so engrossing, so vast
rockstar has mastered ‘minutia’
rockstar is really good at writing these characters and storylines, and worldbuilding – whether in story or in actual dev – but what it lacks is editing and emotional beats
when i play and feel like im watching a movie i’m also expecting the benefits of editing, of scores, of perfectly timed moments
but since these games are basically realtime reality television there are no breaks, and you’ll get scenes that feel very emotional and resonant and then the next scene is back to the regularly scheduled program – case in point, when arthur is kidnapped, it’s wild, it’s raw, it was probably the craziest fucking thing in the game so far. but we surface back after, three weeks later, him with long hair and rested up at camp. i felt like i never got the closure of arthur being tended to by his camp. i talk to dutch and it’s like same old g. so it deflated that whole sequence
and like most if not all dialog in the game, they get loud and bombastic about some really menial things. also the same feeling in gta except with the deliberate slow pace heightens the mundanity. and of course, they’ve got to write this dialog knowing that it could be skippable, optional, so it can’t really offer too much that’s not directly linked to gameplay.
final point: i’ve been playing rockstar games since gta3. then vice city, then san andreas, la noire, gta, and then this – and i feel like rockstar has been making the same open world game for upwards of 15 years. we got a taste of what they wanted to accomplish with the very ambitious san andreas – but limited to the hardware at that point – and everything since has been iphone upgrades of that same game. rdr2 seems really close to what they’ve wanted to accomplish, lots of bugs though.