Welcome back, gamers.
It's Gary7 MT for the GTA Series Videos crew and in today's video we're going to talk about
the latest Red Dead Redemption 2 Gameplay Video released by Rockstar Games.
To those who have followed all the news and more importantly the previews released in past weeks,
the new video despite showing a lot, doesn't actually say much that we don't already know.
Let's start with some details about the game from content not directly shown
or related to the gameplay video.
Thanks to the images shown by SONY for the bundle edition of Red Dead Redemption 2 with PS4 and PS4 Pro
- and spotted by Mach1bud and RDonlineNews on Twitter -
we know that the game has received a classification "M for Mature" by the ESRB considering that the title contains:
Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language
and the Use of Drugs and Alcohol.
The game at launch is going to be 105 GB with additional weight added probably by a day-one patch
and future content for the single player and Red Dead Online.
Still, from the PlayStation console box also comes the confirmation that some selected content for the game
will be available first on PlayStation 4 with a 30-day exclusive before being available also to all players with the Xbox One
- exactly what this selected content would be is yet unknown unfortunately.
With that in the bank, here's our analysis and like we always do,
instead of doing a classic frame-by-frame "start-and-stop" type of video, we're going to take all the shots of common places,
people, missions, activities or similar content in order to analyze things better.
As always, big thanks goes out to the people over at the GTAForums, Reddit,
and our Discord Server for some of the details listed here.
The video starts with Arthur on a train near the station in Rhodes - in the state called Lemoyne.
We have a lot of shots in the video from this little southern town.
While we're talking about locations in the trailer, we can also see The Grizzlies,
what it appears to be the new rendition of Armadillo,
the town from which the adventures of John Marston begin in the first Red Dead Redemption.
Directly from this town, we can also see what is probably a younger Herbert Moon,
our little racist fella from New Austin.
Ahhhhhh!
You can't eat me.
I'm Herbert Moooooooon!
In this shot of the city of Blackwater, another familiar name for those who've played the first Redemption,
we can see a lawman that some people believe is Edgar Ross, but the agent was shown already in a previous trailer
and he looks way more young than that.
The city of Valentine - apparently one of the very first cities we're visiting in the new game.
And another, unknown, but definitly wealthy city, probably Saint Denis, in Bayou, Lemoyne.
There are a lot of places that are hard to identify yet, from mesa to forests,
bridges and rivers in which Arthur can navigate in a canoe.
Not only exteriors, but also many interiors are shown in this video,
from the theater in which we'll be able to see shows and such,
to private homes that we can rob while being as silent as possible to avoid waking the owner.
The interiors of the Lemoyne National Bank, robbed by Dutch, Arthur, Charles Smith, Bill Williamson and others,
all with their faces covered by bandanas or masks.
We can see the group entering the bank, inside the vault opening the safes
and in the main lobby covering to avoid getting injured from the exploding wall
revealing the access to another area or a different getaway from the lawmen.
We can also see two different gunshops, an abandoned house,
the hotel where Arthur can either eat, probably beef stew from a menu
or take a room to have a bath in which he can clean his clothes and himself by scrubbing his body to avoid people fleeing his stench.
As explained by Rockstar in previous weeks and claimed by journalists in previews,
Red Dead Redemption 2 has a lot to offer to players when it comes to "things-to-do".
We'll delve later on to the missions, but from the trailer we can see Arthur helping three girls from the gang
- Karen, Tilly and Mary-Beth - and when looking at the scene,
it's incredible how every curl in Karen's hair has its own physics reacting naturally from her movement.
The same thing can be said for all the other girls and their clothes,
exactly like everything worn by Arthur, like the little piece of string on his hat swinging according to how Arthur moves his head.
We can also see how the skin is rendered realistically using the subsurface scattering mechanism
on thin skin like noses and ears to simulate how light penetrates a translucent surface.
You can rob banks and shops, collect bounties, explore the world, move the herd, fish,
play Blackjack, Dominoes or Five Finger Fillet.
Drink, dance, and have duels or attend a play at the theater - and cheer or antagonize the performers
- and even search for treasures, be a loanshark or simply chop wood.
It may not be limitless, but it sure is starting to look and feel like it.
Mission-wise, not much is shown or easy to connect in the video.
We do already know how the game begins and what we're going to do in the first minutes thanks to all the hands-on previews,
but apart from that in the video we can only see Arthur on a train at the beginning
making his way towards the train's engine.
Exactly like in Max Payne 3, the transition between cutscene and gameplay is extremely smooth,
almost impossible to perceive if it wasn't for the miniradar appearing on the bottom left of the screen.
On the radar we can see various icons, like an envelope,
a locked icon maybe indicating a fast travel location yet to unlock,
we can also see the saddle and horse head icons moving along the train
with the latter changing from white to black as soon as Arthur reaches the roof of the train,
indicating maybe the unavailability of the horse from that position.
We already know that we can jump back and forth from our horse to trains and stagecoaches.
In other scenes we can see other kinds of icons, like the marked route from our position to our destination,
the X marking enemy corpses or the search area shown in yellow on the radar.
Interiors also have maps visible only after entering the areas, not before.
Another thing we can see from the miniradar is that the lawmen will have a vision cone
that will allow us to hide from where they're looking.
This feature has been part of various Rockstar titles in the past,
but never applied to police that always seemed to magically know where we were.
In the next shot, we can see Arthur and Sadie moving along an oil field or train depot
with the companion of Arthur on the right risking his life.
With a shot Arthur kills the attacker saving his friend.
Let's focus on this shot for a moment to talk about the blood and gore aspect of the game.
The hands-on previews already revealed this, but our enemies are going to bleed, and a lot,
in a dynamic way, like you can see in this scene, for example,
showing Arthur killing an enemy using his knife
- the fist fight marks are clearly seen on both Arthur and his enemy's faces.
Blood is everywhere spraying all over the shot in both streams and clouds staining Arthur's clothes and more.
A lot of blood can also be seen on the victim of the duel and, together with the blood,
we can also notice how the left part of his opponent's face is blown off.
Gore is also shown in this scene in which Arthur shoots at some explosives planted on the street.
The explosion blows off the front and rear right legs of the horse, the right arm of the guy on the stagecoach
and the stagecoach itself sustains so much damage that the armor covering the sides fly off
while the iron covering the wheels is blasted out of shape.
The same way Arthur has his extremely customizable clothing, hairstyle and style of beard
- like here with an epic beard - we also know that weapons are extremely customizable
and that holsters, belts and more will unlock bonuses like a slower degradation for the guns.
We'll be able to wield different weapons per hand - like a revolver and a shotgun shown here,
again something taken from Max Payne's latest iteration.
And while we're on references, in this scene Morgan also strikes a pose,
which is very familiar to the fans of the first game.
In both first and third person views the shooting is absolutely terrific, thanks to a revised Dead Eye.
Shown here at a specific level, the critical and fatal points on our enemies
- head, heart, spine, stomach and if it's a male, nuts - all have red spots.
Inherited again from Max Payne 3 - together with the limited arsenal we have already talked abundantly about in the past
- are killcams at the end of the shootouts.
In contrast to Payne's adventures by the way, according to Arthur's behaviour,
the killcam can focus on him with a high contrast sepia filter when the action done is heroic
or on the enemy with a light silver filter when the action is not.
In the trailer Rockstar also shows various takes using the new cinematic camera added in Red Dead Redemption 2
which allows the player to enjoy more of the world around him anytime he wants.
There are tons of other small to tiny details in the trailer by the way.
From the scars on Arthur's arm after being attacked by a wolf, to the fact that he's been shown smoking,
to the icon of a Stranger mission or the way the money bends in Arthur's hands
when he gives Uncle his share after working a herd together.
October 26th, 2018, the day marked for Red Dead Redemption 2's release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is fast approaching.
The game has probably already gone gold
- a state celebrated by most developers, but never by Rockstar Games.
In the remaining weeks expect more news and images from Rockstar,
while reviews probably won't be online till a couple of days before it drops.
And that's all for this analysis and maybe for the gameplay video series itself,
as opposed to the previous video, there are no indications that another will be released,
so with the exception of a possible launch trailer,
this could be the last time we'll get to see anything from the game before it's actually in our hands
- or it's possible that one more video showcasing Red Dead Online could drop after the release of the game,
in time for its release in November.
For all the new updates, keep following us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,
and if you want to chat with us, other players and fans, join us on our official Discord server.
For the GTA Series Videos crew, this was Gary7 MT.
Till next time.