{"id":9035,"date":"2024-12-25T01:00:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-25T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/host-of-cowpokes-past\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T22:44:29","slug":"host-of-cowpokes-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/host-of-cowpokes-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Host of cowpokes past\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hot take nearly half-a-decade past its prime: Red Dead Redemption 2<\/em> is turning out to be quite the good video game.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t buy it on its release in 2019 and continued not to buy it all through COVID. Maybe after The Witcher<\/em> I just wasn\u2019t down with another epic storyline starring a non-customizable character, despite the Wild West setting. I\u2019d played\u00a0 the original Red Dead Redemption<\/em> and of course its DLC pack Undead Nightmare <\/em>(y\u2019know, the one with the zombies) and had a lot of fun but was I ready for more of that? Seemed that I wasn\u2019t, even after I picked RDR2 up on sale over a year ago. So many games, so few finished. I remember as a kid visiting my aunt\u2019s house and seeing games on her shelf still in their shrink-wrap packaging and finding it absolutely mind-boggling that someone would buy a video game and not immediately be playing the hell out of it. Now I understand. Bleah.<\/p>\n

BUT. Delayed is not the same as never, and so I metaphorically broke the shrink wrap at long last and started playing RDR2 and its accompanying product of Red Dead Online. Both are largely abandoned by Rockstar these days but it doesn\u2019t make it any less impressive to me what they brought forth, and that\u2019s summed up in one of those words an Old West gentleperson might well have put in their journal: verisimilitude. To put it in more modern terms they are immersive as fuck, which has its downsides since RDO is in its Holidays phase right now which includes everything being really damn snowy and cold, even the Louisiana swamp biome. This happens to matter more than just in looks since there\u2019s a survival element and if you\u2019re not dressed warmly you can rapidly deplete your healthiness. The \u201cstory mode\u201d of RDR2 which is the single-player meanwhile also starts out with you as part of a ragtag group of outlaws desperately searching for food and shelter in the midst of a terrible blizzard. And like I said, it\u2019s an immersive game so my timing deciding to play it as Winter begins in real life is perhaps not the best.<\/p>\n

BUT. I do live in the Los Angeles area and so can\u2019t complain too much compared to what my in-game avatars are experiencing. Although RDO is most likely stuck in snow until the Holiday event ends, you do get out to greener pastures in fairly short order in the main game and that\u2019s when the tried-and-true GTA-style adventuring begins, alternating free roam open world and scripted missions as you guide notorious outlaw Arthur Morgan through his paces. This is similar to guiding John Marston in the first game but RDR2 is a prequel where Marston is an NPC and where he was mostly a loner during his time, here is the time before when there\u2019s a whole gang of men and women of all races, colors, and creeds, trying to stay alive and free in an 1899 America where law and order are increasingly encroaching upon their way of life.<\/p>\n

This change is probably the most crucial difference I\u2019ve found so far, because Rockstar really took their time breathing life into each individual gang member. They move around, they talk to each other, they do chores (and complain at the people not pulling their weight) and you get to react or not to all of them as you choose. You can roam out for days to do honorable or dishonorable deeds but you\u2019ll always return to that outlaw camp of found family and little by little they\u2019ve grown on me and sometimes I want to just sit down and listen to them instead of rushing to the next mission. Of course having played the first game I know there\u2019s tragedy in store but I really credit the developers for putting so much detail into these virtual people and the setting itself. Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> (post patches) is the only game that\u2019s come close for me recently but I feel like between the two they\u2019ve really raised the bar for the future. They feel alive. Just the other day I decided to check out a theater in-game promising a Vaudeville-style variety show \u2014 now maybe there might be a mission that takes place there later but at the time it had no draw to it except my curiosity and whim, and I got treated to a genuinely great experience, and what\u2019s more an experience that I could sit and watch or get up and actually interact with to change the outcome. Let\u2019s just say as an example that the devs must have heard of real-life 19th Century incidents like the actors having to change the ending of Othello<\/em> at literal gunpoint because an impressionable cowboy got up and threatened the man playing Iago with a loaded revolver.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m running long at the mouth and have barely scratched the surface, but I think that\u2019s one of the keys is that you feel like there\u2019s so much you\u2019re seeing but also so much you\u2019re missing out on. Unlike real life you could reload a save or do a new playthrough but it feels so naturally presented that even a guy like me that sometimes gets really completionist can walk away from a confrontation because I don\u2019t feel like Arthur gives enough of a shit at that moment. There\u2019s a lot of choice in how to approach certain situations, but also times where it\u2019s just going to go bad because Arthur is, well, Arthur, and Arthur is not what you\u2019d call a born diplomat. He\u2019s grown on me too, I suppose, as I continue playing.<\/p>\n

And heck, I even figured out that there\u2019s customization to an extent. It turns out that under all the hairyness he\u2019s normally presented with Morgan is a blonde dude with blue eyes and with the right shave and outfit can do a half-decent Frank cosplay. Now I just have to find a bolt-action rifle to go with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot take nearly half-a-decade past its prime: Red Dead Redemption 2 is turning out to be quite the good video game. I didn\u2019t buy it on its release in 2019 and continued not to buy it all through COVID. Maybe after The Witcher I just wasn\u2019t down with another epic storyline starring a non-customizable character, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ERFy-2lJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9039,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/the-cat-is-both-alive-and-dead\/","url_meta":{"origin":9035,"position":0},"title":"The cat is both alive and dead\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"October 30, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Schr\u00f6dinger aside, this title is referencing us. Dawn and I don\u2019t have kids, we have a cat. Our agreement was that if we ever divorced, the person who asked for it would have to take custody of the cat. We kid, of course. We loved the little furball for all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9033,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/playing-cowpokes-and-aliens\/","url_meta":{"origin":9035,"position":1},"title":"Playing cowpokes and aliens\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"February 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Eaton Fire was a very near miss on our place and it was good to take a break while we dealt with insurance, cleanup, etc. It could have been a lot worse for us but being on the frontlines of a natural disaster is a heck of a thing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2025\/02\/xcomsuzie-c35ZrT.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9105,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/outlook-uncertain-try-again-later\/","url_meta":{"origin":9035,"position":2},"title":"Outlook uncertain, try again later\u2026?","author":"dawn","date":"April 9, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I don\u2019t usually post about current events outside the sphere of pop culture, but in this case the events are broad enough they\u2019re intruding on it. The week before last Dawn and I were at WonderCon and also hearing from friends at another show out of state and the word\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9038,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/league-of-extraordinary-animation\/","url_meta":{"origin":9035,"position":3},"title":"League of extraordinary animation\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"November 20, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Is the term \u201ckiller app\u201d still in parlance in the tech community? If not, quick rundown: hardware by itself doesn\u2019t sell, or at least doesn\u2019t sell for long. This is particularly true with game consoles and is why they tend to jealously guard their library of IPs. I remember the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6390,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/my-meta-review-of-the-watchmen-movie\/","url_meta":{"origin":9035,"position":4},"title":"My Meta-Review of the Watchmen Movie","author":"Clint Wolf","date":"May 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"[A blast from the past which I originally posted back in 2009 on my old site, preserved here for the benefit of at least one pingback that links to it.] What do I mean by Meta-Review? Not sure I know myself. Probably because I'm less discussing the movie itself here,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9050,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9035\/revisions\/9050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}