Game pricing hasn’t changed much, sure. I paid $70 for n64 games in 1996. But volume sure has

FFVIII sold 6 million copies in its first year, a huge commercial success, and has sold 9.6 million lifetime Ever juggernaut games like Mario 64 - 12 million copies. FFVII - 12.6 million Pokemon red blue green combined - 30 million Madden 2007 - 7.7 million (interestingly EA does not release sales figures for modern madden games, probably because sports games seem to make far more money from micro transactions than sales. NBA 2k for example sells around 7m units a year but is one of the highest grossing franchises in gaming)

More recent games:

baldurs gate 3 sold 15 million copies Elden ring 20 million Pokémon sword and shield - 27 million Diablo 3 30 million The Witcher 3 50 million Skyrim 60 million Rdr2 70 million GTA 5 200 million

So when people cry “wahh, videogame prices need to rise because inflation” remember that they are stupid and overlook the very basic fact that 20-30 years ago gaming was a niche activity that got nowhere near the volume it gets today. Any single game selling 50 million copies in the 90s or early 2000s, let alone 200 fucking million, was an insane pipe dream

So bored rich people can piss away a shitload of cash to look at the unrelenting blackness of space for a few moments before coming back to earth and continuing their lives of wasteful excess in a vacuum of ignorance, duh

While doing this they will emit the carbon dioxide equivalent of 395 transatlantic flights, or the c02 emissions equivalent of what 22-24 Americans output in an entire year from their average daily life. Meanwhile sabotaging an oil pipeline is called ecoterrorism but their behavior is called a fun experience. But that’s okay, katy perry had to see space! We don’t need those ice caps, really. Sorry your children will grow up in a post apocalyptic wasteland

He means “there are a ton of children with parents who cannot enforce boundaries and there are a ton of grown people who will make poor financial decisions”. Nintendo will exploit both

Hopefully someone will exploit Nintendo with a paper clip again

I think it was the illness. Even without the illness based on the first games ending and the fact that Arthur was not mentioned or existed within it I was pretty sure I knew how rdr2 was going to end before I started but the illness gave it such a somber tone. Arthur recognized his mortality and really started to reflect.

It’s been ages since I played rdr1 but as far as I remember John was more “I’m doing this to be done, for my family!”. The tone was much lighter as a result even though there were moments that were heavy. And the characters weren’t as developed so I didn’t care as much. Dutch was just a fucking monster in that game, bill and Javier were just props. But rdr2 fleshed them all out so much

I mean it is an era where up and moving 100 miles basically meant you started your life over. But that was kind of the plot: they were a gang of that era where they could run in a town, wreak havoc, disappear, and the infrastructure didn’t yet exist to reliably track them across the gigantic land mass that is North america.

But by the time the game rolls around the beginnings of the modern federal government are happening and agencies to track people like them across the country are in full swing. So all of a sudden their way of life is coming to a close, quickly. Instead of just some pissing off a sheriff in a town and never being able to go back there, occasionally having a bounty hunter after you, you now have a huge team of people with the resources of a government coming for you.

I think part of it that’s understated is the size of the map. The map is obviously big for a game but it’s supposed to be a huge chunk of America. When you compare the geography of the map to America it’s somewhat clear that it’s supposed to be a gigantic swath of America, from like Montana down to Louisiana and across to Texas. You can ride across the map in 20 min but obviously this would take months irl. Obviously this is about gameplay balance but as a result you lose the sense that Arthur is going extremely far away when he’s going from valentine to st denis, when in reality that would be like a month of riding and crossing several states. Even if he did a genocide that would probably shake the heat for a little while back then

They did obviously play it up of course. If you literally murdered everyone in a town back then there would probably be more of a response from the surrounding towns to find you. But gamers like violence and it’s again about balancing gameplay vs authenticity. usually gameplay wins because otherwise you end up with a boring game

I remember so many people being furious at rockstar for not releasing dlc on the scope of gta4 but honestly with this game I don’t know what form that narrative would take that could be satisfying.

The main narrative is concluded decisively obviously. It’s a prequel so continuing with John would just be rdr1. Another undead nightmare is eh, zombies are so played out. I guess you could fill in what went on with Dutch or some of the others that show up in rdr1 but frankly I don’t really want to play as them. I suppose you could intro some new character that’s part of their new gang. I dunno. I get why they didn’t prioritize it (well that and more so that dlc costs a ton to develop for a pitiful return relative to something like gta online, which is kind of sad)

I love this game. It has several drawbacks, some of the physics make things feel like you’re underwater the whole time, the wanted system can be extremely irritating at the worst moments, and for a game with a world that is extremely alive the missions are extremely on rails where often even doing something slightly off the developers intended path will fail you

But despite that I still love it. The game is gorgeous years later. They put so much effort into the world. It’s not just the graphics, it’s every detail that just makes it feel so alive. Walking around the town the npcs are so thought out, have so much dialogue. The animals too. I remember playing other open world games after and just noticing more so how lifeless they felt in comparison; that npcs would repeat dialogue after 2 or 3 lines, animals would run in circles, etc. and the story is great.

I hope that once gta6 is done they turn to rdr3. Its overall a much better series with a stronger narrative, better characters, etc. with red dead they seem to not be as overly concerned with shitting it up with online bullshit and microtransactions though so the series might be done for