But the more I play, the more they feel like puppets putting on a show. More so than any other game I’ve played.
Fuck right off, if this has the most puppet like NPC's you ever experienced, I question how many games you've played.
We tip our hat like a proper gentleman, and we kill anyone we want. The game rewards those masculine impulses without fail.
Wrong, you will be punished for killing anyone you want. You are not rewarded for it unless we're talking about looting the corpse, you are in fact made more evil with each murder.
These rewards further stress that, in spite of
Red Dead Redemption 2’s meticulous details and animations—created through
excess, condemnable hours and strenuous labor—
the NPCs just exist for the player’s benefit.
There is no other alternative you fucking absolute worthless hack. Tell me how you have a game with NPC's that exist for another purpose other than to be there waiting for me to interact with them. It's infuriating that we're in a place where you have to tell a
professional games journalist that games are entertainments products made with the primary, in fact I'm going to say only, goal of giving the person who bought it a good time. Go make a fucking grievance game where I have to sit in a chair and have no agency, and must listen to NPC's lecture me, make them exist not for my entertainment but to shame me and educate me on all the ways I and people like me who might enjoy a game like Red Dead are problematic members of society. Go make that game, please.
One time, while riding through the plains, I heard a man crying out in fear. He was going to die, dammit. Please won’t someone help him. As it turned out, he was bitten by a snake. I could leave him, I could suck out the venom, or I could give him medicine. I opted for the latter, and we then parted ways. Nearly five hours later, I heard the man call out to me while I was walking around in the town of Valentine. He was sitting on a shop’s porch with his friend. Why, wasn’t it wonderful for him to see me, his savior, again? He was so delighted that he offered to pay for whatever I wanted in the gun shop. I bought a Springfield Rifle and scope; it’s perfect for hunting deer.
Sounds like a pretty cool little NPC side-mission, how can she find this problematic?
This encounter meant to give my actions consequences, but the reward and the scripted nature of our interaction rang false.
He was spawned in as I came near, solely to be rescued by me, and then again to reward me for it.
If he existed persistently, how would you know? This woman does not understand the medium she writes about.
NPCs exist in orbit of the player, for the player. This is true to a certain extent in all games, but it feels particular pronounced due to Red Dead Redemption 2's aspiration for creating a meticulous and believable space.
No, it's not true "to a certain extent", it's a fundamental aspect of videogames. They exist for the player. Everything in it exists for the player, and I would be curious to hear their description of a game that wasn't built
for the player.
I avoid towns more often than not in the game. I get too distracted by the animatronic people and their play-acting lives.
One wonders how she manages to live in a modern city with all the NPC bugmen.
Perhaps I’ve been playing games so long that I can’t help but see the puppeteer’s strings.
Actually I think you've had your head up your own Idpol ass for so long you are unable to even see the game for what it is anymore. You focus on the puppeteers and the strings to the detriment of all else.
It’s not even about being more “realistic”, or creating better AI; it’s about allowing these entities lives independent of their service to the player.
NPC wants respect and freedom for all NPCs.