Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Bandits Stole my RAM

2025-Feb-01

There has not been a video game review on here in almost one full year. There has been plenty of tripe written about forgotten sitcoms. Several misguided reports on the heavy non-fiction books I have blundered through. Sometimes an emotional screed about a recent film. No talk about video games though.

Not only has there been a dearth of video game reviews on here, the last three video game blog posts were on the same damn game: Satisfactory. In the nine or so months since that last blog post I have put more than two hundred hours into that game. A graduate thesis is what would be commensurate with the amount of effort I put into understanding that one particular video game. In the past few weeks I have put myself on a hiatus from the factory building of Satisfactory. The urge to put my pricey PC hardware to use remains. In Satisfactory’s place, I have revisited the two big time consuming sandbox style games I was playing in 2023.

Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. In chronological order. I likely paid $15-20 a piece for both of them. Grabbing them whenever they were on sale and I was hankering for some new game. RDR2 (for the PC) was released in 2019 and Cyberpunk2077 came onto the market a year or so later. I met them as they each reached the $15-20 threshold on Steam. GOG in the case of Cyberpunk2077. The underlying theme of all three of these games besides their price point is the open sandbox that they offer for the player to make choices. Ultimately the more lasting choices a game can give me, the more I want to explore.

I do commend each of these two games' scripted single player campaign. (Not Satisfactory. Only because I can’t attest to the single player writing. I spent most of my hours in the Early Access version. Anyway, I don't play that game for the story. Even though it’s sparse writing has been thought provoking). I have completed both RDR2 and Cyberpunk; finding both of them to be compelling single player games. Both campaign endings felt like conclusive endings to the story brought forth by heavily scripted missions.

However, heavily scripted scenes are just not what I want in a video game. That works great in movies, or anywhere I’m a passive audience. Scripted action sequences within a video game feel cheap, especially the second time around. I want to be playing a game that makes me feel like they’re in a Hollywood movie. With superficial thinking, pushing your video game player choices through the decision points an action movie should do the trick of feeling like a participant in a cool action scene.

Being strapped into an on rails action sequence rarely makes me feel like an action movie star. I get that sensation in a video game when it happens in an unscripted manner. Something that could only be believed if it was recorded. Sometimes I feel like a James Bond, or Jason Bourne, or John Wayne, when I’m playing video games. Rarely does that happen when the game developers shoehorned the situation.

(Note to self. I should learn my PC video screen capturing hotkeys)

At this very moment I am making my second playthrough of Cyberpunk. This time choosing starting characteristics that are very different from my first try (last time was hacker/sniper. This time the use of blunt melee weapons will be the prime characteristic). As well, leveling up in new directions. The most joy I find in that game is playing the minor missions. Really, that applies for any sandbox type of game.

The low-stakes shorter tasks offer more freedom of execution than the missions that move the story forward. I adore it when a mission is available within in-game walking distances in Cyberpunk. Night City is exquisitely designed. A monument to video game design. A video game city like that does more storytelling than all the written ‘shards’ I ignore.

Having to go to the actual campaign required missions again is a chore. Well, it is now that I know the setup story. There is less dramatic punch or mystery to add weight to the writing. The first time around every new step was exhilarating. The way the story elements were spliced into a long tutorial mission showing a new player the way around the big digital city of the alternate future of 2077. The second time around the story-heavy first act holds me back like leg irons.

The game did and still does a good job of putting my GPU to work. The second time around I can still take the time and smell the polygon roses here and there. However, in the thick of some boring story missions that I need to pass so more of the city is unlocked, I ponder how easy it would be to find a mid-game save on the internet that skips the long story missions of the first act. I’d rather smell the fake digital roses on my own jaunts through the city, not on an escort mission for a story I’ve already heard.

I know for a fact right now that I will not start another Red Dead Redemption 2 campaign again. I remember how tedious the introduction/tutorial the first six to ten hours felt. I knew this decision while I was running through the tutorial. I had played the first RDR enough in the past to know ninety-five percent of what was slowly paced in the games’ first act. Every mission on the snowy mountain top filled me with so much malaise. I wanted to cut loose from the plot and get onto my cowboy simulator right away. I did not buy the game to hear of the plight of Arthur Morgan and his outlaw gang. I wanted to rustle cattle, rob trains, hunt rare animals, and shoot lots and lots of late 1800s small arms.

Bolt action rifles. Revolvers. Repeaters. Shotguns. Even the automatic weapons that feel anachronistic but are not. Cowboy bandits and Luger pistols historically coexisted! Using those weapons in cool cowboy bandit situations is what I wanted to do. Arthur Morgan is an interesting character. I do not see him as anything more than the art on the outside of the arcade machine I want to play.

Since the end of 2023 I have left my RDR2 save point at the epilogue. Some spoilers have been avoided through my lazy embargo of RDR2 story points. They’re vague enough that I know I do want to finish the last or penultimate story mission. Whichever one lets me get to see just how John (the Epilogue protagonist) kills Micah (the mangy good-for-nothing foil of the main story). Micah’s voice actor and writers did a super job of making a word class jerk come to life.
Alluring as that bit of plot might be to experience firsthand, I am still more intrigued by getting ‘100%’ of the cowboy simulator checklists. Even though I doubt the Rockstar developers would seal off the achievements I’m aiming for after completing the last story mission, I’m wary of that happening. I won’t move forward until my character can pick from every assortment of animal skin clothes. Until then I play the game as a slow pace hunting and fishing simulator.

Essentially that is what I want from these video games. A place to play, rather than listen. Scripted narrative could be interesting in an interactive sense. That effect wears off very quickly with me. Being strapped into a railroad car along mandatory story points has only a minute of my attention. I want a video game to give me a wide berth to do things. I play games to play! That is faultless and speak for itself.

I suppose I will push my new Cyberpunk2077 save as far as I can before they shove me into one of those twenty to forty minute episodes of scripted action. What I hope at the very least is that this dumb bruiser character I am using this time gets a different route through the same quests and results in different outcome. We’ll see. This game has a beautiful sheen. Scraping deeper than that shows that this sandbox is all veneer. Pretty but shallow.

RDR2 gives me less leeway and how to make my protagonist play the game. What I have found to be superior about the sandbox the game is set in is the quality of its width. There are a lot of substantive things a cowboy can do. In Cyberpunk, there are really only a few things a hoodlum in a cyberpunk future can do. They’re fun, but it’s essentially a first person shooter with level development on how you shoot your guns or swing your ‘cyber’ swords. The main third-person gunplay that is the core of RDR2 is not as rich as cyberpunk. Which is superior? I suppose I will have to find my playtime totals in a few years to see if they meet up. Right now RDR2 is in the lead by a few dozen hours.