Red Dead Redemption 2: I'm finally playing this

After being told for years that RDR2 is one of the best gaming experiences of all time I picked it up on some special that they had in the PlayStation store. I think it was a holiday or Black Friday sale. I don't remember. It sat in my library uninstalled for months and then later, it was installed but never opened.

I guess you could say that since I knew that this game was a massive time-sink adventure that I was "afraid" to get started. Well, I finally did get started yesterday and so far, I am impressed.

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Now I never played Red Dead 1 and I am also one of the few people in the world that never got involved with Rockstar's flagship games in the Grand Theft Auto series. I played them a bit but never finished any of them. I can't say why that is exactly but it is the case.

Now one thing that annoyed me at the beginning of RDR2 and was completely expected was the massive load time just to start the game. I realize that this is a HUGE game and this was always going to happen but I'm a very impatient person when it comes to gaming and load times are things that have made me walk away from good games in the past. I am yet to die, which I am sure is going to happen a lot later, so I am hopeful that they have some sort of streamlined loading because even in a great game, I will not tolerate multiple minute reload times.

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I gotta say that even though I have only played an hour or so I am already extremely impressed with everything I have seen. The way that they incorporate the tutorial into the story is really done well and this is something that a lot of other games are severely lacking in. Either the tutorial is tedious and boring, or it is insufficient and you end up getting thrown to the wolves without really having any idea of how to play the game.

Thus far, RDR2 has done what I consider to be one of the best intros to gameplay that I have ever seen and the story doesn't lull at all even though they have clearly incorporated it into teaching you the various aspects of the game. I feel as though they make it damn near impossible for you to fail at the early stages and this is a good thing. During the first shootout at the house you discover and also when being attacked by wolves on the mountainside I made plenty of mistakes and the system was very forgiving about this.

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I missed multiple times with my shotgun and then the wolves just seemed to kind of hang out by my feet rather than take me down. While this is unrealistic, I was happy they did this because it would have been upsetting to me if I had been ravaged by these guys at such an early point in the game.

I am a "fucking casual" for sure... to the point where it too me a few minutes to even figure out how to get the shotgun out of my horse's saddle bag despite the fact that the instructions were on the screen in front of me the entire time.

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I also like how very early on they gave me an opportunity to decide whether or not to spare a prisoner or execute him. Normally I play the role of the kind stranger but I decided that I am going to be a ruthless asshole on my first playthrough, just to mix things up a bit. I realize from what I have read online that later in the game you will make big problems for yourself if you utilize this tactic to liberally, so my mind may change about this later. I hope that there are lasting consequences for your actions in this game because I love it when games do things like that.

So while I am pretty sure that most people have already played through this game at least once, I am JUST NOW getting started for the very first time on this and am really looking forward to what is coming next. So far it seems like a wonderfully made game and this is probably why it gets stellar marks from basically every reviewer, professional and normal-dude alike.

My only fear at this point is the same fear that I had with Witcher 3. I can see already that all of the buttons are going to be required in this game and me being a casual gamer, this means that if I walk away from this one for a week or so, I am not going to remember how the hell to play. I guess we'll cross this bridge when we get to it.

Have you played RDR2? Did you love it?