Red Dead Redemption 2 Online (RDO from now on) hasn’t exactly been highly praised online, and actually it hasn’t been spoken about a hell of a lot as far as I can see – This is pretty surprising to me seeing as GTA Online has become such a big deal, and one can only think this will be its successor… I personally never got into GTA Online as I had purchased GTA V on last gen, and never re-bought it… But this made me more excited to try out RDO as I’d only heard good things about what Rockstar can do with an online platform. So what did I think?
Just as a foreword, I’m writing this after 3 seperate play sessions of about 4 hours each with 2 different chaps.
What activities are available I hear you cry – There’s a hell of a mix of things to do, much like the solo player campaign you’re not going to struggle to be entertained. There are the standard activities of hunting, robbing, fishing, shooting, etc., but more online activities have been added for your posse to tear up the town/s. The main focus of the main online play is the delivery of an item to a location, where another posse can take said item and deliver it instead, and gain the money for it, the activities I experienced were delivering mail and a stagecoach – We also stopped someone from delivering mail and took over, as he was a 1 man posse – Now these activities are actually pretty fun and can get heated if you get embroiled with another team, however the downside is you currently cannot switch off being killed by other online douche bags similar to a passive mode seen in GTA:O. The main issues with this are the fact that you can constantly be killed, and the spawn points are very close to where you died, meaning you can easily be trolled and spawncamped. I definitely found a few online players to be absolute pricks and had to fast travel to the other side of the map to escape, and, whilst it makes it more ‘wild west’ and fun at points. there definitely needs to be more control on this for people who just want to have fun with their mates and beat up NPCs.
First off I need to outline that the character creation is AWFUL, no matter what your created character will be unbelievably ugly. It’s hard to make them look normal at all and this is honestly pretty off-putting. I felt like i was creating someone for a PS3 RPG – I ended up covering my dude’s face in a massive beard just in pure shame.
The other side of the activities is the story, where you’re rescued from prison by a lady named Mrs. LeClerk who’s associate, Horley, gives you missions. Her husband has, apparently, been wrongly offed and she’s asked you to help her find and capture / kill the men behind it. The cutscenes have your whole posse in it, which is a nice touch and they mostly involve killing large groups of people… But it’s actually super fun. Especially if you find alternate roles in your posse (Such as one guy with a rifle, one with 2 pistols) and there is a huge driving force to do the missions, MONEY. Money in RDO is pretty hard to come by, as the people you loot will have a maximum of 50 cents on them – The camps you raid will barely have a tin of beans and online activities don’t really reward you, and you’ll also get naff all for pelts. It seems that Dutch’s gang have done so much robbing they’ve fucked the whole economy! I understand that this is to encourage us to spend money in game, as is standard nowadays, and Rockstar clearly heard the complaints as they handed out 15 gold bars to all of those who’ve been playing the Beta, but this is expected unfortunately after GTA:O.
So after playing the story missions available and using some of my gold bars, I was able to buy a standard revolver, rifle and some new threads, it’s not all bad – There’s also a mission where they say ‘I can tell you’re a bad man so you’re going to go and….’, and I had bad karma on both play throughs so I’m unsure if there’s alternate missions if you’re a goody two shoes. These story missions are unavailable once you’ve done them as a posse leader, and the money only really goes to the leader; for example the final mission gives you about $300-400 as the leader, but only $15-20 as a member, and there’s no currently implemented way to share money or items unlike GTA:O’s Heists. I understand this is a way of limiting people logging on and joining random posses and spamming it for money, but regardless, it’s a bit crap.
So do I like it? Yes, I do. I’d say a lot of its faults are bound to it testing the waters in RDR’s setting, and I imagine will be ironed out with time. The need to spend money isn’t necessarily there, and for me the fun parts of solo play have been transferred across for you to go and have fun with your mates; for example we spent a good hour just seeing how long we could last from starting a bar fight, using no weapons. You can easily get lost in travelling around the open world and having fun, but more general rewards need to be available because you’re never going to raid a whole enemy camp for just 60 cents. There also needs to be more depth added to the posse system, such as sharing items and money, but overall I think this is a really good start. I’m excited to play it when there’s a proper system for robbing trains / banks. It’s definitely something I can see myself getting more into as it progresses!
Let us know your opinions on both RDO and GTA:O down below in the comments!