I spent weeks playing Red Dead Redemption 2 before discovering the second half of the world.
I’ve traveled tens of miles of wilderness as Arthur Morgan. I drove from the northern snow-covered mountains to the marshy huts in the southeast. But in all my adventures I have never visited the southwest corner of the playing card.
From the moment the story began, the city of Blackwater – the gateway to the southwest of the game – wanted me to be dead or alive. And so I avoided it. I did not mind; The rest of the world was so big that I never lacked places where I could go. But after 80 hours of shootings, robberies and a dense history, the city has finally destroyed the bounty. For the first time I was allowed to ride through Blackwater and explore the hidden area beyond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUwTh4uSILg [/ embed]
This essay on real school design related to video games was written in addition to the video above, which was also created by Jacob Geller.
Blackwater himself was in the first Red Dead Redemption, so maybe I should have expected what would come next. But despite that, I was no less astonished when I discovered that behind the city was a large part of the world of the previous game, which was beautifully reproduced in graphics of the current generation.
My thoughts wavered. How many new characters have hidden in this huge landmass? How many carefully orchestrated quests were waiting to be accepted?
As it turned out, the answer was almost none.
The value of being alone in a beautiful world
In the main world of Red Dead Redemption 2 I was never lacking in activities. Hundreds of characters with thousands of lines of dialogue were more than happy to take me on missions. Whether it was collecting money from debtors or getting drunk with a friend, the game offered me a steady stream of content that I could engage with.
I’ve lived the life of the world’s busiest cowboy for dozens of hours. I would rob a train in the morning, help a guy catch a fish at lunch, then get a haircut and a shave in the city, before finally stalking and bringing him back to camp for dinner. En route, I might find a stranger on the way, asking for help and probably moving me to a whole new set of activities.
I did not experience any of these events when I slipped through the southwest corner of the playing card. My drive through the town of Armadillo, a major hub of the first Red Dead Redemption, was calm. No bandits jumped out to attack me, no rare species distracted me from the road. Gradually, I realized that there was a shortage of quests, characters, and checklists in this corner of the world that I was getting used to.
For the first time in the game I really felt alone.
Too busy and not enough time
In the main world of the game, many of the gameplay systems felt unnecessarily tedious as I was constantly confronted with things to do. For example, at first I was confused by the concept of making “split-point” cartridges. Split points cause more damage than typical ammo and can be freely created. But they have to be made individually.
Arthur Morgan has to take out a single bullet, put an X in the top of his pocket. If you want enough ammunition to complete a typical story mission, you must do this memorable simple action dozens of times. The carving of split points just felt like futile work, as there was always a dealer nearby where I could buy a few boxes of equally powerful high speed circuits.
In the southwest alone, I had no such luxury. Every bullet was precious; The next salesman lived miles away. Alone as I was, even a single coyote or a few angry squatters posed a threat. A few hand-carved bullets suddenly formed the line between life and death.
The actions that I found disturbing in the first 80 hours – carving bullets, brushing horses, nourishing – now felt like little moments of Zen
And it was not just the bullets; Almost every system in Red Dead Redemption 2 felt more natural when I was truly isolated in the wild. I was not looking for superficial aesthetic rewards, but because I needed the flesh to feed on those long, lonely journeys. I was happy, brushed, fed and cared for my horse because he was the only company I had in the desert.
In this barren second world I had no pressure to delete items from my endless task lists. For the first time in the game I had time to think. The actions that I found disturbing in the first 80 hours – carving bullets, brushing horses, feeding myself – now felt like little moments of Zen. They held me present.
Finally, I returned to the main world of the game. I completed the last mission and saw the credits. Like the rest of the game, it was excellently judged, traded and scored. But thinking of Red Dead Redemption 2 now, I’m not thinking of the end. Instead, my thoughts wander back to the empty hours I spent in the Southwest Desert.
At first I found it disturbing to have so little to do in this part of the map. Are not we playing video games to beat them? Was not I interested in getting the last results? But in retrospect, I’ve found that these quiet moments and unstructured spaces allow some of the purest role-play I could do while playing – and as such, many of my favorite moments in the medium use the same sense of isolation. I love it when a game can step back and let its characters live.
As I sat watching a sunrise in the mountains of The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild, I was truly astonished by the beauty of the moment, not because the game told me. As I grappled with the breathtaking emptiness of Shadow of the Colossus’ world, I felt absolutely connected to Wander and his lonely quest. And in Red Dead Redemption 2, my cowboy daydreams were best filled with nights I spent alone, with only the stars as companions.
