary represented in a way that was more or less accurate Arthur's inner conflict. But, as I said, once we have control everything ends up on the ground, presenting characters with moral compass that is erratic and difficult to understand.

Morgan is defined from the beginning of the game as someone who "Do what is needed, no matter what it is" in the context of the band. So much so that dozens of missions end with the massacre of dozens of people, robberies and assaults while some secondary activities will lead us to steal stagecoaches and houses and collect debts, in whatever way necessary, and they will present us to Arthur on he doesn't care to intimidate the dying person, the father of the family, to collect his debt. But, on the contrary, honor system that is not clear he punishes us if we loot the corpses we meet or that we respond to threats and start fights. Rockstar tries to show some evolution in that sense and while initially aggressive and immoral in debt collection do not report any damage, towards the end of our honor we will go down even if we receive rewards and payments from those we have protected. Of course, the next mission will make us steal and slaughter without remorse.

It is, at least, strange that on the one hand we are presented with someone who kills hundreds of people does not cause discomfort and steal the slightest as a way of life and, on the other hand, most of our secondary missions become charitable souls and honor systems clearly designed for players to behave in a noble way and not like the criminals they make. Dissonance is clear and disrupts development of characters who, as we say, have beautiful axes at the interpretive level.

Many characters, shallow

This band, obviously, is the core of the video game. It is therefore surprising that character development is inadequate and completely irregular, giving that feeling Rockstar wants to cover more than they can and should. In fact, they will spend dozens of hours playing for almost all members will continue one-dimensional archetypes: the cook, the loan shark, the fool, the rude, Mexican, Irish, veteran, native, and female (why distinguish them, right?).

And introductory prices more than a dozen flat and irrelevant characters finally proven: a large majority barely had the slightest impact on the plot, Rare is a character with dramatic arcs that are minimally developed and the mission associated with them often feels like secondary content. Along the way, Rockstar forgets to introduce new and memorable characters, always with a touch of excessive company, such as Seth, West Dickens, Bonnie or Landon Ricketts.

Everything is a little more striking, if possible, if we talk about the two most important characters in Arthur's history, Sadie Addler and John Marston. The first, saved in the early stages of the game, completely disappeared from the script to the third chapter when, suddenly, Arthur and he treated each other with strange beliefs if we calculated that players only saw them cross a few words until then . I must say, yes, that in my case I suffered bug which made John, Sadie, Abigail and Jack disappear from the camp for a long time and I couldn't even have an optional conversation with them.

Even worse, for what finally happened, the case John Marston: You begin to plant the seeds of your bad relationships with Arthur Morgan and, again and the three biggest parts of the video game without the slightest contact with them, all change and accelerate into a forced march in results where, almost in the morning, Marston's future finally became the most important for Arthur. It is understandable, to be reflected in him and the protagonist contact with Abigail and Jack, but he did not stop feeling forced by the fact that Marston starred in the first video game. Arthur's Redemption does not have the background or intensity of the original video game by how your way is built.

Epilogue that is unnecessary and unsatisfying

Following the same pattern as the original, Rockstar Games again bet on individual chapters as a closing to place themselves in the position of other characters after the decisive end of the protagonist from the main adventure. And if on RDR the original epilogue centered on Jack, son of John Marston, precisely the protagonist of the original game who monopolized spotlights on the final stretch of Red Dead Redemption 2.

There are many, maybe too many, problems behind this decision: from the amount of intrasains from the amount calculated, to find out almost everything that will happen and how, arrived tediousness of content that is long and unnecessary and, most importantly, extraordinary differences in important matters and relations with the adventures that occur. Placing himself in Jack Marston's shoes many years after his father's death had all the meanings of the world, as a second redemption in the form of revenge for his father's murderer and as an absolute closure to the story, leaving the same bitter. when verifying that, despite the wishes and hopes of his parents, Jack finished being a more naked sniper.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the history of John Marston and the story of Arthur Morgan is almost nonexistent and the decision was clearly felt pure service enthusiast on the part of Rockstar Games, it looks like a microtram that is truly stagnant and independent. In addition, for monotonous and repetitive play, this last stretch is nothing more than reducing the emotional weight of what the previous hour experienced: repeat for the third time the task of maintaining a farm with John, after the start RDR, on the McFarlane farm and the results, with his family, are boring and unnecessary. Like the others, it doesn't contribute anything.

But perhaps the worst of this epilogue is the outcome and treatment of the character who, if it's already irregular in the main adventure, is completely blurred. The last collision with Micah, besides being not very extraordinary in playing, was resolved in an inconsistent manner. It's your own Dutch people the person who, without saying a word to John or Micah himself, shot him. Why?

It makes no sense that many years after leaving John and Arthur, and on several occasions, for their fate in situations of risk of death and leaving them without believing their words about Micah, and after spending a long time together. he built a new band, when he realized. But also, the way to get out of the way without words with John, Sadie or Charles and leave money, what had spent years gathering, was a layer of inaccuracy in one of the most unusual game characters.

Inconsistency and error retrocontinuity

As I said in a review, Rockstar is committed two unforgivable errors while working at prequel as RDR2: not only what is calculated practically is irrelevant regarding the original video game but also does not enter some errors and inconsistencies with events that are told and played RDR. Beyond that there was never mentioned the person who allowed him to live a new life, something logical because it was created ex profeso for RDR2, the most obvious is that it significantly changed the chronology known to be related to the Dutch van der Linde band.

While in the video game we saw how the band broke up in 1899, Marston had been in his first video game he left in 1906 after being abandoned and left to die by the Dutch and other members. The closest, even though the results and dates are hardly right, is a bank robbery in which John is captured by Pinkerton and ignored by the Dutch but, of course, there is a clear error of retrocontinuity or retcon.

Marston too claimed to have stepped on New Austin in the 2010 video game While here we not only can visit and visit this area (although there really is little to do), but more, once we haven't met dates, we see how it builds and settles on Bleechers Hope far earlier than ordered and , path to connect to the beginning RDR, it is not even mentioned that it was made of the daughter John claimed.

And beyond that is undeniable, cold dating, games too presents us with characters that are very different from what we expected: it is evident that, traveling 12 years in the past, we found changes like Marston who were very immature and individualistic in the first half of the game but did not stop surprising the images we saw about him in the epilogue, being flat characters acting with the sole purpose of impressing Abigail . This is also exemplified in a few sentences and, especially, in the letter he wrote.