LogFAQs > #945385170

Finally beat Red Dead Redemption today! I went back to read your final analysis as well and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. But here's my go at a bit of a write up.

I'm going to start with the positives before jumping into the horses. I really liked the Sandbox they created here. All the different costumes and challenges were really fun to stumble upon. Even finding a new animal tended to have its moments, it was always a pleasant surprise to randomly see a beaver or getting attacked by the cougar. Hell I even found a Jackalope near the end.

I think it plays into the story as well. As repetitive as a lot of the farm tasks got, it actually made me more invested in the characters and their struggles. I found the Mexico arc to be really fascinating too, while I'm sure it lacked any historical accuracy it still managed to spark an interest in the Mexican Revolution.

Now for the negatives... so the horseback riding may be front and center with how obnoxious it can be, but I think the real issue is the lack of a decent fast travel option. Majority of questing just involves getting to the location, then once the quest is over you're just kinda left there and have to travel all the way back just to start the next quest. It's frankly infuriating, sure you can set up a campsite and fast travel, but that requires you to leave cities/roads to use it and even then not all quests are in fast travel locations, so you still have to ride there.

The other thing that really hurt this gameplay loop for me was the sheer number of main quests as well as their lack of variety. There are over 50 quests and a vast majority of them boil down to maybe 5 or so types, so the quests weren't rewarding enough for how long it takes to actually get to them. I think it would've suited the game a lot better to roll multiple quests into one or at least allow us to start them immediately afterwards.

Anyway I'm not really sure what Rockstar was trying with some of these gameplay decisions. I've only played this and Bully, the latter of which I had a much better time with. Really interested to see how the other sandbox games and especially GTAV stack up against this.

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