Like I'm sure many of you have been doing, I've spent a portion of my weekend playing that new cowboy game everyone has been talking about. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been the game of choice in my off-time these past two days and even though I'm surely not as far into it as some others are, it's easy to see after any amount of playtime just how gorgeous its open-world is.

[pullquote]"The level of interactivity, mechanics, and systems available to players make Red Dead Redemption 2 as close as we can get to the living, breathing Western world that Rockstar is aiming to deliver."[/pullquote]

Wanted levels have never made sense in Rockstar games and they are always a joke. In the Grand Theft Auto games, even though you can steal a tank, and destroy literally hundreds of people, all that happens when you get caught is you lose some mo

In Red Dead Redemption 2, that scale almost pales in comparison to Rockstar's dedication to making its world feel just about as real as the turn-of-the-century West can get. This includes everything from Arthur being able to take baths and shave, to being able to customize your guns, down to the metal inlays in the barrel and stock of each weapon. As Rockstar emphasized during our demo, the studio isn't necessarily aiming to make the game's world all about physical size and area, but about expanding the ways and methods that players can interact with the game's excruciatingly-detailed world, and how their actions and decisions will influence it.

Honestly, I agree with most of this. I do think that Red Dead Redemption 2 forces you to do far more menial tasks that I feel like most other developers would never think to include. Being forced to pick up your weapons from your horse and equip them to Arthur before heading out in the wild is a far cry compared the hundreds of other games in existence that allow you to carry near-infinite weapons on your person. In addition to having to physically pick up items off of the shelf in a general store, the lack of a fast travel system Palworld early Access issues on, and the need to do other small chores such eating food in order to keep up your Cores, these tasks do seem almost boring and their inclusion could be questionable.

Watching the live stream of a pro player is one of the ways to get really good at League of Legends . Some of them are very educational and diverse when it comes to teaching. They tell you how to ward, farm, which champion is easy to overcome and the mechanics of the champion they main as well. It helps a lot since you might want to try out the same routine in your game and sometimes things won’t occur the way you want but once you get a grip on your timings of what needs to be done, it helps you improve overall as a player. At the very least, the outcome is you will be able to view the game, what the pro players do and copy the same techni

During certain missions, you are prompted to cover your face with a bandana, which is typical of Westerns. It looks cool. This is to keep your identity hidden, right? Well despite this, somehow you always get fined with a bounty. It doesn't make any sense. I tried wearing masks too and that doesn't do anything either. It feels like Rockstar put them in as an obligation to the genre. They didn't want to implement it as a real disguise. It might have broken the game otherwise, or someth

Not that Cloth Armor is necessarily bad, but wearing it can get useless fast. It's fairly limited to the amount of Champions that can use it. Most fragile Champions like Vayne would have a good reason to wear it, but again, it becomes completely useless if one were to have a healer as supp

Whistling for your horse carries a litany of problems. For example, the distance it can hear it in isn’t that great. Even when you do whistle, within distance, it takes forever for your steed to trot to you even when you have a good relationship. It’s weird in games where you turn around and your horse is there like in The Witcher 3 , but as ridiculous as that is I would much prefer that silliness to this. Thankfully there are cheat

With so many different facets to the gameplay and interacting with the environment, the number of systems and mechanics at play in Red Dead Redemption 2 is staggering, and in some instances can even sound a little overwhelming. However, after having hands-on time with the game and first-hand experience with these mechanics, these touches truly feel like meaningful ways to make Red Dead Redemption 2 feel alive and dynamic, for the players that really want to go deeper into it. As Rockstar emphasized to us during the demo, these more survival-driven mechanics aren't meant to feel like "chores" that the player has to do -- they're optional -- but instead to develop that idea that Arthur is truly a part of this world and more than just a vehicle for players to explore what it has to offer.

With players having to juggle a multitude of relationships and the gang's well-being throughout the game, director Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is most likely the film that will have some of the largest thematic ties to Red Dead Redemption 2 . The plot of the film will likely sound familiar to Red Dead fans, as The Wild Bunch focuses on a gang of outlaws around 1913 led by the aging Pike Bishop (William Holden), who is seeking one final score in a massive train robbery.