Poll of the Day > It occurred to me earlier today that RDR2 was released nearly 7 years ago.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Bones = dust.

Time sucks!

That's funny because if you were to put a gun to my head and say, "you have exactly two seconds to tell me how many years ago the original RDR was released" I would probably have blurted out a number between 7 and 10. Despite the fact that I know there was a long gap between the two games and I was playing the second game when my wife and I got engaged and we've been married five years.

Kind of supports my hypothesis that our collective (or maybe just my) perception of time sort of ground to a halt when COVID started. Because RDR1 was released ten years before COVID. So they were somehow released 8 years apart and also definitely released 10 and 7 years ago, respectively.

I'd probably have said it was like 3 years ago, tops. It just feels so recent to me.

And I don't think Covid is the issue. The issue is that our perception of time tends to change as you get older. When you're a kid a year feels like an eternity, but when you're adult you get distracted and then turn around and it's a decade later.

It probably hits me harder because I'm older than most of the rest of the people here. But it will happen to yoooou!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And I don't think Covid is the issue. The issue is that our perception of time tends to change as you get older. When you're a kid a year feels like an eternity, but when you're adult you get distracted and then turn around and it's a decade later.

It's a bit of both. Time does seem to be moving faster now than it was a decade ago, but 2020-2022 definitely do blur together in a weird way on top of that.

and can you believe that the 80's were 60 years ago? almost as old as gamefaqs.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd probably have said it was like 3 years ago, tops. It just feels so recent to me.

And I don't think Covid is the issue. The issue is that our perception of time tends to change as you get older. When you're a kid a year feels like an eternity, but when you're adult you get distracted and then turn around and it's a decade later.

It probably hits me harder because I'm older than most of the rest of the people here. But it will happen to yoooou!

You and I are around the same age and I have a noticeably worse grasp of time post-COVID. I do agree with your overall statement that your perception of time changes as you get older. Things that seemed to last forever as a kid are just over in a flash now.

I bought it during the winter sale. I didn't like it.

Revelation34 posted...

I bought it during the winter sale. I didn't like it.

Agreed. It was a technically impressive game but the story is just a slow motion trainwreck.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Time sucks!

I had this thought the other day while forgetting how old I am. Looked up Rihanna to see how many kids she has and said, "Oh, she's only a year older than me. Wait, she was born in 88'... I'M 37! When did that happen!?"

rjsilverthorn posted...

Agreed. It was a technically impressive game but the story is just a slow motion trainwreck.

I don't know, I only played through the prologue and thought all the forced mechanics they made you do like walking in perfect unison with everyone else and doing everything exactly the way the game wants you to do it was really annoying.

Then we get to a camp in the mountains and I'm given freedom to explore, so that's what I try and do. I get on my horse and run off, ten seconds in my horse collapses and dies from "exhaustion", then ten more seconds I collapse and die from "exhaustion"... that is not an exaggeration, wtf!

rjsilverthorn posted...

Agreed. It was a technically impressive game but the story is just a slow motion trainwreck.

The story was fine. It was the gameplay I didn't like.

Salrite posted...

I don't know, I only played through the prologue and thought all the forced mechanics they made you do like walking in perfect unison with everyone else and doing everything exactly the way the game wants you to do it was really annoying.

Then we get to a camp in the mountains and I'm given freedom to explore, so that's what I try and do. I get on my horse and run off, ten seconds in my horse collapses and dies from "exhaustion", then ten more seconds I collapse and die from "exhaustion"... that is not an exaggeration, wtf!

The problem with the game is that it's a very technically impressive "Western" simulation. The problem is, most people will find simulation-style games boring. Especially if they go into it expecting an exciting action game instead. They tried to hard to make a lot of parts of it more "realistic", when they should have been more "cinematic".

It's the difference between playing a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator and a game like After Burner. They're scratching two very different itches.

Though the big sticking point that kind of ruined the RDR2 story for me (and actually led me to stop playing) is how they gave Arthur TB. The idea of it isn't terrible, but it's handled so poorly it annoyed the hell out of me. It also kind of ruins John as a character.

I miss when games were still developing as a hobby and a technology. 7 years used to mean the difference between Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario 64 (roughly). Now we just get diminished returns on games and systems that cost more than ever when realistically we could all still just be playing on PS4s if they would learn to optimize games better

GanglyKhan posted...

I miss when games were still developing as a hobby and a technology. 7 years used to mean the difference between Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario 64 (roughly). Now we just get diminished returns on games and systems that cost more than ever when realistically we could all still just be playing on PS4s if they would learn to optimize games better

Yeah at a certain point graphics got good enough that it stopped being a selling point and yet AAA developers still mostly prioritize attempts at photorealism at the expense of everything else. Most of my playtime over the past five years has been indie PC games with graphics that cover the whole spectrum of stylized to intentionally retro looking. Because at the end of the day it's a game and it should be fun to play.

game fuckin sucked

man101 posted...

Yeah at a certain point graphics got good enough that it stopped being a selling point and yet AAA developers still mostly prioritize attempts at photorealism at the expense of everything else. Most of my playtime over the past five years has been indie PC games with graphics that cover the whole spectrum of stylized to intentionally retro looking. Because at the end of the day it's a game and it should be fun to play.

I still think of the PS3/360 era as being "modern". I can easily go back and play a game like Mass Effect and not feel like I'm playing a clunky old game the same way I do when playing, say, the original Halo or GTA3.

That's probably the last time I feel like games took a real quantitative step forward, as opposed to just making small incremental qualitative improvements.

Which is funny, because if you think about it, I'm playing a game that's 18 years old and there's not a huge difference between then and now to me. But if you went back 18 years from Mass Effect, you're looking at games like Super Mario Bros 3, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man 2.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd probably have said it was like 3 years ago, tops. It just feels so recent to me.

And I don't think Covid is the issue. The issue is that our perception of time tends to change as you get older. When you're a kid a year feels like an eternity, but when you're adult you get distracted and then turn around and it's a decade later.

It probably hits me harder because I'm older than most of the rest of the people here. But it will happen to yoooou!

It has to do with how human memory works. We retain information most vividly from teens to mid twenties. After that you remember less, so in hindsight the time "feels" shorter.

Snoregasm posted...

It has to do with how human memory works. We retain information most vividly from teens to mid twenties. After that you remember less, so in hindsight the time "feels" shorter.

It's also a "storage" issue.

Like, when you are 5, you are comparing one year of life to the previous five, so you're effectively talking about 20% of your total life.

On the other hand, when you're 45, one year of life is only about 2% of your total life. So your perception of it is somewhat compressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T6omDi0pwg

man101 posted...

Most of my playtime over the past five years has been indie PC games with graphics that cover the whole spectrum of stylized to intentionally retro looking. Because at the end of the day it's a game and it should be fun to play.

Same here, glad to know there are others like that on this site.

I was so ready to dispute this until I remembered that I played it mostly after work during covid times. Me and my friend so badly wanted the MP to be good, but we still had a lot of fun in pseudo private servers playing poker and robbing trains.

I've currently got a 2nd play through save forever stuck in the "Golden Age" of chapter 2(?) where I do all my animal hunting n such.

It was the karma system that ruined it for me. How are you supposed to earn money without committing crimes as a bandit?

Revelation34 posted...

It was the karma system that ruined it for me. How are you supposed to earn money without committing crimes as a bandit?

I feel like the game doesn't really work if you just go around committing crimes, at least in the early game (which is as far as I got). You rob people and you get like $2.

Yeah, the perception of time is a wild thing. It hits me that Elden Ring is already going on 4 years old.

But back to RDR2 being 7 years old; that's a good thing. It means we have maybe just 10 more years until RDR3, and those years will feel even faster.

And I still haven't played either game despite iirc owning at least one.

Of course, when I read the title, for some reason I thought of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, which I really enjoyed despite the gameplay seeming uneven.

Feels like longer than 7 years to me lol. Feels like a decade ago that I played it