I picked up Red Dead Redemption after finishing RDR2 because I was just extremely curious about it and it wasn't too expensive (and I had nothing else to do) and... hm. Yeah.

I knew it was inferior, that much was not in doubt, but it's kinda weird seeing the ways in which it's inferior, and just how tonally different it is.

Like from a gameplay standpoint it's much much much weaker, like it's not even worth discussing. But it's a GTA4 era game, and I will maintain until my grave that GTA was not fun until 5 came out. Rockstar just hadn't figured out how to make fun games yet.

In 2010 they just didn't know a lot of stuff they knew in 2018 and I don't hold that against them. But it's just kind of... weird, seeing what they were *trying* to do - which they *achieved* in the sequel - being held back by technique as much as technology

Purely from a tonal standpoint, the world looks like a cartoon compared to the sequel, and I can't quite put my finger on why. Everything is realistic enough but something is just... off. There's an uncanny valley about it all. Maybe the buildings aren't the right proportions.

The soundtrack has the beginnings of the brilliant minimalist stuff they used in 2, but a good chunk of it is modeled very directly on Sergio Leone's work, and frankly what makes 2 good is that it ISN'T The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

RDR2 is good because it is realistic almost to a fault. There's something exaggerated about the places in 1 that just isn't there in 2. They feel real, human, lived-in. I know games just got better about this but the difference here is just stark.

The things in RDR2 that aren't realistic are basically mandatory for gameplay reasons. One man can't fight 40 because a single bullet usually killed you (slowly, agonizingly) in the 19th century. That kinda shit is like - whatever, the shooting is so little of your time.

RDR2 has very limited fast travel, and it feels natural that way. You have to go to certain places to do it, and it only takes you certain other places. Mostly you just don't bother, it's not really worth it and the world isn't that structured. You ride where you need to go.

I've been in RDR1 for a few hours and I've discovered the game seems to have unlimited fast travel - you literally set a waypoint anywhere and then make camp and you can fast travel there. This is necessary because the map is so grossly inferior.

The radar pathfinding seemed atrocious at first but eventually I realized it's because they designed a map with these huge canyons in it that, idk, might be realistic, but are *terrible* for gameplay.

If you make a beeline for a waypoint, you might find yourself stuck at the rim of a canyon and forced to backtrack ten minutes in realtime. It sucks. Travel in general is not very much fun.

RDR2 is different because, while travel in the world is not what I'd call a constant pleasure, I didn't get frustrated with it. I wasn't gritting my teeth going "damnit this NEEDS fast travel"; it all felt like a necessary part of life.

Again, it was very hard to do this in 2010 because people just didn't *know.* But the amount that this contributes to the ultimate quality of the second game is just remarkable.

Likewise with how empty the world feels. Games were like this ten years ago. There's very little to interact with, just hovering mission indicators, islands in a sea of dead polygons.

There's not much point in going into buildings unless you need something, or walking up to anyone who isn't a blip on your radar. The only thing it can possibly do is make trouble for you when you bump into something or pull your gun by accident

You couldn't *do* much with 99% of the people you met in RDR2, but the fact that you could at least greet them and you didn't *quite* know what they'd say back was enough to make the game feel organic.

More than anything the improvement is just in subtlety and nuance. Not everyone in RDR2 is a cowboy movie cliche. They aren't all going "DID YOU HEAR WHAT HAPPENED AT THE HORTONS RANCH" like JRPG characters.

RDR1 was trying - hell, Red Dead Revolver was trying harder than you'd expect, I think - but it still feels like a theme park, everyone you walk by going "I KIN SHOOT A BOTTLE OFF A HUNG MAN'S HEEEEAD AT FIFTY PACES"

In RDR2 people are worried about the weather or their laundry or they just have nothing to say. That's a feeling I have about this era and this part of the world - that an awful lot of people just had nothing to say or do most of the time.

Most people are either wordlessly busy with their livelihood or they're in between tasks, idle, just existing, waiting for the next thing to happen or the sun to go down. That's not Rockstar's forte; GTA was always a game where random people on the street shout wild bullshit

I guess more than anything I like RDR2 because I feel like there's a big chunk of history that doesn't exist outside of tropes. The Western is probably not very true to life, and if we ignore our vague cultural memories of those, what do we think life was like in 1899?

Sure, it's not a documentary. But at the same time, it's... minimally exaggerated, in a lot of ways. There's gunfighters, but those existed. They were dumbass troublemakers who get themselves killed for no reason, by and large, and that's what they often are in this game.

Half the people you meet are stumbling drunk. Everyone was constantly drunk in western towns, this is documented. A lot of fights were unglamorous, just a liquored up dipshit saying something he shouldn't and getting knocked out. Barely an event.

Everyones life is a disaster on the razors edge of falling apart, everyone has regrets, nobody really wants to be there. It's not an exciting world. It's a sad, lonely place full of people trying to have little victories and build little lives, and an awful lot of them failing.

That's not how everything was everywhere. People out in New York weren't having that life. But an awful lot of people who went out west never got anything they wanted out of it, and their children were born into it and had to make something of it, and often didn't make much.

As I get older I get more and more curious about the stark truth of history. I'm not really sure where to start. The written word doesn't quite do it for me as much as I'd like.

It sounds silly to say that I felt this game helped connect me to a part of history I've never been able to accept as real, but trust me, I know which parts are and aren't exaggerated.

As a Cowboy Action Shooting simulator, and in all the parts that are connected to that, yeah, it's a videogame. But outside of that I was very surprised at how much it made me feel like I understood what life could be like in this time and place.

I guess that's my point. It's less that it's totally accurate in all its details, and more that it presents a world that's close enough to reality to feel immersive, yet with the really dull edges sufficiently filed down that it can still be a form of entertainment.

Not sure how else to put it, but truth be told I picked it up in the first place just because I've never been introduced to any media in that setting that I particularly liked. Would like to find more.

I would like to see more stories set in the wild west that aren't just 1950s TV gunslinger shows or otherwise entirely centered around guns and the men who shoot them.

The sound design is such a significant change between the games. RDR1's soundtrack is full of that "western whistle" - who started that? - which comes off as so corny and theme-park-esque

I'm still playing it and it's just... grating, honestly. I guess this was a serious thing in westerns at some point but it's *impossible* to use it in cold blood now without making a mockery of the work IMO.

RDR2's music is almost entirely minimalist banjo plucking, lazy upright bass, some organ stabs from time to time - anything you notice is almost always to accentuate an intense moment. The rest of the time it's all so mild and unobtrusive.