Rockstar has been ramping up the marketing for their upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2 recently. Just a couple weeks back, they released the gameplay reveal for the game, showing off several of its systems and mechanics, and the general consensus on what was shown has been very strong. However, Rockstar recently showed an extended gameplay demo of the game to GameStop employees over at the 2018 GME Conference, and the reception there has been slightly more mixed.
WCCFTech have compiled a bunch of comments on Reddit from people who were in attendance from the demo, and there seems to be a bit of a divide on what the game looked like. Several people were less than impressed with what they saw, while others thought it looked pretty great.
Mostly, people seem to be praising the game for being a beautiful looking one, but criticism on the demo has centred on the fact that the snippet of the game Rockstar showed was pretty uneventful. “Game looked great but what they chose to show for the first 20 minutes was very boring and not what you would want to show to the people who you want hyped about your game,” said Redditor dutrank. “Don’t get me wrong,” they continued. “I still think the game will be fantastic, just the demo was kinda boring to watch.”
Another user, WDCombo, had similar thoughts, saying that while the shootout shown in the demo looked good, the heist that was shown off seemed less impressive. “Shootout looked decent, the bank heist was slowly paced,” they said. “The game will be great and sell like mad but the demo they showed was really dry.”
Others, however, have been more positive. User 1001mistakes talked about how the reason for people being less than impressed with the demo might have been being exhausted from the week, before going on to claim that the demo perfectly showed the game’s biggest strengths. “To give a little context, everyone was exhausted from the week and it’s the last thing they showed us,” they said. “I nodded for a minute but the game is beautiful. The world looks so meticulously constructed and the demo was a flawless example of the mechanics, world, and physics the game has to offer. I didn’t play the first one and had zero excitement for the game going into it but came out stoked on getting it.”
Another Redditor, MadManInABox1963 talked about why the demo was less action-packed, saying that since the person playing the demo was trying to take the “honorable” route, there was just less action inherently, and that the game itself will present plenty of choices to players. “The guy was trying to be honorable,” they said, “so he held the NPC’s at gunpoint as a threat instead of just shooting them. Multiple options to customize your bank robbing approach broke up the gameplay as well. Think about the heist planning in GTA but it happens in between action scenes.”
Meanwhile, another user named Black_Static went on to claim that the negative responses to the demo were, for the most part, nothing more than a “vocal minority”, before going on to claim that Red Dead Redemption 2 looked good enough to compete with the likes of God of War and the upcoming Spider-Man. “This is a vocal minority,” they said. “The murmurs and talk of how amazing it looks far outweigh the few people here voicing negative opinions. They showed off the graphics and an early robbery. The game looks gorgeous and the physics were amazing. This is easily going to compete with God of War, and I also see Spider-Man making the lists as well.”
That seems to be spot-on, I’d say. As I said earlier, reception to the gameplay reveal was exceptionally strong, and it definitely does look like Red Dead Redemption 2 is on track to be a resounding success. As for whether there’s merit to the criticism, we should find out soon enough- hands-on gameplay impressions are inbound soon.
Red Dead Redemption 2 launches on October 26 for the PS4 and Xbox One.
