The storm chaser of Red Dead Redemption 2.
April 19, 2020 12:54 PM Subscribe
“Over on Reddit, one player decided to take a closer look at Red Dead Redemption 2's weather system, and came back with some unexpected findings. After asking members of the reddeadmysteries subreddit for help in tracking down lightning strike spots, "MC_Ulfric" (also known as "InsertRandomNameHere") hopped on his horse to follow the storms himself - across the entire map. This wasn't just a simple sightseeing tour, either, as MC_Ulfric carefully watched where the largest lightning strikes hit the ground, and compiled the data from three storms into a map that shows Red Dead Redemption 2's storms are anything but static.” [via: Eurogamer][The Beautiful and Terrifying Weather Systems of Red Dead Redemption 2]
By God that is a pretty game. That desert environment looks like film. I wish I didn't suck so much at games, so I could play it.
posted by The otter lady at 3:56 PM on April 19, 2020
posted by The otter lady at 3:56 PM on April 19, 2020
There was a team or maybe a group of teams whose job it was to model weather systems for this game. And they created all this, and it's amazing that they created something complex enough that someone has to devote hours to studying it and trying to understand it.
I sort of hope it does lead to an easter egg, because that would be awesome.
posted by hippybear at 4:01 PM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
I sort of hope it does lead to an easter egg, because that would be awesome.
posted by hippybear at 4:01 PM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
I sort of hope it does lead to an easter egg, because that would be awesome.
"Themaze lightning is not for you."
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:41 PM on April 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
"The
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:41 PM on April 19, 2020 [6 favorites]
Given all the effort that went into the wildlife and natural history in the game, it would be interesting to see if there is also any kind of weather engine in the game that draws on real-life models.
posted by carter at 5:04 PM on April 19, 2020
posted by carter at 5:04 PM on April 19, 2020
Ulfric. Bwahahaha.
posted by slipthought at 5:16 PM on April 19, 2020
posted by slipthought at 5:16 PM on April 19, 2020
I’d love to play this game. But I don’t have a video game console. I suck. I also want to play that Assassins Creed game that’s in Alexandria.
posted by misterpatrick at 5:55 PM on April 19, 2020
posted by misterpatrick at 5:55 PM on April 19, 2020
It's on PC now, misterpatrick!
posted by The otter lady at 6:28 PM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by The otter lady at 6:28 PM on April 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Even my 8 year old i5 with only 8GB of memory and the cheapest GTX1660 ever sold new manages to play RDR2 and maintain better than 30fps even in Saint Denis. I'm still waffling back and forth as to whether my purchasing decision was the worst timed ever or the best timed. On the one hand, I blew $40 on it two days before being informed I was losing 75% of my monthly income. On the other, it has given me days of relatively mindless entertainment just from wandering around the map.
I don't care too much for the actual story, but the open world is amazing, even if the default TAA makes it look much worse in motion than it does in screenshots. A couple of days ago when I was out looking for, and failing to find, a bison there came a storm that was so nasty that I was surprised not to see a tornado around somewhere. It can be quite immersive at times. It's also one of maybe three or four games that make MGS:V seem small.
If it were possible to play RDR2 as non-lethally as MGSV I'd be much happier with it. There's a lot less entirely pointless and gratuitous violence than GTAV, but it's still a bit ridiculous at times, presumably to keep people with short attention spans from getting bored while trekking across the map.
posted by wierdo at 12:20 AM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
I don't care too much for the actual story, but the open world is amazing, even if the default TAA makes it look much worse in motion than it does in screenshots. A couple of days ago when I was out looking for, and failing to find, a bison there came a storm that was so nasty that I was surprised not to see a tornado around somewhere. It can be quite immersive at times. It's also one of maybe three or four games that make MGS:V seem small.
If it were possible to play RDR2 as non-lethally as MGSV I'd be much happier with it. There's a lot less entirely pointless and gratuitous violence than GTAV, but it's still a bit ridiculous at times, presumably to keep people with short attention spans from getting bored while trekking across the map.
posted by wierdo at 12:20 AM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
The weather is one of the best things about RDR2. Truly epic.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:56 AM on April 20, 2020
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:56 AM on April 20, 2020
A word of caution about Red Dead Redemption 2:
I had been seeing lots of good stuff about Red Dead Redemption II. It came to PC last fall, and I waited a while before buying it for optimization and patches to be done.
I bought it on Steam, Saturday morning, for some quarantine amusement. It was over 100GB download, which took a couple of hours to install. Once I started playing, I was immediately struck by how awful the controls felt. Why is my horse not steering? Why are my button presses not doing anything? Things seemed to be happening a long time after I pressed the button. Controlling my character felt like pushing around a wet sponge.
I paused my game and tabbed out to google search because I thought something was wrong with the game, or my keyboard? I discovered that it was designed this way intentionally.
Apparently they designed it with 400ms input lag so animations would look nice while doing things. That's nearly a half second between pressing a button and having the action happen. I found it agonizingly sluggish. Some people have reported feeling motion sick because of it.
It's VERY clunky to play. Also, many actions require a one second long press-and-hold. Sometimes picking something up is one button, and sometimes it's a different button! Why?
I couldn't get past how bad it all felt, so I requested a refund through Steam. Fortunately I had stopped just short of the two hour mark for a refund, and it was approved.
Long story short, buyer beware. Maybe this won't bother you if you're looking for a very cinematic experience and you aren't as picky as me about control responsiveness. I found it intolerable. Hold off until buying and find a way to playtest before purchase, if you can.
There is also this very long article about RDR2 by Film Crit Hulk, discussing many of the design choices with the game, which I found very interesting. A great deal of the game is occupied with tedious tasks in the name of "realism", but are they good choices for a game?
Personally, I feel like I saved myself a lot of money and frustration.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:05 AM on April 20, 2020 [7 favorites]
I had been seeing lots of good stuff about Red Dead Redemption II. It came to PC last fall, and I waited a while before buying it for optimization and patches to be done.
I bought it on Steam, Saturday morning, for some quarantine amusement. It was over 100GB download, which took a couple of hours to install. Once I started playing, I was immediately struck by how awful the controls felt. Why is my horse not steering? Why are my button presses not doing anything? Things seemed to be happening a long time after I pressed the button. Controlling my character felt like pushing around a wet sponge.
I paused my game and tabbed out to google search because I thought something was wrong with the game, or my keyboard? I discovered that it was designed this way intentionally.
Apparently they designed it with 400ms input lag so animations would look nice while doing things. That's nearly a half second between pressing a button and having the action happen. I found it agonizingly sluggish. Some people have reported feeling motion sick because of it.
It's VERY clunky to play. Also, many actions require a one second long press-and-hold. Sometimes picking something up is one button, and sometimes it's a different button! Why?
I couldn't get past how bad it all felt, so I requested a refund through Steam. Fortunately I had stopped just short of the two hour mark for a refund, and it was approved.
Long story short, buyer beware. Maybe this won't bother you if you're looking for a very cinematic experience and you aren't as picky as me about control responsiveness. I found it intolerable. Hold off until buying and find a way to playtest before purchase, if you can.
There is also this very long article about RDR2 by Film Crit Hulk, discussing many of the design choices with the game, which I found very interesting. A great deal of the game is occupied with tedious tasks in the name of "realism", but are they good choices for a game?
Personally, I feel like I saved myself a lot of money and frustration.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:05 AM on April 20, 2020 [7 favorites]
The size of the download is indeed completely ridiculous. If Comcast were enforcing their cap right now, it would have been over 10% of my entire monthly data allotment.
I can't say I've noticed any serious input lag. I have noticed that when riding a horse or doing some other things that your inputs are smoothed to avoid twitchiness that would otherwise result. That said, I play with a gamepad, not a keyboard and mouse. It was a console-first release, after all.
NB: I play exclusively streaming over a LAN, so I'm clearly not a person who notices minor input latency. I should have no trouble noticing literally half a second of lag, but all I see is a game that acts like every other AAA game that uses similar character animation.
posted by wierdo at 8:48 AM on April 20, 2020
I can't say I've noticed any serious input lag. I have noticed that when riding a horse or doing some other things that your inputs are smoothed to avoid twitchiness that would otherwise result. That said, I play with a gamepad, not a keyboard and mouse. It was a console-first release, after all.
NB: I play exclusively streaming over a LAN, so I'm clearly not a person who notices minor input latency. I should have no trouble noticing literally half a second of lag, but all I see is a game that acts like every other AAA game that uses similar character animation.
posted by wierdo at 8:48 AM on April 20, 2020
The controls do take some getting used to. Besides the animation smoothing that wierdo mentions, it also took me a while to realize that Rockstar seems to have meant this to be a slower-paced game. You can't run when in camp or indoors, for example, which avoids the typical video-gamey scene of your character sprinting around like an insane person and being suddenly stopped by a flimsy table. A side effect is that by walking around camp you get to experience spontaneous-feeling conversations with your fellow gang members. There's a lot of ambient story that you pick up just by taking your time when moving around.
I don't love all of the choices that Rockstar made with the UI. I wish I didn't have to craft or cook everything one unit at a time. But in general I came to appreciate that things happen more slowly, and the world is so mind-blowingly detailed and realistic that it's a joy to soak it in. I had to
I also think, as wierdo suggests, that it might be better with a controller. I played on PS4 but I've played many Rockstar games in the past on PC and all the ones since GTA 3 felt like they were designed for controllers first, and didn't feel right with mouse and keyboard.
And speaking of horse controls in particular: I also struggled with them at first, but now they are so natural feeling that I dislike how other games' horses feel. I played Breath of the Wild for a bit after RDR2 and riding a horse there felt more like piloting a boat in comparison.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:19 AM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't love all of the choices that Rockstar made with the UI. I wish I didn't have to craft or cook everything one unit at a time. But in general I came to appreciate that things happen more slowly, and the world is so mind-blowingly detailed and realistic that it's a joy to soak it in. I had to
I also think, as wierdo suggests, that it might be better with a controller. I played on PS4 but I've played many Rockstar games in the past on PC and all the ones since GTA 3 felt like they were designed for controllers first, and didn't feel right with mouse and keyboard.
And speaking of horse controls in particular: I also struggled with them at first, but now they are so natural feeling that I dislike how other games' horses feel. I played Breath of the Wild for a bit after RDR2 and riding a horse there felt more like piloting a boat in comparison.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:19 AM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
NB: I play exclusively streaming over a LAN, so I'm clearly not a person who notices minor input latency.
Yeah, I tried Steam's streaming play through our TV once, to play a Lego game with my son. That was more responsive than RDR2 and I still found it irritating.
The sluggish control issue is something that was noticed at launch, by PS4 users.
Obviously it's a matter of taste, and plenty of people don't mind it at all. YMMV.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:39 AM on April 20, 2020
Yeah, I tried Steam's streaming play through our TV once, to play a Lego game with my son. That was more responsive than RDR2 and I still found it irritating.
The sluggish control issue is something that was noticed at launch, by PS4 users.
Obviously it's a matter of taste, and plenty of people don't mind it at all. YMMV.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:39 AM on April 20, 2020
Speaking of the slow pace, it's almost comical how different the game feels when doing required missions compared to the "maintenance" stuff and resource gathering. Happily, it doesn't really force you forward nor does seem to seriously penalize you for rushing through to the end of the story. You get access to the vast majority of the map pretty early on, so it is more amenable than most to being gone through relatively slowly.
Contrast this to AC: Odyssey, where you have to level up your character quite a lot before most of the map ceases to be a death sentence should you try to go there. It does have that entirely separate exploration mode, but I don't find that a great replacement.
posted by wierdo at 9:41 AM on April 20, 2020
Contrast this to AC: Odyssey, where you have to level up your character quite a lot before most of the map ceases to be a death sentence should you try to go there. It does have that entirely separate exploration mode, but I don't find that a great replacement.
posted by wierdo at 9:41 AM on April 20, 2020
I'm about to give it a try on Stadia. Should be a good test of that setup...
posted by ph00dz at 1:35 PM on April 20, 2020
posted by ph00dz at 1:35 PM on April 20, 2020
People who are turned off by the slow animations in the story mode should really play the online version of the game. It's nothing like GTA Online in terms of griefing (you generally don't interact with other players unless you chose to and if you don't want to play with anyone else, it's very easy to set up your own private session via the Windows firewall settings). More importantly, the developers significantly sped up character movement speed and animation speeds last year.
posted by longdaysjourney at 6:48 AM on April 22, 2020
posted by longdaysjourney at 6:48 AM on April 22, 2020
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posted by hippybear at 2:44 PM on April 19, 2020