the story is reasonably well put together (not as creative as KCD in some respects but more plausible), but FO NV type decision making with downstream impacts sorely missing. at least in KCD, what you do in nest has some (alleged) impact on baptism
Hey, don’t get me wrong, the story of RDR2 is quite good in my opinion. It’s just that the vast majority of the missions allow very little in the way of freedom in how you solve them. Rockstar straight up disables certain mechanics and equipment, sometimes forces you to use certain weapons regardless of your preference, and often sets up truly arbitrary tasks for you to accomplish before you can progress anywhere in the mission.
One of the first missions forces you to eat something before you can finish looting a house for stuff. The universe literally prevents you from opening a chest unless you eat a cracker or something. There are only a handful of missions with optional objectives, let alone different possible paths to reach the conclusion of the mission (and at the moment I can only think of two).
KC:D does suffer from linear storytelling as well, but I don’t think I’d term it as railroaded. You’re given quite a bit of freedom in how you solve a mission - whether it’s through subterfuge, force of arms, or charismatic methods in certain instances. Outside of the more cinematic missions which involve multiple forces clashing, you’re generally at the mercy of your own decision making.
The lack of this in RDR2 in the main story missions makes it less a game in my mind than a movie that you continually unpause by left trigger, right trigger (auto-aim and shoot). Personally, I found it kind of tedious and frustrating, knowing that there were tons of different solutions that I could be doing at any given moment that didn’t necessarily lead to a different outcome of the mission, but was arbitrarily prevented from doing because reasons. If I kill everyone in Vranik, I don’t get a game over screen, and I can appreciate that.
basically how i feel about RDR2 and KCD. In RDR2, killed countless rival gang members and had zero impact on MQ faction battles. In KCD, killed over a thousand (no hyperbole) enemy NPCs and had no impact whatsoever on battles at Pribyslavitz, Vranik and Talmberg.
Sadly true to an extent in certain areas, and I’ve said similar things about the game. However, if you watch footage of the beta of the game, or played it, you know the reasons why it comes off as a bit clunky in this regard. Warhorse had to cut a lot of corners to reduce the amount of bugs and voice acting they had to contend with to get the thing out the door. The scouting and siege of Pribyslavitz was cut short in terms of the options at your disposal by a significant amount. So, yes, if you kill everyone at Pribyslavitz or Vranik prior to the battle, it comes off as very puzzling and ham-fisted when you see that your efforts amounted to nothing. I presume they had plans for content in case you did such a thing, but couldn’t get around to implementing it.
With Talmberg, however, it makes a bit of sense, as they specifically say that they split their forces. This probably would have happened before you escaped Vranik, as it was always intended to be a trap for Radzig and Divish to fall into. Otherwise, it’s presumed there’s large numbers of bandits in the region because they’re recruiting from all over Bohemia. The fact that they refresh isn’t a huge shock to me. That they come back in two hours ready for battle is on the immersion breaking side, though.
Still, if Rockstar had done it, you’d be basically told every step of what to do in virtually every mission, right down to who you should swing your sword at. I prefer the somewhat flawed linear storytelling with options of KC:D to the oppression of having to deal with RDR2 missions.
it’s more than a vibe. 2 out of 3 parts present. a number of Kickstarter targets not present. nearly a year on and artifacts still exist
Well, yes, as already said - they cut a lot of corners and had to chop a lot of stuff. Just saying that even people who didn’t realize that they had to cut content back, and were unaware as to what the kickstarters were promised, can see that there are missing elements in places.