This isn’t a complain about the game, neither a compliment.
It’s something personal I guess, not related to anything else, but myself, I think I just need to vent.
Maybe the game romanticize way too much the life in the year around 1900 and the thing is I just love the life how they portrait it. The game is extremely immersive and it’s hitting me hard.
Everything is so simple, there’s so much respect between people, they live camping with a simple life, everybody trying to help to survive as they can, singing at the end of nights, having profound and philosophical talking. It’s such a more human focused life.
Seeing a simple life like that and comparing to the modern world makes me feel sad. Today we have cars, cities, buildings, very few vegetation, a lot of pollution, everybody is so fixed on being clean, good looking, companies rule the world, people accepting being modern slaves in exchange of a little comfort and convenience. It’s truly a disappointment to me.
I’d exchange 20-30 years living in a world like RDR2 shows than 70-80 years in the modern world. That’s right, I’d rather die trying to hunt for food and learning how to survive in the woods than a massive boring life doing the exact same thing every single day in front of a computer.
OP has valid feelings here. They are noticing how our modern world is an intermediary in social relations. How removed we are from nature, and social connections. How social connections were key to survival. Etc.
This is all true even if they didn’t talk about the harsh realities of the time too. Or the moral character of various characters. Some of the responses here are missing OPs point. And seem to not be able to parse out the nuance and focus of their post.
I think it’s great that they can experience this game and take this away from it. This is what art is for. And this is part of why RDR2 is such a masterpiece. It’s not just a game of shooting people. It has depth and character and humanity too. This is why it stands tall among other shallow “shooters” or “open world games”.
If you look at what OP is saying and reflexively point out that you only see it as a murder simulator, then you are really missing out on the artistry and complexity of the game. They didn’t say it depicted a utopia. Just that it makes them see the alienation that modern society causes. Alienation from nature and each other.
At the same time, I think it’s potentially dangerous to come to this conclusion through the filter of media. Media can be thought-provoking and cathartic, but it shouldn’t act as a substitution of reality.
The modern world has problems for sure, but the idea that things were better “back in the day,” artificially instilled by the media we consume, veers uncomfortably close to the same type of mindset that allows regressive political movements like MAGA to take off.
It’s always valuable to take wisdom where you can, without fully accepting everything else with it without question. Media can help you discover something as long as you realize it’s not reality, it’s what someone wrote. For example I sometimes get shit from people for referencing Nietzsche. I don’t agree with everything he believed, but he makes some interesting points about a lot of things, and even then he is often misunderstood as objectivism.
OP has valid feelings and I doubt anyone is dismissing their feelings. What most people here are dismissing is the conclusion OP came to about their feelings, which is:
If the people here were a genie and granted OP their wish and sent them back into the late 20th century, they’d be dead in a week. They have very much romanticized themselves a setting that is a fairy tale and they now want that fairy tale. But the reality is that the 20th century, especially the kind Arthur Morgan lives in the game, is far from a fairy tale. I’m not OP but if I had to choose between living in the 20th century America or live in the right here and now, I’d choose here and now every single time. I’ve camped out in the woods, I’ve grown my own food, I’ve foraged for food. I’ve rolled around in mud and washed myself in a river. I wouldn’t want to do those things (and a 100 other things I’ve never even done) for the rest of my life. I’d rather have the comfort of my home and spend the weekends doing those things when I feel like it.
OP has valid feelings but it doesn’t mean they should reject the modern world. If they want to do that they can start doing that gradually. Learning how to cook meals from whatever they have in their cupboard. Learn how to camp in camping spots. Learn how to tend a garden. Learn how to forage. Learn a 100 other things and when you know how to be self-sufficient and you still feel like the urban space is pushing you down, sell your shit and buy a home in the middle of nowhere and live off the land or whatever. Just learn to be self-sufficient before you reject modernness, because the lives we live don’t really require us to survive on our skills. I imagine most people don’t even know how to cook a delicious meal because it’s far more convenient to have it brought to your doorstep. And cooking is the most basic skill you should know.
I remember the late 20th century, it wasn’t that bad, and certainly not that dangerous. /s
Fuck. I originally had 19th century and thought “that’s like 1800 something but the game should be taking place somewhere in 1900s so it must be wrong” and then replaced it with 20th century. Turns out that’s not entirely true either because Arthurs story takes place in 1899.