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Red Dead Redemption 2’s Biggest Flaws

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There are so many glorious things I can say about Red Dead Redemption 2, but I keep being thwarted by the game’s biggest flaw. RDR2’s control scheme and interface are beyond bad.

I have no idea why Rockstar is still using this antiquated and horribly unfriendly setup. I completely acknowledge that there are many, many different systems in the game and the scope of what you’re doing in-game is vast beyond what we’ve seen in other games, but there’s a line that’s been crossed.

For example, I want to take that bow off my horse. Can I go up to the bow on the left side of the horse and press square to take it off and carry it with me? No. I have to hold the right button on the D-pad until a radial menu comes up. While holding that, I have to push the right stick in the direction of the radial option I want to choose, then whole holding that there I have to use R1/R2 to cycle through the various items in that type of slot until I find my bow.

I should have been able to walk up to that side of the horse, face the bow, and press square.

Swapping weapons, making sure the right items are on my and not my horse, etc., has become a full-time job.

Remembering how to open up various contextual menus, radial menus, and multipage menus has become a full-time job. My wife was watching me play and started to take notes for us after we spent 5 minutes sifting through various menus and pages to find something.

After several play sessions, I can honestly say the controls have soured many experiences in an otherwise wonderful game. Time to innovate, Rockstar.

On other more positive notes, RDR2 is such an unusually slow-pace game that I feel no desire to rush through. This could easily last me many, many months. Rather than write any sort of review, I’ll just comment on various systems and things I find enjoyable or otherwise.

  • This was the issue I had with the first RDR, it’s control scheme was so shit that I quite after a couple of hours (I had borrowed the game from a friend). I figured it would be more of the same in this sequel, so I’ve skipped it. No thanks.

    It’s funny because GTA V fixed most of the control annoyances of prior editions, but apparently they didn’t give the same makeover to their other big series.

    On another note, Red Dead Revolver had an excellent control scheme, which somehow didn’t make it over to the Redemption series.