Hey Duders, question, when does the snowy winter section of the beginning end? roughly how many hours in or is the setting like that for the entire game?

Not that long; just a few missions.

Probably 2-4 hours depending on how quickly you go.

If you're asking this question you should probably just return the game.

scared of snow? lol

I feel your pain man, in HDR that shit nearly seared my retinas off.

This.

It's getting more and more apparent this game isn't for impatient people.

I think the snow part in the beginning is much slower paced than the rest of the game because you're riding out to do tutorials and there isn't anywhere else to go yet. I ended up really enjoying the game but I do recall those early bits seeming to kind of "drag" as in I was excited for the game to finally open up and get me out of the tutorial zone.

So it's good to know that it's maybe an hour or so of missions before you move on.

@humanity: yeah its a small chunk but i think it is very much an indicitive slice of the games pace throghout. I've put over 150 hours into RDR2, so its defnitely for me, but those that dont like it all started off with similar complaints.

While I never really grew to love the game(I liked it about as much as I tend to like Rockstar games), I did like it a good bit, but I hated the opening area. I thought it got way better after getting out of the snow/tutorial area, so I definitely do not agree with the idea that someone won't like the game if they don't like the start.

@metalbaofu: Forget the snow area, I really didn’t warm up to this game until about chapter 4 when the story actually started going somewhere. This is one of those situations of “well just play for x hours and the game will get good”. Well it turns out you have to play for about 40 hours for that to happen, up until then it’s just a bunch of meaningless robberies and whatnot. I was so close to just quitting the game but now I’m super into the story. I see what they were going for in those early chapters and how it ties in later but I can’t say any of that was great at the time and also the gameplay still isn’t much fun even here at the end of chapter 6.

While it didn't take me that long to start enjoying it some, I do get what you mean. I tend to feel the same about all Rockstar stuff. I stick around for characters/story, and end up liking the games, but never really loving them. A big reason for that is the game play for me. The actual playing of a Rockstar game just never feels all that good to me.

On my first playthrough I recall the opening being very slow and counting the minutes until it was over.

Interestingly, I recently restarted the game to focus on side content and I absolutely loved the intro. I think it’s because I was already very familiar with the controls.

I think that’s the thing about RDR2, it’s amazing when you’re not struggling with the controls. That just takes time, and that amount of time will vary from player to player. And of course, some players will be turned off by this learning curve immediately.

Edit: I’d like to add that it really helped me to go into the options and basically turn auto aim to the max. There’s two settings, one to change the lock on angle to ‘Wide’ and another meter which I turned all the way up which I forget the name. I changed this about 3/4 through the game and it really helped. It actually made me better at the game; I have since turned it back to default settings and my skill (and enjoyment of the combat) has mostly persisted.

@the_grindilow: How? The HDR implementation made the screen look super dull. Unless that's what you mean, or they've fixed it by now. Unfortunately, to get a brighter, slightly more colorful image you have to turn HDR off.

@nasher27: I restarted since I got an XB1X and RDR2 was bundled with it and I must say I had the exact opposite experience. I never had many issues with the core game, I adapted to the controls quickly enough and apart from some story mishaps I enjoyed it pretty much all the way to the end. I was actually a little disappointed that I pushed forward to quickly because there were plenty of side quests I wanted to have done, which is partly why I restarted on the Xbox.

Apart from the snow areas looking absolutely stunning I was really blowing through it because I just wanted the mainland to open up. It was interesting to see the game from the beginning after I had spent what seemed like 100 hours with these characters and saw them evolve over the span of the story, but much like my first time around I was itching to get into the main game (and even when you do get out of the snow it is still several hours more of drip fed tutorial missions before you get into the game proper).

I was actually asking so I could play through the snow section before Christmas to feel all Christmasy :)