I tried to fix Red Dead 2 by roleplaying

Maybe RPGs just aren't for you... cuz it sounds like you're missing the fundamental desire to play them the way they're intended to be played. You're literally supposed to play the ROLE of your character. lmao. It's in the name of the genre ROLEPLAYING game. You didn't "fix" RDR2 by playing it the way it's intended to be played. You just changed your perspective.

The Nakey Jakey video helped me process RDR2 and put cohesive words to my vague feelings. I feel like this video did that with survival games, one of my favorite genres. What a gift

Anyone know of any mods that address these issues? Like, something that cuts out the skinning animations?

Bro you would love balders gate

I'm gonna be honest I love all the over the top details and features. All of it made the world feel more real in a welcomed way I have probably like 2,000hrs in just rdr2 story mode.

Anyone else notice he had an American Standardbred in CH1 when you're only supposed to be able to have the Mahogany Walker?

Pat's videos are all must watch for me.

Is there the possibility for mods to at least make hunger a mortal or hunger/stamina reducing threat, and give dirty old guns chances to jam and waste ammunition, or to become extremely inaccurate and slow to fire? All this does is make me want to replay arthur's story with these hooks.
imagine.. being on the road for a day or so, forget to fill your pack and you'll have to go hunt or forage to get through the night! Pull out your trusty revolver for a duel to find your perfect disarm go way wide thanks to all the rust and dirt.. idk. too hopeful.

In Far Cry 2, if you don't take care of your gun or replace it, it will inevitably jam or at worst, explode on your hand. This isn't a simple thing that is as easy to fix as using an item, it is a constant threat and can change how a fight goes. I really wish RDR2 went for something like that.

It’s so weird to see people who don’t roleplay this game. I never have had this issue and it’s very strange to see people going like “these mechanics waste time / are pointless!” like those are the best mechanics in the whole game. I wish every game had the time and budget to add individual cupboard searching animations. Maybe you will fall out of role playing eventually when you get bored, but that’s because I just have a deeper spiritual connection to gaming god than you do. Anyways gonna clean my gun and enjoy it now

Idk why youre complaining about it? Its not supposed to be a real life sim. Its an action rpg

"Those things dont really work the way the game says they do" bro you just bagged 16 single star pelts that would get you maybe $5 and none are usable the point is to follow game mechanics and structured systems because you get generously rewarded for doing so

It's always weird to see Hickok45 in a video because he was my 7th grade English teacher. Neat, small world we have here.

This video connected really well to my expectations vs reality experience with playing BG3 shortly after release. I was expecting a game I could get deeply into roleplay with and play it almost like I play DnD. Instead, it really is just a videogame. I came back and appreciated it more once I realized this.

Strikes me that a lot of these problems might be caused by Rockstar trying to build a game to appeal to a wide variety of players. My default style is a more immersive roleplaying style, so I LOVED things like the camp dynamics, the weight mechanic, etc. I came from playing Witcher 3 to playing RDR2, and RDR2 fixed things that irritated me and broke my immersion in Witcher 3, like how it's not possible for Geralt to sleep during free roam, even though he'll sleep during specific quests and cutscenes. I noticed how comparatively restrictive RDR2 was in missions, but it didn't really bother me, as the narrative is the most important thing to me in a game (as an example, whenever I sent Arthur to find a Point of Interest or a cigarette card, I had to come up with a reason why he was veering off the trail). I also noticed the lack of consequences, and while it did feel like a missed opportunity, it didn't impact my enjoyment at all because it didn't change how I was playing the game. I assumed it was actually intentional, so that players who just want to play through missions and/or play Wild West GTA won't be bogged down by the need to eat or sleep or hunt for the camp, while players who want a more immersive story experience can take advantage of those in-game opportunities.

I think maybe a possible solution would have been to build in those consequences but have the option to turn them off. I would have loved to see them, but I also know so many people who would HATE having those 'sticks' because that's not what they want to spend time on - and I imagine those players are a sizeable enough chunk of Rockstar's market that they can't just foist those mechanics on them and say 'deal'. I think that's exasperated by the fact the game took so long and cost so much to make, which increased pressure to make the game as appealing as possible to as many different types of players as they could, in order to make back that investment. (And that points to the other problem, which is - these mechanics would have cost even more time and money to build).

I guess the long and short of it is that I agree the game would have benefitted from more consequences, but I struggle to see how they could have done that without shrinking their market and getting into shareholder trouble. But again, I love the game as it is - and as other comments have said, maybe we'll see some mods some day which fix some of those problems.

I will say, with hunting, you can just brutally kill the animals however you want for meat- but the way Charles shows you is optimal for getting perfect skins for selling or crafting!

SPOILERS but I can't believe you left out THE SMOKING! Smoking is bad (in real life) but integral to the cowboy persona, particaurly in RDR2 where there needs to be a cover story for Arthur's worsening cough. They decided the best way to implement this was to let you carry around 20 standard + 20 premium packets... which you take a single cigarette out of... and smoke in a single drag. You then presumably toss the rest of the pack. Cigars are implemented just as badly.
They aren't even worth using mechanically since they recover a pitiful amount of Deadeye each at the cost of Stamina- or you can eat a single cooked turkey breast and get almost full meters of both.
Smoking should have been like beer or stew at camp where you slowly work through one cigar/ette at a time, at the minimum.

Love the video and nakey jakey reference, love that guys music and video essays. But really, great analysis and I love the idea of the two different rdr2 the immersive versus action so much! What a wonderful way to voice the pros and cons of the game, thank you Patrick! And everyone who helped on the video

🤦🏻‍♂️

I really hope a lot of the stuff that you had to self impose eventually gets picked up by modders. Stuff like working at the the camp actually having consequences, or the single action revolver system you mentioned, or actual gun condition and hunger meters would all be really cool to mod in

This video is so good and totally gets to a big issue I had with this game. Making things complicated and time consuming doesn't by necessity make them interesting. The game wants to pretend it's an immersive sim, but it really isn't. It tries to pretend you can approach encounters in a variety of different ways, but really when you try to go off script, you're most often stopped.

Best example I can think of is a mission where you need to rob a store. You can spot what you need to get through a window. So you think "oh, I'll just get in from here, cool". Try to shoot through the window and it's unbreakable. What is the purpose of all those times you forced me to watch Arthur slowly pick up a can of beans if I can't shoot out a window??

As someone who’s just getting into roleplaying in games, this was so interesting! This video has given me helpful ideas for how to improve immersion in my playthroughs. I wonder if there are any mods for Red Dead that elevate the survival mechanics?

honestly it's so crazy that ppl really play a game the unintended way and then call it bad, like i played the "roleplay" the first time through and found it super fun and immersive. if you kill the animals with the wrong guns then it's basically useless to even kill them in the first place, like why else would you hunt them down for their furs

Tell me where to find all the Pat content. Where is the bonus?

I naturally take things slow when playing games so I never had a problem with RDR2. I never really noticed the lack of consequences because I rarely pushed the systems far enough for it to be a problem. I realized early on that you didn’t need to shoot every animal you see so if I needed to hunt something I was usually methodical about it because that’s just more fun. Why would I run around on a horse blasting deer in the back of the head when that’s not fun and only slightly faster? Every time I’ve talked to people who dislike the game I’m always reminded of the Sid Meier quote that players will naturally optimize the fun out of anything. Just slow down and don’t fall into the trap of trying to be optimal and the game is far more enjoyable.

Wild how playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played makes it more fun

I also found myself doing this on my current playthrough, and I’ve spent about 100hours in chapters 1-3 so far

This is fascinating to me because I didn’t actually play RDR2. I played my dad’s save game but because I didn’t want to advance story without him. I ended up doing all of these tasks without the fire fights or story. So here’s my perspective, the game was basically Animal Crossing, it was a relaxing simulator where you hunted to feed your family and played dress up with your horse.

I personally love the detail of the game.

I'm here for that animorph title card. I feel like a mouse to cheese😂

Be the cowboy!!!!!

I played on an Xbox on 2018, playing it modded on pc fixes all these problems, including single-action

rdr2 is one of my favorite games, i really like the rp aspects, i sometimes play it just to sort of hang out in the world. go hunting for days, sleep in a tent, go back to town to sell that game, eat at the bar, take a bath, sleep in a hotel... however, i find myself agreeing with almost every critique made of the game, as well. it feels rare to love a work but to see the flaws so obviously and those two things coexist fairly peacefully within me

This might just be me, but this sounds like someone devouring an ornate cake, and then complaining that the ornaments got in the way, while also complaining that the cake wasn't more ornate. The abundance of details give the world so much debt, and how much you partake is up to you. But if you ignore them the world just feels clogged up, and if you hyper-focus on them then you're misunderstanding their point. To make just one example, food and cleaning of weapons are enough of a hinder that you have to do something with it. And if you do the different side activities the game offers then you naturally acquire all you need to keep Arthur fed and your weapons clean. However, if they made feeding and cleaning guns too big of a thing then it would no longer be side activities. Its a balance, and you seem to just be complaining that it didn't go either of the singular paths completely.

I get the illusory complexity problem, but I don't really see it as a problem to be honest. I think it allows for rp without forcing you to grind just to not die of starvation in the middle of a long mission. And while I see the appeal of a skill based or somewhat skill based weapon system I wouldn't want to change it myself. Despite playing a lot of br's, shooters, and in general highly competitive online games, that is not what I want from RDR2. I want to feel like a sick gunslinging cowboy. It's not a hard game, it's cinematic. These are just my thoughts on the videos message, great content as always Patrick <3.

I first played Red Dead 2 during the start of the pandemic. I fully expected to hate it, but the game won me over and I almost played exactly as you did in the video. I ended up playing it for 120 hours, shed tears for the story, and realized I haven't been outdoor except for grocery for weeks.

Everything is so detailed in this game. Thanks for using our clips! We love when people spread our stuff around ❤

I think I’m the only person who didn’t get bothered by this games systems. I’ve played it multiple times!

Hey I also threw dynamite at the klan, hell yeah 😂

the yapping is insane

Dude missed the whole point of the game

Haven't ever gotten past rdr2 tutorial bc it's super long, but I think I'll try rp like you did, and leave the power-gaming to rdo.

I always try to do some roleplaying when playing a game but I totally get it when people don't bother when the game doesn't really give you incentive to bother.

Being forced to acknowledge complexity without being allowed to feel it, great analysis. I’m going to be thinking about that in any future games I play. Great video.

How did you know I watch nakeyjakeys rdr2 video every time I have to do a chore and have probably watched it 10 times all the way through🤨? Anyway I’ll be back to finish this video in about 40 minutes

The animorphs thumbnail-

We got a YAPPER over here

And the beauty is: if you want to expand roleplay, there's also RedM. You do need to get into the right community though to get the best experience.