I mean, it’s a very nice looking game, which may have something to do with it having about ten times the budget of your average game from a major publisher (the term AAA is now entirely meaningless and I refuse to use it without clarification). Guessing that helps.

I’m not sure “clean and sharp” is a positive value, though. This becomes a problem because I don’t know what people mean, and people often don’t know what they mean, either. Good picture quality doesn’t need to be “sharp”. Things that are in focus realistically aren’t impossibly pin-sharp, that’s a videogamey thing. Shadows definitely aren’t ever sharp. And of course the picture you presented is anything but sharp, since it’s… well, a pretty low-quality 1080p image, so the trees are blobs, the hair is a grainy mess and distant models are blobby.

OK, here’s a true fact I would think is common knowledge but it may not be: A slightly older game on higher settings often looks better than a newer game on lower settings. Remedial performance options are often very compromised and not really meant to be used. Expensive features can look bad on minimum settings and newer games can be built around more expensive stuff and look off when those settings are toggled off. Lower resolution rendering of a better looking image can produce worse results than higher res output for a worse looking image for a number of reasons.

That doesn’t mean newer games look worse, though. It’s just the nature of the beast in PC gaming and it has been for forty years. That’s why it’s always been cool to go back to old games when you update your hardware.

Yeah, I’m kinda with you. I played a lot of it, in the tens of hours, but I didn’t finish it. It may be at the peak of self-indulgent simulation for simulation’s sake in open world games.

I think I’m glad it exists. Somebody had to do this, like somebody had to do CJ getting fat when he eats and slim when he runs, right? That’s a fun thing for someone to have done in a successful mainstream game release.

But there’s a reason that didn’t show up elsewhere, and that’s also a good thing.

I just watched a good Any Austin video on RDR2, he studies the power line infrastructure on the map. Makes me want to play again.

RDR2 does have TAA though.

If you don’t disable TAA RDR2 actually does look quite blurry, especially the vegetation looks terrible. I found the best results from using DLDSR as anti-aliasing, but it does take a heavier performance toll.

Also I should get around to finishing RDR2 some day.

Jagged edges are the opposite of blurry. Blur smooths out sharp edges.
When edges are sharp and crisp, that’s when the jagged nature of square pixels is visible.

The screenshot you posted here has lots of blurred edges. Look at the grass, trees, and hair.

Maybe you could post a screen shot of the problem you’re talking about?

I’m playing it for the first time at the moment as well! But on ps4.

It took me a little bit to get used to the slow pace in parts - almost closer to a sim. I’d just finished Horizon: FW, so the speed of movement was a big change. Now I enjoy the extra time to smoke weed and head-cannon my character.

The writing and plotting are the real treasure of the game so far. I’ve enjoyed the scenery and the views well enough, but I rarely find myself impressed by graphics.

There’s a lot to like in there: The environments are gorgeous. The main characters are full of texture. The wildlife feels alive. The soundtrack is excellent. The voice acting is good. The details are fine and abundant. I’m really impressed with the team members who worked on these things.

But sadly, the slapdash user interface, hostile save system, unskippable cut scenes, and absolutely garbage mission mechanics (mostly having to do with robbing the player of agency and imposing ridiculous failure conditions) ruined it for me.

The time I spent wandering around the world simulation was mostly enjoyable. The time I spent playing it as a game was mostly miserable.

Yes, it doesnt

Absolutely loved rdr2. It’s a gem. I played story mode three times and I love it to death.

If only rdr2 online wasn’t the pvp obnoxious pay-to-win microtransaction-riddled cesspit that it is, I’d still be playing that now.

I agree with you that it’s slow – and yet, it is one of the very few games I actually finished. That’s highly unusual for me. And then I went back and played it again.

It’s a game designed to be sipped, not gulped.

It’s really slow for about 1/3 of the way through, and then you get to Saint Denis and it starts taking off a lot harder.

It’s a masterpiece, but definitely a slow burn. It’s a top 3 game for me for sure.

Say what you will about Rockstar, but they make games that 20 years later you still want to return to them (I guess just about 8 years later in this case).

Three full story playthroughs is a lot of dedication lol I love rdr2 but it sure drags on towards the end. Ive played to the late game probably six times but only actually pushed all the way to the end twice. Kudos!

Yeah, when i played through it i quickly discovered that I’d have to set aside a few hours at a time in order to actually let myself enjoy it.

Luckily, this was mid 2020 and i had just gotten laid off, so i had time.

Yeah I think I agree with you on all counts. I haven’t finished it, mind. I also sort of got taken out of immersion constantly by the enormous body count you rack up in every single main story mission. You’re essentially committing genocide, and nobody fucking cares. It’s such a bizarre clash with all the immersion centric features of the open world sandbox. Even the story tries to be grounded, and then you murder like a thousand O’Driscolls and several hundred sheriffs.

Stretched out over a couple of years, with about 10% of game time actually spent on progressing the main story, it’s not that bad ️

I loved loafing around, really.

nope, they’re talking about blurry pixelated messes when running on epic settings on a 5090, rendering at 25% scale at single digit fps.

tldr: unreal engine 5

when characters eat a meal they actually cut up their food and eat it, not just a few motions on loop. Lots of love and detail in this game

also the horses balls go up when you ride into cold water

I played it a little after release. Yeah, no. I needed an upgrade for it, but I played it anyway, and it was blurry as shit. Worse than modern games. Their version of TAA was so much worse than the modern DLSS/FSR TAA we have today. It was purely a temporal blur, adding previous frame data to new frames. It still looked good, but it was blurry. I should try it again now that I’ve upgraded…