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I’m literally replaying it on the ps4 rn because my gaming PC died and the graphics are still so so beautiful, you can obviously see that it’s aged in places but overall this game is just an incredible visual feast.
This game is one of those cases where PC is absolutely worth it.
Also pretty funny how console players make fun of PC players for Rockstar games not coming to PC at first while PC players upgraded their PCs over 8 years to absolutely max the game out while console players got cucked still waiting for a next gen port. PS5 pro can only play this at checkerboard 4k 30fps PS4 settings 😄
bruh having an imaginary fight here. when in reality console players generally just play and enjoy their games and not worry about things like if the graphics were maxed out and if the fps is dropping even a single frame
My hot take: the hyper-fixation on graphics is an albatross around the neck of gaming. Developers seem to care more about pushing graphics to the limit than providing fun gameplay. And you can't really fault them, because overall games seem to share that preference.
It's gotten to the point where I can tell that these games from different studios are using the same game engine due to the same clunkiness/jankiness from the gameplay and movement.
Like they just use a lot of the default settings of the game engine out of the box and don't take the time to customize/optimize things to make it "feel" better.
They're basically just re-skins of the same game and gameplay mechanics sadly even though the graphics look good.
I owned and played RDR2 on the One X at launch - what they achieved was truly astonishing. Literally looked next generation at the time compared to any other console game I played. And it's why I had no doubts that the first two GTA6 trailers were reflective of gameplay.
The RAGE engine and R*'s talent for optimising for fixed hardware is leagues above anyone else. And the extended look gameplay confirmed that. Given the age of the current console hardware it's almost witchcraft what they've achieved, even if it is at 30fps. It's even running at native 1440p according to DF. Even 1080p 30fps would have been impressive on that old hardware.
It was gorgeous when I played it on PS4. I never had a PS5 but I got it on PC a year or two ago and replayed it, and it still looks just as good as I remember it.
The first part, in the snow, is a slog, period. Don't base your opinion on that. But once you get out of the snow prologue, play about an hour. If you still don't like it, shut it off and rest assured it's just not the game for you. The game is slow all the way through, but the snow level is "annoying and slow," while the rest of the game is the kind of slow that works for some people and not for others.
I hear that a lot but I loved it and it looked wonderful, great tutorial all in all. The story is deep and you can always piss off and do your own thing in the wonderful world rockstar created. If gta6 has as much to offer in single player as RDR2 does I’ll be so happy. Gta5 is nothing after the story.
It's just how expensive storage is these days. My 2TB storage is nearly full and it's such a chore to remove old games to install something new and that's why I've been lazy
Nah, I've been there. The clicking is easy. The deciding "well, am I going to actually play Game B in the near future or not? Oh, wait, even if I delete Game B, that won't be enough. So I guess Game C, too? Or, Game D is bigger, I could keep Game B and C, and delete Game D instead. But... " stuff can be a pain. Even worse if you have family so you have to double check every decision with them.
I have a constant love-hate relationship with it as I'm playing through it right now.
It has some of the most mind bogglingly poor game design choices sprinkled everywhere that almost inevitably frustrate the hell out of you at times. But it's still a marvel and has lots of great moments. At least until GTAVI comes out, it's probably the most well crafted world in any game. Just such insane attention to detail, even where the game probably would have been 'more fun' if a lot of that effort went into polishing gameplay and game design aspects instead. lol But then it's not the same marvel and so maybe less compelling as a whole, I dunno.
And for better or worse, GTAVI is looking a lot like it's taking its cues from RDR2 in terms of gameplay and interactions. So I'm curious if it will get the same sorts of complaints once the initial honeymoon period and inevitable unanimous 10/10 review period is over.
I also found it boring and forced myself to push through as I thought "maybe it is just a slow start" and nope, it remained boring and I ended up giving up anyway much later
As a game, it is slow paced, somewhat aimless. But as a storytelling medium, to me it remains unmatched.
It’s the first AAAA game in a while where it feels like youre an insignificant cog in this wide world during the Wild West.
Arthur Morgan isnt a demi god taking down Olympus, he isnt saving the world, he isnt a fallen king. He is just Arthur Morgan, and all the grand stories he experienced didnt matter in the end. The fate of the Wild West didnt change when he moved on, he simply got chucked aside like another side character. Thats the harsh reality of that time period.
Making every single mechanic in your game a tedious one is a design choice that has nothing to do with the overall story or significance of the wild wild west.
There are plenty of games where you are just another cog, cyberpunk for example (to name a similar type of game that is way more engaging, you are just some street punk that does nothing of consequence in the end, plenty of endings you just abandon the whole and live your last few days in piece or just kill yourself) manages to do that while being a fun game in spite of all its issues.
Like I said, there is definitely an audience for that game as it had great reception but for me it was just a boring slog.
There are also people that love ultra realistic simulator games like flight simulator where you do nothing except stare at your screen for 10 hours while you do a real-time intercontinental flight but that isn't for me
It was definitely a design choice that forces the player to slow down and be deliberate in their movements, which I think coincides with the time period and overall themes of the game. Rockstar had a specific vibe they were going for and they nailed it. But yeah, definitely isn't for everyone.
The tediousness of the mechanics is one part of the way the core ideas of the narrative are conveyed—specifically, that being a good person in a world that pushes you towards immorality is tedious and takes patience and hard work that often goes unacknowledged; and that building something good out of a life of mistakes is a slow and painful labor of love which you undertake for the people around you as much as for yourself. So yes, it has to do with the overall story and significance of the Wild West. Doesn’t have to be your cup of tea but there’s a very clear reason it is the way it is
Calling the game a walking sim doesn’t really do it justice. It is definitely slower paced but I’m so thankful for that. Game has so much cool detail to take in.
The game does not play itself and to call it a walking sim is just untrue. It’s just not gta, thank god.
A lot of the gta 6 gameplay trailer seems to go in the direction of RDR2, as in gunplay and the interactive world.
When I first played it I thought the graphics were as good as they could get for the time. Same for the animations, I remember seeing footage of Arthur riding his horse in circles and being blown away how realistic and weighty it seemed.
I'm not saying it looked bad, and compared to other games it looked great, I just don't remember the clouds and lighting being as good as in this video
well RDR have a special place in my heart even among all rockstar games , now i have same expectations from witcher 4 its crazzy how it looks and sound, cd project red is doing some amazing stuff recently witcher 3 remastered also looks great ngl
Not really, ue5 is not equal unoptimized dogshit. It's a capable game engine, but devs rely on it too much.
The reason cdpr switched to ue5 is their engine was too old, and caused the cyberpunks massacre at launch. They spent 5 years fixing the game. I'm sure they won't want to redo the same mistake. Especially with their strongest title.
I heard the reason they switched to UE5 because it is easier for devs to do the project on UE5 as it is used universally, where if they wanted to work with RED Engine which again is no slouch, they had to make the new devs learn the engine first. So switching to UE5 removes that step entirely.
Red engine has a lot of limitations which they did not address at all for cyberpunk. Red engine works very well for games like witcher(infact made for it). Like the npc ai and how long distance rendering is handled. Cyberpunk is definitely a totally different beast when talking about rendering requirements, which was not handled well by cdpr.
Recruitment. Like you said, UE5 is easier to work with.
Problem is UE5 was oversold to developers, and is under-delivering. So they will have a fairly serious problem on their hands when it comes to getting the damned thing optimised.
From what I've read, it's less "UE5 is under-delivering," but more that most dev teams don't put in the time/effort to optimize appropriately. There's some really well optimized games on UE, but it seems like most developers don't really prioritize it and just assume that features like DLSS will be enough for it to not matter.
Its a given a new version will always have some bugs and optimization issues , but i think devs will adapt UE 5 soon , few are already doing it . Unless u have an engine like capcom does UE5 is the best choice
Not just mission design, but also the controls, progression systems are massively unrewarding, and loads of other game design decisions that are just weird and frustrating.
The praise games like this get are proof gamers are full of shit when they say gameplay is more important to them than graphics. The presentation values of these Rockstar games is like everything.
RDR2 still is one of the most expensive games ever produced.
People here are comparing that with games on less than a tenth of its budget, find the occasional comparison where RDR2 still looks better (often heavily cherrypicked), and conclude that this means that tech is actually getting worse. It's silly.
In this case, the cherrypicking is in selecting a scene with a very specific lighting scenario, which has practically no impact from ray traced effects. Ray tracing mostly handles reflections (none in this scene), improves the clarity of contact shadows (the video is too bad to judge their quality), and has its biggest impact if it can handle global illumination (very important in indoors and city scenes where walls reflect a lot of light back into the scene, but almost nonexistent in outdoors scenes like this).
And many of RDR2's technological wins weren't so much 'ahead of its time' as simply due to copius numbers of working hours for both the big and small problems that are part of every production. Most of that is not transferable to other games and thus not an advancement of the state of technology.
It's also rather ironic that people now celebrate it as an awesome example the 'good old tech', when much of the feedback at the time was that its 'horrible TAA' was ruining games with blurriness. An issue that is primarily fixed by switching from its default TAA implementation to a modern upscaler like DLSS/FSR 4.
In this case, the cherrypicking is in selecting a scene with a very specific lighting scenario, which has practically no impact from ray traced effects. Ray tracing mostly handles reflections (none in this scene), improves the clarity of contact shadows (the video is too bad to judge their quality), and has its biggest impact if it can handle global illumination (very important in indoors and city scenes where walls reflect a lot of light back into the scene, but almost nonexistent in outdoors scenes like this).
People always ignore this when talking about how Death Stranding 2 is so much more 'optimized' than other games of today while looking just as good or better. Except most of the game is wide, empty outdoors with minimal amounts of a variety of assets, and where you can get away with basic rasterized lighting so much easier. The lack of a more modern lighting system definitely shows up in the times where you are inside somewhere, and it suddenly doesn't look nearly as impressive, outside maybe the still very high quality character models.
I found it to be a very good looking game that just didn't hold me either with the story or gameplay. I see why people like it but it just isn't for me.
Gameplay is very underwhelming, but it's highly immersive and has a great story with some really captivating characters. It's an incredibly beautiful journey if you like to stop and smell the roses, take in the ambience and immerse yourself into the role of the character. It's not for you if you want to be mechanically challenged or stimulated via action and responsive gamefeel.
RDR2 is literally my all time #2 game. It is a masterpiece and example of what gaming is at its absolute peak. The tutorial is a slog but once you get through it -- just absolute cinema.
I got bored after 40 hours. Didn't find the characters to be captivating at all. The gameplay is meh, and the gunplay and missions are pretty repetitive. Go here shoot horde of dudes, rinse repeat. I can also see why people like it, but it wasn't for me.
I don't think it's a bad game, I am just not the target audience apparently.
It's pretty amazing what you could get with pre baked lighting. Wish they'd bring back some of their old methods of lowering how much is calculated realtime.
It's worth pointing out that the reason prebaked lighting looks good is because it is ray traced. The whole point of GPU RT is to bring the same general process traditionally used for baking lighting, into the real time renderer. Whether they're all the way there yet is a worthy question, but there's nothing inherently more authentic about doing ray tracing in advance and doing it real time.
It's pretty amazing what you could get with pre baked lighting.
It isn't amazing, it is a lot, and I mean a LOT of manpower and processing power. Which is why tons of games had shitty lighting. RTX really is the wave of the future.
Wish they'd bring back some of their old methods of lowering how much is calculated realtime.
RTX is the future because of this. You get more realistic light, without having to stop for each and every scene to have to render and then fix it at every step of the way. Not only that, prebaked lighting actually takes up space on your hard drive so it is creating smaller files. While it won't make up for super high res textures and HD quality audio, it is still a nice bonus.
I mean the hardware acceleration has come a hell of a long way. With my 4070 basic ray tracing is only like a 15% hit to preformace and high is only like 30%. Depending on the game of course. Even path tracing in cyberpunk is over 30 fps and I've got a 3440x1440p monitor.
Look at Doom The Dark Ages, Assassins Creed Shadows or Indiana Jones for well optimised ray tracing. And probably GTA 6 for well optimised ray tracing.
Baking lighting takes up a lot of space. I always quote how in Assassins Creed Unity most of that games storage size was taken up by light maps. If you were to do the same with Assassins Creed Shadows it would take up a terabyte or more likely due to the world size.
So other real time methods had to be used. Real time lighting also allows for much better looking destruction. In Doom you can destroy and change a lot of the environment. Due to real time lighting from ray tracing all of this is lit and shadowed correctly.
What's really held praise for ray tracing back is the dramatic slowing of improvements in performance per dollar over time. A 4070Ti will let you comfortably use RT or even PT in games while still getting good performance, but it cost $800(on release). So people see that and say, "Well geez, ray tracing requires these very expensive GPU's, that sucks". Except a 4070Ti should not be called a 4070Ti and cost $800. It is a MIDRANGE GPU. Not even upper midrange, just an actual midrange GPU, ala RTX3060. Sub 300mm², 192-bit bus, 12GB VRAM.
Imagine how much more accessible ray tracing would feel if that same 4070Ti was called a 4060Ti and cost $450 instead. And this still lets Nvidia sell it a tier higher than this sort of GPU used to be, I'm not asking for Nvidia to act as a charity here. Nvidia really fucked us hard, and put accessible ray tracing(that didn't require heavy compromises elsewhere) out of the hands of most. 50 series didn't meaningfully move the needle much at all in terms of improvements in performance per dollar, either. So RT/PT still feels inaccessible to most without big compromises today. Until Nvidia actually gives us a lot more power at a given price tier, then people are going to continue to not be super positive about ray tracing.
Thank you. As someone who has been a 3D environment artist in game dev for 15 years, raytracing is an absolute god send.
Spending hours at a time waiting for the lightmap to bake only for there to be errors to fix that you can only see when it’s done… and that’s after having to do a second uv map of the whole level just for the lightmap, sucks balls.
Having to bork a lot of lighting to make things look right/good but is going to be inconsistent with other levels in the game, sucks balls.
Not having dynamically lit environments that change like when a roof door opens up in the cave in the rtx example scene makes it impossible to light such a scene correctly without raytracing
No, we need more affordable GPU's, and more specifically - much bigger improvements in performance per dollar in new generations. RT+PT will always remain inherently heavy.
Because you get dynamic scenes this way. Someone might come upon something during the day, and I could come upon it at night. Which makes the game more alive, and more realistic.
not for static scenes, lightmaps look wayyyy better than realtime RT in that regard. more samples, heavier algorithms = more realism
offline baking will always look better when appropriate, that’s why movie CGI looks real and our little path traced games need DLLS5 AI to get somewhat close
Showing my age here: Myst. For most of 3D game's history, things looked good thanks to precompute and cheap tricks. Like "lighting" and "shadows" that were actually just color mapping.
RDR2 was one of the most expensive games to develop, so yeah, you need to pay talented people a lot of money and give them time if you want it this good.
Meanwhile Nvidia ray tracing delivers even better results for way less effort.
2K is a standard that's been around for decades. 2048×1080. Basically, 2K is 1080p. We think of 1080p these days as 1920×1080, because that's the cropped version for 16:9 screens. Same with 4K. Industry standard is 4096×2160. 3840×2160 is the 16:9 cropped version.
So.
2048 = 2K
4096 = 4K
Pretty simple to understand that the "K" = 1000 pixels wide.
So how the hell did 2560 become 2K? Lazy ass marketing, that's how.
The actual term for 2560×1440 is QHD, or Quad HD. 4x the pixel count of HD, which was originally coined for 720p. 1080p is FHD, or Full HD. 4K is UHD, or Ultra HD. These are basically the "16:9" terms for all these industry standard resolutions. But alas.... lazy and easy to understand marketing won out.
I mean a quick Google search would show you're correct - is it possible that you got downvoted moreso due to the way you bring it up? If it is an "ACKSHULLY" type remark I can understand getting downvoted
If I'm honest I've seen QHD refererred to far more than 2K. Not saying you're wrong on the technical stuff, I'm just not sure I'd share your conclusion regarding the lazy marketing.
Same I fondly remember stopping every few minutes during missions to just stare at the scenery and take it all in. Beautiful, beautiful game. Did the same with Uncharted 4. But RDR2 is on another level.
Install reno, copy game reno files inside game folder, launch game. That's my experience with most games and reno. Some might ask you to rename some files, use optiscaler, but im sure the discord server has pinned most instructions.
This was my ss back in 2019 rocking 2060 on mostly medium. I still remember how good it look when it rain and heavily saturated. So might be the case of OP upping the saturation.
I played it the other day on my PC and honestly this doesn't look too far off. If anything they might have an Nvidia filter on but thats it I would bet.
The storms rolling across in this game are truly next level. It does look phenomenal in these moments, but its mostly lighting and low-res video in this instance. I been running it on my 5080 full maxed out. Has some crazy texture and clipping issues.
Sure, even RDR2 Online is a lot of fun. It's a shame they didn't expand the map and/or content of the game. You can play this game forever even after all the quests have been done. It's so relaxing in its own way and yet so fun and addictive.
It's honestly one of the best games ever made just for the world. I best the story in like 40 hours say, then spent an additional 100 hours hunting and exploring the world. Never been so immersed in a game world other than KCD 2.
That's because it's just the basic modern GTA/Rocktstar formula. The gameplay isn't what makes it fun, it's the immersive world, attention to detail, and story
Started a replay a while back on pc. After 1 hour I was totally fed up with the sluggish controls. It's like playing with 2000 ping. Finished the story once and never touched it again. I remember why now. It's a shame because it's otherwise a great game.
It's so fucking gorgeous. I own it but I can't get into the gameplay! It's hard to not find it a bit tedious. But it runs well on my PC at 4k, looks stunning, id give er another rip but the file size fucks my ass.
Disagree but i get why you could experience it this way.
Its a game about immersions and stories, more like reading a great book than playing a video game.
I started playing it on a normal 1080o monitor, then less than midgame I bought a 1440p monitor that supports HDR. You can imagine how shocked I was to go from normal 1080p to 1440p with HDR with this game.
I actually bought this on PC on a sale for like £9 or something then never got around to playing it. I already completed it once on Xbox One, but figured the graphical stuff on PC would make a replay worth it. Maybe I'll do that once I'm finished with Zero Company and Plague Tale.
I finally played RDR2 last summer and it was such an amazing game. I dont think I will be playing GTAVI before a few years given that I am yet to play GTAV...
I mean, looking at a game like this that 8 years ago was something mind-blowing, for me at least, is the reason why I cannot even imagine how GTA VI is going to be for this time in gaming… honestly cannot wait to play it on pc
No wonder rockstar wanted to copy from their own work to put in to GTA 6. They really cooked with RDR2. But then not so soon after pulled the content plug for RDO. So much potential gone to waste.
The biggest graphics issue in rdr2 is the distance that the polygon count drops away. If you watch carriages etc... look basic until quite close. The landscape is a little low poly and the grass is pretty meh. The lighting for non RT is excellent (go to the bar in saint Dennis). The overall detail is insane, people sit down and eat whole meals while they chat.
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