Quick Look: Red Dead Redemption II (PC)

So hyped to play this.

I bet the game looks even prettier on a PC, but sadly this video compression is so strong it almost looks like it's running on a regular XBOX or PS4 with how blurry everything gets...

The photo mode *is* new, Brad. There's a camera item in the PS4 version but it obviously didn't have all the options that a fully-fledged photo mode has.

A year removed from playing this game I have to urge to revisit it - perhaps maybe i was too harsh or my own expectations too high? I have a suspicion the game is just not for me but I do get some small bit of joy to listen to Brad cherish the small things which at the time I could not abide

Regardless, the craft that Rockstar put into this game is unmistakably masterful

I still play RDR Online almost daily and it's so fun/relaxing. I was easily able to earn the gold in game to buy the new jobs plus you get the bounty hunter one for free with Twitch Prime (and ps4 users get the hunting one free).

don't know if i'd consider a 2070 to be "middle of the road" lol

this game whips ass though

I'm definitely going to get this. I played it on PS4, but I'm willing to play again. I'll probably wait for them to fix that stuttering issue first. Looks great.

Rory going heel on animals. I didn't see that coming.

Ugghhhh i need viable GPUs to go below $700

@cb1115: Eh, it's a $500 card in a product line that ranges roughly from $200 to $1200, it's pretty middle by definition.

No.

I was really hoping Abby would play this quick look.

Wish we got to see some first person keyboard + mouse gameplay. Seems like a fairly major part of the PC release.

I started playing this (on PC) with my Xbox controller, but the keyboard + mouse controls are so much better than GTA5.

"I'm still early on and trying to learn how to feed my camp"

Oh Rorie, I've got news for you. Those of us that are done with the game still aren't sure.

I busted my bank buying a current desktop that had a 1060 in it and just after the new 2160 or whatevers came out. I was still in the mood that 960 was amazing cause it could do ps4 graphics and more. Now everyone's statements make me feel outdated everytime i get a new game but then i play them and i can almost put everything max settings and don't notice a difference on my normal old 1080 or so tv. Point being, for people like me who use to game mostly only counsel then moved to pc laptops that burnt a hole in my desk vga in to a big tv with my game windowed so i could get 15-20 fps in batman arkham knight all settings low, well its just fine when a game plays decently above what id get with ps4. I just got control on the pc and did not see all the graphics issues people had and had half the system others had. Maybe i'm missing something or i'm just too adjustable to bad graphics or dropped fps but im glad i am cause sometimes commenters and the crew make it seem like a gift and a curse to notice all these graphics flaws while gaming. Flaws totally put Jeff in particular off a game and it can just be something i'm fine with.

Just for help as well. What would a good non-build yourself, pc for 2019 look like given current tech. Can anyone give me specs so next time I can make a better choice. If an average card is 500 bucks i get why people just bite the dust and get xbox scarlett etc. with streaming your scarlet will look like a 3000 pc when wifi etc is forced to get cheaper and quicker by companies pushing tv/game streaming subscriptions (trust me it will happen, same way sega pushed it when they tried to stream games in the 90s or so.)

I would really like to see games like witcher 3 and red dead redemption 2 get another shot on this years GOTY. Obviously its an uphill battle cause the team can just say well its just ___ again then list flaws they didn't like, but now they have a chance to all play the game. RD2 with mods can take out the slog jeff doesn't like. MOD in fast travel/no eating/super sprint/etc all way of life helpers and finally judge the game for what it did outside of realism which people like jeff would almost never like since they hate micromanaging. Its a good chance to see why other gb staff liked it so much. Witcher 3 can finally be played in spurts on trips ect so people can get past the bloody baron and notice there are some really great quest in the game(including dlc). Both games came out this year and will have to fight but i think they deserve better discussion from a full group that finished it. We know Outer worlds will win this year but it would be nice to see witcher get cred and red dead.

Someone get @ me once someone mods in a really good, replayable Oregon Trail mode mod for this game...also build me a fancy new PC that can run this like a charm.

Now I understand why Rorie only likes puppies.

@brad: ehhh... a card that costs as much as a high end "modern" console still doesn't feel mid range to me.

@brad Game with vsync dropping to 30 when not reaching target 60 fps on 60hz display can be true but usually not (for modern games)... It's really up to the developers and whether they will use double buffering or longer swapchains (commonly referred to as "triple buffering" although it's kind of confusing because that term is reserved for something else). So you're not locked to whole-factor of 60 and present games at higher average fps - but it could lead to additional latency and frames being intermittently presented more than once thus introducing horrific judder. Which is why you need g-sync/freesync monitor ;)

Nvidia is supposedly bringing 2070 back after replacing it with 2070 Super. The newly minted 2070 might be considered mid-tier now. Thanks nVidia for expanding the meaning of mid-tier for us plebs.

Rorie: it runs pretty well on my 1080ti

Yeah I don't think a 2070 is considered middle of the road there folks, there's only really 3 cards that are faster, a 2070 super/2080/2080 super. A 2070 is top tier gpu territory. This is just a demanding game.

I had the exact same kind of hitching in gta v. Never could figure out how to fix that.

Loving those pebbles.

Rorie quick looks are something else

Team resolution checking in. I can't wait to turn everything way up and enjoy my cinematic lowish framerate.

Why GB do you always use a controller on a PC port QL?

One of the main reason you get a Rockstar game on PC is KB+M so the shooting doesn't feel like an auto aim whack-a-mole, and you can bind stuff to different keys, not use the same key for multiple actions.

I really should save up for some 2080, I don't think my 1080 is cutting games like this anymore.

If you have a lower end GPU, I would just play the game at medium settings, and lock the frame rate to 30fps with vsync on. If you have a 960'ish card, drop the resolution down to 900p or lower if need be.

48 hours on and this game still doesn't even run on the PC for me or a lot of other people. I'd beware of this poorly made port.

Man that grass at the very start looks pretty teeerrible. And that's not even counting the bits that float.

@ravelle:

I play this game with a 1070 and everything on high/ultra. Smooth 55-60 fps with the occasional freezing that everyone has been encountering.

@arcadefire: Oh, good to know!

@brad @rorie Apparently this game pretty much requires a CPU with at least 6 cores or 4c/8t. So if you are running it with a 7600k then that probably introduces a lot of performance problems.

This link shows how big an impact it has. The first bar chart is testing with a 9900k and turning off cores/hyperthreading.

I think maybe the reason the game wouldn't let them shoot that guy by the river is because he's not an adult?

@brad: You probably realised after the quick look, but your pupils dilate to let in more light, not your irises.

16:58 - "It's like... I'm doing this video with a psychopath!" - Brad to Rorie.

Seems about right.

Typically Rorie and Brad are my favorite Duders due to their knowledge of what's actually happening around them, but Brad having no clue how vsync has evolved since the '90s and Rorie acting like a psycho as Brad says is kind of off-putting in this here video, pardner.

@stealydan: Here is a link that demonstrates how to get proper low-lag vsync, I feel like it's required reading for any knowledgeable PC gamer: https://www.blurbusters.com/howto-low-lag-vsync-on/

This game just doesn't do anything for me.

@brad: It doesn't necessarily matter where in the product stack Nvidia positions a product when $500 is still $500. For Nvidia, the sales failure of the RTX series was very much a hard lesson in aspirational pricing and overvaluation. That is 5.4 days of wages for a single American at the median real income level, which may put into context why so many people seem to be disagreeing with you.

Brad, it's a video game. The animals aren't real.

This game is broken for a lot of people.

I can't play longer than an hour without it crashing. The mouse cursor moves to the center of my screen every time I open a menu. The settings screen doesn't appear when I open it from the main menu. I couldn't get past the intro screen without it crashing until I made an exception in Avast to ignore RDR2.exe. Some people can't even launch the game because Rockstar's Launcher doesn't work for them.

Super, super, glitchy.

Gamers Nexus talks about the freezing. It seems to be a thing on CPUs without hyperthreading. They say the solution is actually to increase the resolution. Going from 1080p to 1440p lowered the avarage FPS but stopped the freezing. I have a 9700K which seems affected but only at 1080p and I don't play at such low resolutions anyway. Also I am not buying this in PC even if I could run it fairly well on my 9700K,32GB RAM and RTX2070. I have it on PS4 and it plays and looks good so I see no need to buy it again. Maybe in a year or two when it comes to Steam and it is on sale.

My feelings are similar, I finished the game after taking a 6 month break. It has a lot of cool ideas that make me want to like it more than I do. The moment to moment gameplay was the same torture I remember from last year. Returning to it didn't change my feelings on this game. Now I'm glad I can say I finished the story, but I'm not sure if it was worth it.