During the Epilogue, John is forced to take up his guns and mount his horse in order to go after a small gang of bandits who are threatening the farm he works for. Abigail disapproves, terrified that she might be about to lose John. John, however, must use his less than savory skills to defend their livelihood and ends up cornering the last bandit in the barn. While the man screams all sorts of threats at John, the player is treated to an in-game recreation of the cover of the first game, with John glaring down the barrel of a

Sphincter sirens are a normal part of everyday life, so when they are included in a video game, they make the world feel ten times more real. Who would have thought that passing gas could be used so precisely and elegan

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a graphical and visual achievement for sure, but every “exceptional” story element is merely surface level. By the end of it all, the game feels like a package designed for the mainstream media for some futile campaign proving that games are movies now; a movement that personally seems like it comes more from self-insecurity than from true reverence for the medium. By attempting to signal a movement forward for video games, I feel that in certain ways, this game has moved the form backward.

The original game was always a touch ambiguous about how John won his facial scars. Aside from a voice clip that happens when John attempts to fight wolves in the first game with a knife, players were left to speculate as to what animal did that to him. This is confirmed in RDR2 to have in fact come from a close encounter with a wolf pack. After Arthur and Javier track John in the Grizzlies, they come across a perished horse and tons of evidence of a fight, and then a wolfpack as they come off the mounta

As 2018 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official statement Game of the Year 2018 awards for DualShockers , there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2018 releases — can be considered.

These epilogues and the rest of your time in the game end up being a taste of the life fans of the series have wished for from John’s story. It’s a small taste of peace and happiness before the cycle begins anew from what we saw in the original Red Dead Redemption . Arthur’s journal being passed to John helps facilitate this all-too-brief period of happiness in his life.

I kept thinking back to Andrew Dominik’s 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , which I’ve been presuming was the most prominent visual inspiration for Red Dead Redemption 2 for a few reasons. For the most overt example, look no further than the major train robbery sequence from early on in the story, and compare it to one of the first scenes in Dominik’s film . From the foreboding music, the light in-between the trees as the gang members await the train, and the point man standing on the track to stop the train, the two scenes are nearly the same beat-by-beat.

If you’re reading through each and every staff member’s Game of the Year lists, it’s pretty likely that most, if not almost all of them will include both God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 at the forefront (assuming they played them). I’m falling straight into that trend – but you have to admit that there is an astonishing reason behind it. Both of these games are absolute masterworks, built detail-by-detail in order to transcend the normal experience of an open world game.

In-game journals or logs in other games often have the appearance of life, thanks to talented teams, but none feel like living, breathing books like Arthur’s does. Drake’s notes in the Uncharted series are filled with doodles and charm that is signature to Drake’s personality, but its in-game purpose is usually to solve simple puzzles more than to flesh out the characters. During my brief time with Mass Effect , the Codex was easily my favorite bit since it filled out the history of the galaxy, but it lacked a personal anchor point.

The only element that I could track consistently was this feeling of disdain from the characters. Even with the game’s 1899 setting, I kept thinking back to the contemporary Western Hell or High Water by director David Mackenzie and writer Taylor Sheridan, who is also responsible for Wind River and the Sicario films. To sum up the film’s themes, it was implicitly about the “silent majority” that became disillusioned with the rest of the nation’s move towards progressivism. It’s a cops-and-robbers film in rural America, where ordinary people rob banks out of financial desperation, citizens openly carry firearms, waitresses complain about city folk and their values, and indigenous people are pushed around and bullied by their peers.

In RDR , John famously swam like a rock when he so much as put a toe into deep water. Not even his horses could keep him from sinking. In RDR2 , Rockstar not only has Arthur constantly make fun of John for it, but you will also lose the ability to swim when you play as John in the Epilogue. Talk about commitment to a charac