Whether you like fps or mmorpg or dating sim games, it does not matter when it comes to RDR2. This is a game every gamer should try at least once in their life if they want to call themselves a gamer. Not because I think they will like RDR2, or RDR2 is for everyone, no. I’m not recommending this to everyone because I think everyone will like this game, I’m doing so to show people how high the bar has been raised and where the limits currently are when it comes to video games. I give this game a 5 star not because of its story, or characters, or combat, none of that is taken into consideration because there is no need. The world-building alone makes this game a masterpiece.
When it comes to world-building, a lot of games have created beautiful fantasy worlds that draw you in and make you feel like you’re no longer on Earth, but none are as real as RDR2’s world. They are beautiful, but beautifully fake. You’re fully conscious and constantly aware that this is a fake world, that you’re just playing a video game, that none of this is real. But RDR2 has done such a great job with its world-building that you’d sometimes forget that this is a game, that the people are just npc. When you run on the street and bump into npc, in any other games it’d have the npc do their programmed stumbling movement and then continue their way as if nothing happened. Real people don’t act like this, and it’s minor details like this that add up and constantly remind you that the world is fake.
But for RDR2, bumping into people can have consequences. If you knocked them too hard and they fall and hit their head, the witnesses around you would get you charged with assault. You can run away before the police comes and result in a bounty on your head, or you can stay there and wait for the police to come and smooth talk your way out of it and receive a verbal warning instead. If the other person is not hurt but pissed off, he might yell and swing at you. If you dodged and punched him, throwing the first punch, then you would get charged with assault. But if you let him throw the first punch then punch him back, then it’s a brawl and you’re fine.
All this programmed events for simply bumping into someone. It’s such a minor thing that most games would ignore, but RDR2 wants you to be immersed in the world, so they went above and beyond and made every interaction you have with this world as real as possible. If something so insignificant as bumping into someone can have this amount of thoughts put into it, you can only imagine what else this world has waiting for you.
The game LOVES details. I’d even go as far as to say it’s the most detailed game ever. Even now players are still discovering new lore hidden in the game’s details that no one has ever found before. For a game with animals you can kill, it actually shows the animals hunting each others just as how the food chain works irl. When you stumble upon random npc camping in the wild, you can hide and eavesdrop and you’d hear them having a whole on conversation, and you can do this with every npcs and they’d each have a backstory, a personality, and social circle, which is incredible due to the number of npcs in this game. Even the hats you wear have intricate details to their designs.
There are probably no less than 300,000 individual animations in this game. The simple act of getting on your horse can vary depending on the slope of the land the horse is standing on, the speed you’re moving, and which direction and angle you’re coming from.
There’s also the passing of time. When you see construction workers building houses or train tracks, you can stop and watch them. If you’re patient or have the time to waste, you can literally watch them build a house or train track from start to finish, piece by piece, nail by nail. Unlike npcs in other games, these npcs aren’t just repeatedly hammering the same nail, or chopping the same pile of wood over and over again, they’re actually doing their jobs like normal human beings made of flesh and blood.
If you punch a random npc, later on in the game they might have a black eye or bandages around their head. If you killed an animal but don’t dispose of it soon enough, its carcass will degrade in quality as it rots and eventually you can watch it turn into bones. After you carried a dead animal, you’d have blood stains on your clothes that can dry with time and if you don’t wash it off the townspeople would make snarky comments about you. Oh, if you walk too close to them when they’re having a conversation, they’d quiet down and question you on your intention. Someone quick-to-anger might think you’re trying to start something and punch you right away if you’re too close. One time you’d help a npc to a doctor to get his arm amputated. After taking him there, the quest is over and you can leave. But if you decide to stay, you’d actually be able to witness the doctor taking out a saw and amputating the arm.
If you meet a blind beggar begging for money, other games would give you two options: give money or ignore. But RDR2 would also let you steal money from him. With this, you can discover that he’s faking it after he grabs your wrist before you can steal the money. So later on when you meet another blind beggar, you’d reasonably expect him to be another faker and steal money from him as well. Only to realize this one is actually the real deal and he didn’t know you’ve stolen his money and even thanks you instead assuming you dropped coins in his jar. The games knows you would try to steal money from a beggar so they played along and added this second, real beggar to purposefully mess with you.
If you did something to someone irl and they’d react in a certain way, then you can expect to do the same thing to an npc in RDR2 and have them react the exact same way. I can go on forever about the insane amount of details in this game, and this is only one aspect: the world-building. You’d have to read a 200 page essay if you want me to talk about the story and characters too so let’s leave it at this.
Seriously, give this game a try. You don’t have to like it, just like how you don’t have to like being born into this world, but you have to experience it at least once to know what is out there. Because this is what RDR2 is. It’s not a game to play, it’s a game to experience.