Horse Sense

Red Dead Redemption 2 is such an epic game that there's no way I'm done playing.  My adventures as Arthur Morgan have taken me from the beauty of the wooded lands around Valentine to the murky swamps and dirty streets of Saint Denis.  Poor Arthur is marching toward his inevitable end but I'm still having fun.

Since I've largely completed much of the side content I've been advancing the main storyline.  I did spend some time doing something that I said I wasn't going to do...but inevitably always end up doing.  Usually one of the first big adventures that Arthur takes is to find what is arguably the best horse in the game--the white Arabian that spawns in the snowy expanse outside Lake Isabella.  This time I told myself that I would organically find Arthur increasingly better horses--basically I would keep an eye out for different horses roaming around and if I saw one that was an upgrade, I would tame it.  This worked out pretty well, there's one random thoroughbred that roams around in the area outside Emerald Ranch and I managed to track it down and tame it.  It's a good horse--decent speed and it doesn't scare extremely easily.  I stuck with that horse for awhile and then stumbled across a random Nokota in the hills outside of Valentine.  Once again, I tamed it, built up the bond to level 4 and kept my eyes peeled for other horses.

My own stupidity doomed my "organic discovery" plan.  I decided that I should sell one of my previously stabled horses and thought I had selected JUST that horse to sell.  Instead, I stupidly sold ALL my stabled horses and didn't realize it until way too late (basically I noticed the stable icon was no longer showing a number for my stabled horses).  All those horses that I had worked so hard to find were gone.  There's no way I couldn't have a backup horse, so I decided to just pursue the normal path of tracking down the best horses.

My favorite of the horsies!  The coat pattern is so unique.

This time around I decided to check out the other wild Arabian that can be tamed.  Its stats are slightly worse than the white Arabian, but it has my favorite look of all the horses in the game.  You can find this horse wandering around the rugged terrain just west of the Wapiti Reservation.  The biggest challenge in taming this horse is the rocky terrain--the horse kept positioning itself on top of rocks or close to the edge of dangerous looking drop-offfs, so I had to chase it around a bit to get it in a place where I felt confident that it wouldn't buck itself into an early death while I was trying to break it.  Behold, the brindled Arabian!  It truly is one of the prettiest horsies.

Now I had my backup horse, but I wasn't content with just one, so I decided that it would also be worthwhile to go grab the white Arabian.  In previous playthroughs I've never had a problem finding and breaking this horse.  This time around it turned into a real chore.  It took me three different tries to catch the damn thing!  The first time was completely my fault--it was kind of blizzardy and I lost sight of the horse and accidentally rode too close to it and spooked it off.  Generally I could track it down using eagle eye, but this time it decided to take off on a bonkers path--it swam across the open part of the lake and made it to the small island in the middle and then just disappeared.  I rode fully around the lake multiple times and could not find it.  I gave up and decided to come back later.

The classic white Arabian.

Round two also turned into a disaster--I bundled Arthur up and ventured back up into the snow.  This time the horse spawned right next to two wolves that were playing (but not scaring the stupid horse...).  As soon as I got close enough the wolves turned to attack and I had to kill them.  The shooting scared the horse off (thankfully this time it didn't take off into the water) and I figured I could still track it down.  Unfortunately a random rider also decided to come by and scared the horse off even more (honestly, I never see riders up there so it was very oddly timed).  I wasted a bunch of time riding around and trying to find it to no avail.

So I waited, did a few missions, and then decided to give it another go (which is truly stupid).  Again, the wolves had respawned, but this time I was ready and quickly dispatched them while keeping an eye on the horse.  I was finally able to track it down and break it.  I probably wasted well over an hour on the pursuit of this dang horse.

I previously wrote about irritations I have with certain aspects of RDR2 and another one (sort of two) popped up with the taming of the Arabians.  NPC's love to comment on how awesome the Arabians are, but then I took them into the stables and the stable master stated that the horse was starved.  What?  I feed them whenever their health starts to dip.  That's when I remembered the whole "body condition" aspect of gameplay that is never explained well.  It's a counterintuitive mechanic where Arthur and horse companion need to eat at a certain regular pattern to maintain their weight (rather than the traditional RPG way of whenever health gets low).  It supposedly has some effect on stats (like stamina).  The game never explains much other than the fact that Arthur and horsey need to eat from time to time.  I'm pretty sure that there are guides out there that explain how to maintain body condition, but I don't know how much time I want to expend on this aspect of the game.  It's poorly explained and difficult to monitor--the only way to see the condition of your horse is through a pause menu option.

Even though I know exactly how Arthur's adventures will end (sad face), RDR2 is always a magical, western-style good time.  I forgot exactly how many people you shoot--it's staggering (maybe more than GTA V?).  Maybe someday I'll do a bandit playthrough...probably not though, I just don't like bad Arthur.