Western Style Adventure

I decided to grab Civilization 6 for free as part of the huge Epic Games Summer Sale giveaway.  Choosing to snatch it up is completely questionable--I'm horrible at 4X games and generally don't enjoy them--but hey, it was free!  One of the pluses of grabbing the freebies from Epic is that you also receive a $10 off coupon that can be applied to other purchases.  I had been eyeballing Red Dead Redemption 2 for awhile and was trying to be patient enough to wait for the price to drop down just a bit more than the sale price of $47.99 and to get somewhere in the $30 range.  Lucky for me that I got that handy $10 off coupon!  I decided to grab it and enter the world of the Wild, Wild West.  I cannot even think of another "western" themed game that I have played, so it's an exciting old/new world to be adventuring in.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, before my adventures got started, I got to have a whole other kind of adventure--an adventure in the frustrations of having to use multiple game launchers...that use multiple accounts....that work like a pile of hot garbage.  I very much enjoy Rockstar's games--I have been a Grand Theft Auto fan for a long time--but was wary of pouncing on RDR2 because many of the reviews on Steam mentioned the fact that the Rockstar Launcher is trash and that there were some early sketchy performance related issues.  I left my computer on overnight to download the whopping 118gb and then excitedly logged on and got prepared to get down to playing--unfortunately, just logging on turned into a chore.  The first thing you have to do is download and install the Rockstar Games Launcher--it was a quick, easy install.  Then, you have to try to set up an account, or in my case, try to remember the username and password for a Social Club account that I probably hadn't used for at least three years.  After going through the normal "forgot username/password" e-mail game I did finally manage to get logged in....only to get the message that "there are no linked games with this account."  What the fudge, man?

Faced with this installation wall, I had to resort to Googling how to fix this issue.  Repeated scanning of my system kept saying "there are no game files."  Umm, yes, there are 118 gb of frakkin' game files that took hours to download!  With some Reddit searching I was able to find some strange but effective solutions that eventually worked (deleting folders for the launcher and Social Club) and starting both the launcher and Epic Games in administrator mode--the launcher finally identified RDR2!  Time to get down to business....

Ha!  Nope.  The next error message I received was that the Rockstar Launcher couldn't authenticate the files from the Epic Games Store.  I hopped back onto Reddit to look for a solution and couldn't find one.  Luckily, I stumbled onto a thread that mentioned that during the halcyon days of the GTA V giveaway people were frequently getting the same error and that it had to do with Epic's servers being completely overloaded by people activating their free copies of GTA V.  So, there was nothing I could do but wait until the server side issues had been resolved.  Within an hour they had been fixed and I was finally able to get logged on.  By this point I had seriously considered mashing the refund button because all this work just to get the game to start was grating on my nerves--but, I am hoping that it turns out to be the masterpiece that people are claiming it is.

My first impressions of the game were mostly positive.  The graphics are absolutely amazing and I was stupidly impressed with the physics of the snow in the early introductory story.  Here's where I'm going to mention that my graphics setting defaulted to the high side and my computer started to sound like an aircraft upon take-off--this game is a beast on the graphics side of things and there are some insanely detailed graphics settings.  I had to play with them a bit so as to not overtax my poor graphics card (it didn't overheat, but I could feel the heat coming off my PC).

A genteel looking Arthur.

The story follows an outlaw gang that is on the run after a heist gone bad (the details of which seem to be intentionally shrouded in mystery).  Arthur Morgan, the character you play, is a rugged, cowboy type who rides with this gang.  One of parts of RDR2 that is interesting is the fact that there is a morality element--you can choose to have Arthur take actions that are "honorable" or you can play him like a true, outlaw badass.  After a short story introduction that gives players an idea about the various gameplay elements, you finally get to the meat--the massive, open world.  The world is gorgeous and filled with animals to hunt, games to play, bounties to capture and of course, story missions and side tasks.  It's not an Ubisoft-esque nightmare of map symbols, but it's huge!

I've been playing for a few hours and I've hit a bit of a wall--there is a ton to do and I've been a bit too focused on some of the side tasks (there are special challenges that you can unlock) which have proven to be more difficult than I initially thought they would.  There have also been some elements of the game that aren't explained terribly well and that I had to spend some time to figure out (namely supplying my camp).  I am going to spend some time working on the main missions (because I also think they unlock some gameplay elements that I haven't discovered yet).

I would emphasize this post with a beautiful screenshot I took of a fun, double rainbow, but another irritant related to Social Club is that your screenshots are saved in a weird, abnormal format that requires more work to find and convert.  (Maybe you're seeing a pattern here by now?).  I am really hoping that the quality of the game makes up for the ridiculousness of installation and these weird, non-user friendly settings.