Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming to PC

Please, don't. I have no idea what are they talking about. The game is pretty, but spectacular as some suggest? No, it isn't. And I know you played at least two of four games I mentioned visually outclassing the Rockstar's overrated title.

I've not played a game with this caliber of graphics. And especially not an open-world game. In terms of graphical fidelity and sharp graphics, I think God of War (2018) was up there. Especially facial animations. It looked incredible, and even better than RDR2. But as far as the open-world, scenery, landscapes and lighting, I've not see anything better than RDR2.

Which, pray tell, did you see that was better than this?

I think The Last of Us 2 will also be giving it a run for its money. It looked incredible. And the type of smaller-scope game that it is, at least compared to RDR2, will likely mean it can push more. And since it's just on PS4, it'll likely be optimized to hell and back for that lone system.

That's one of the big advantages of games that are exclusive to a single piece of hardware. They can optimize a whole lot, knowing their hardware will not change. That's what's so shocking about RDR2. It's a multiplatform title, on both PS and Xbox, and now also PC. And looks amazing.
 
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It all comes down to subjective notions, though.

Apparently joxer thinks the first Tomb Raider (2013) looks better, which is a very bad joke to me.

joxer would agree if he was being honest - and he took another look at it, but that's not going to happen.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was extremely pretty at release, and I'm sure it still looks great - but if you look at the lighting and the fidelity of animations in RDR2 - it's on a completely different level. Not to mention the vastly superior snow effect, which you can see from the very first scenes.

The most recent Tomb Raider looked muddy and blurry for the most part, and I think RotTR looked much better overall.

That said, they're all great looking games.

For my part, the only games that can possibly compete here, in an "overall" sense, would be Division 2 and Star Citizen.

Division 2, especially, has amazing lighting and superb fidelity in terms of assets and view distance. For animations, though, it can't quite compete.

Star Citizen is still very much work in progress, so it's kinda silly to pick that as a comparison - but it's the only other game I can think of that might compete. That's, again, more about the sheer amount of polygons on screen - and the absurd attention to detail on weapons and larger objects.

Witcher 3? No way. You don't really have to do more than take a ride through a forest and take a look at the volumetric fog and insanely detailed lighting effects in RDR2 - and you'd have to be drunk to claim Witcher 3 can compete here.

Also, again, in terms of animations - RDR2 beats them all, hands down.

Which isn't a surprise, if you have any insight into development. You can Google what kind of effort went into this - and what kind of money.

The one area where I'd say RDR2 is a ways behind the best is in terms of facial animations and detail. This is more than likely due to console limitations than anything else.

But it's most definitely not up there with the best of them.
 
Witcher 3? No way. You don't really have to do more than take a ride through a forest and take a look at the volumetric fog and insanely detailed lighting effects in RDR2 - and you'd have to be drunk to claim Witcher 3 can compete here.

This is the only thing I'm not so sure of. I distinctly remember when playing through Witcher 3, that I was, very often, blown away by scenery. Especially in the viking area (whatever it's called). Some of the open areas were absolutely wonderful. Of course, I played it about 2-3 years after it cam out, so I pretty much maxed everything out. That might have been a contributing factor. So, to be fair, I'd have to replay RDR2 in 2-3 years on more powerful hardware and max everything out.
 
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This is the only thing I'm not so sure of. I distinctly remember when playing through Witcher 3, that I was, very often, blown away by scenery. Especially in the viking area (whatever it's called). Some of the open areas were absolutely wonderful. Of course, I played it about 2-3 years after it cam out, so I pretty much maxed everything out. That might have been a contributing factor. So, to be fair, I'd have to replay RDR2 in 2-3 years on more powerful hardware and max everything out.

I'm strictly talking about max vs max (or nearly max vs nearly max).

It makes zero sense to compare low vs high, for instance.

All you have to do is try.

Believe me, I've got Witcher 3 installed - and played it just a few days ago.

It's very pretty still, definitely.

But the asset fidelity, distant vistas, lighting, fog, cloud detail/thickness, weather effects (lightning, mud, snow), animation quality and variety - are all at least one step beyond in RDR2.
 
I'm strictly talking about max vs max (or nearly max vs nearly max).

It makes zero sense to compare low vs high, for instance.

All you have to do is try.

Believe me, I've got Witcher 3 installed - and played it just a few days ago.

It's very pretty still, definitely.

But the asset fidelity, distant vistas, lighting, fog, cloud detail/thickness, weather effects (lightning, mud, snow), animation quality and variety - are all at least one step beyond in RDR2.

Yeah, could very well be. I've not touched Witcher 3 in 1 year at least. So, I'm going off memory. It's funny how, given enough time, it's all subjective and you don't really remember how it actually looks. More how you remember feeling about it. I guess graphics are indeed very passing, and an in-the-moment thing.
 
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Yeah, could very well be. I've not touched Witcher 3 in 1 year at least. So, I'm going off memory. It's funny how, given enough time, it's all subjective and you don't really remember how it actually looks. More how you remember feeling about it. I guess graphics are indeed very passing, and an in-the-moment thing.

Yes, I still think Defender of the Crown on the Amiga looks amazing. Until I actually see it :)

I do obsess over immersive qualities, though, and I always look for the best of the best when it comes to visual fidelity.

Still, there is no right or wrong here. It’s all perception and opinion.
 
The Witcher 3 is nearly 5 years old now, so it stands to reason it wasn't going to hold the visual crown forever.

It still looks better than the majority of games released since, but we're getting to the point where some developers are stepping it up a notch.

Metro Exodus is another game that rivals or exceeds TW3 visually.
 
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Well of course, i5 CPU and 1060/6GB GPU is extremely rare and unexpected combination out there. :-D Not really unexpected reaction from developer …

I thought you said your anecdotal experience meant nothing? :)

Anyway, I thought it would be good news, which is why I posted it.
 
The Witcher 3 is nearly 5 years old now, so it stands to reason it wasn't going to hold the visual crown forever.

It still looks better than the majority of games released since, but we're getting to the point where some developers are stepping it up a notch.

Metro Exodus is another game that rivals or exceeds TW3 visually.

It won't be long until RDR2 looks quaint.

Such is the nature of technology and gaming.

W3 looks great, definitely. It's been a while since I considered it top-of-the-line though.

But this is just about visuals.

If only RDR2 was as good as it looked.
 
I thought you said your anecdotal experience meant nothing? :)

Anyway, I thought it would be good news, which is why I posted it.

I suppose that if Rockstar is willing to at least admit there was something not ok with optimisation, its good news as there is good chance they will really address it. Which does not really correspond with that part saying it affected such trivial number of people, but whatever.

I dont think my experience was anecdotal, at least i didnt have much fun with it. But my reaction in discussion was inadequate so I appologized for it.
 
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I suppose that if Rockstar is willing to at least admit there was something not ok with optimisation, its good news as there is good chance they will really address it. Which does not really correspond with that part saying it affected such trivial number of people, but whatever.

I dont think my experience was anecdotal, at least i didnt have much fun with it. But my reaction in discussion was inadequate so I appologized for it.

Oh, you were sincere? Sorry, my mistake.

I thought you were being sarcastic.

As I said, I don't want to rule all the issues out - I just refuse to buy into this being a crap console port, because it's clear that a ton of effort went into it.

Have I claimed no one has issues? Of course not.

But I stand by my experience that the vast majority of people I've encountered, that I've talked to about games and optimization - don't have the first clue.

I obviously can't know how every individual stands out in that way.
 
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we are aware that a small number of Red Dead Redemption 2 PC players are still experiencing some ongoing problems with the game stuttering. We believe this is due to unforeseen issues related to specific combinations of Nvidia graphics drivers, Nvidia GPU cards and certain CPU’s.
Small number? LOL
For all I remember 50% of steam users use 4core CPU. Of course not all experience microstutters, but even 1% of a million sold copies is not something I'd call a small number.

I believe I did write they tested a few hardware combos and ignored everything else. If they checked steam's hardware survey they'd know that the most popular GPUs currently are nVidia 1060 and 1050ti.

Obviously, they did not care. The game runs smoothly on i9 that'll be released in the next year and RTX 3080, screw those who don't own that combination.
I guess someone spotted user score on metacritic or articles all over internet about Rockstar being worse than Bethesda (anyone remembers how Beth fixed FO3 crashes on release hitting "a small number" of rigs basically after one day?) and then shit hit the fan.


EDIT:
Missed this in the Rockstar's statement:
everyone who plays Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC this week and through to the holiday season will receive a complimentary care package for Red Dead Online
Up yours and your mmos, Rockstar.


EDIT2:
Patch log for anyone interested:
https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/360038342293/RDR2-Title-Update-1-14-Notes-PS4-Xbox-One-PC
 
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Apparently joxer thinks the first Tomb Raider (2013) looks better, which is a very bad joke to me.
His screenshot was from the latest Tomb Raider, which definitely has some stunning graphics.
 
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But I did say even the first one looks better than RDR2. To me. All three and that includes the one where the early bear massacres Lara's body to pieces. Seeing so much blood and gore in a TR game to me is a beauty of it's own, rarely anyone would even dare to go that route in reboot of a popular franchise.
I also added looks are taste based.

What he did was picking the oldest one and neverheard about the rest. I guess I've deserved such an answer here and there as backfire, but not in this case. When I neverheard about something it's never after someone's statements about visuals but about genre (mmo) or bullshit plothole bigger the planet story (Bioshock3) or something. Something that isn't eye food or eye cancer.

Anyway, if RDR2 is the best looking game he's ever seen, I can feel sad, but if visuals that didn't impress me make him happy, great for him, he found a game to love.
 
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Doublepost because it's not related to previous one and I forgot to write something (busy day).

The patch that's supposed to fix micro freezes doesn't work on my side. Checked comments, I'm not alone, in fact I didn't see a comment from anyone saying that the patch fixed it (doesn't mean there aren't such cases).
The patch also didn't fix frequent crashes to desktop for those who had that problem.
It also reintroduced at least one previously fixed bug.

Another thing I wasn't even aware that is bugged:
https://www.vg247.com/2019/11/15/red-dead-redemption-2-core-drain-faster-pc-high-framerate/
Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur cores drain rate seems to be tied to framerate on PC

That said, players started to notice that cores are draining much faster on PC than they do on consoles.

I myself noticed how shadows appeared to be moving too fast when riding across open plains, which I assumed was a bug in shadow draw distance. Many others also pointed out that the time of day would change multiple times in long journeys, which didn’t happen on consoles.
I've noticed the shadows thing when I started the game for the first time (without changing any settings) but then because of micro freezes did change some stuff including locking the game on 60 FPS where shadows seemingly started to behave. Thus I thought it was just a temporary glitch that sorted things by itself.

However the cores drain was something I thought designed to irritate the player - MC is sir camp-a-lot or needs to buy buffs frequently. If the above is true, that means it's a bug that stalled my game double the normal, not some design crime. Or we can call it a bad port. :)
 
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I probably need to watch some Let's Plays of this. I've never heard of the game but it's getting a lot of posts here.
 
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