Cheyenne Dog Soldier

I didn't say it needed to be 100% historical, I said that at the very least the Great Plains need to be great, not the size of a suburban backyard. I bet if they asked for a user submitted map contest, just of the areas and town locations, 75% of them would be better than the current layout.

The map's fictional layout has always bothered me and the RDR2 map, even combined with the old one seems like a lot of space is used for what is replicating East of the Mississippi. The Great Plains in the US covers an area the entire north to south length of the country and 10 states, from Texas to North Dakota and in RDR it is a tiny section with telegraph lines visible at every point. There are areas of the Great Plains in 2018 where you can drive for hours and see no powerlines or human habitation. It was the worst example from the first map of immersion or replication. In what will likely be the 2nd map, we have an area from Roanoke Ridge down through the whole New Bordeaux area that takes up the entire length of the map north to south (what the Great Plains should do), but represents an area (the traditional South up to DC) that past 1865 plays no part in the imagery or immersion of the American West. If this game started during the Civil War then it would be a good map, but it's likely starting in the 1890's and these areas were nothing but strongholds of the defeated and still resentful democrats and their terror gang the KKK. It has nothing to do with a Western game. And now we have the Scarlett Meadows too? What is this Alabama and Mississippi? Again, way too late of a time period for this map. Cumberland Forest is essentially Tennessee, Ohio valley, Kentucky, again cool area, but a not for a game in the 1890's to the 1900's. Prohibition hasn't even hit yet so no moonshining. Somewhere in here is Missouri and the James Gang territory, but again, that was the 1870's. The Heartlands is Texas Oklahoma and maybe Eastern Kansas Nebraska, but that should be part of the massive Great Plains, with roving buffalo and Southern Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa. The Grizzlies are a great name but this represents a remote and hard to get to mountain range and placing it right across the river from the most settled area of the map is bizarre and takes away from its immersion. I felt the same way about Tall Trees. The beauty and romance of geography and distance is completely lost on Rockstar. Big Valley is a great name and at least it's next to the Grizzlies, but in size, for a Western game, it should be bigger than the Eastern areas. The whole map feels like an afterthought. I hope that this map is not real and that everything has been redone to be more realistic and immersive.

Hopefully they get it right. I've never played GTA, but from the YouTube videos I have watched of it I gathered one major consistent thing, the vast majority (ok maybe not that, but at least 98% ha) that play that game are stoned teenagers with Doritos crumbs in their chairs. Seriously, they are a living de-evolution of the human race. So Rockstar probably rightly calculated that no one would care if physics went backwards, as long as you can crash cars and jump off bridges and die you have them entertained like toddlers and flashy things. However RDR fans seem a little more demanding and so hopefully they step it back up in all departments.

Any sandbox game post 2012 has no excuse for not having a 'if you see it you can use it, ride it, destroy it, etc' approach. However as gamers become stupider in general by the year and devolve to the button smashing sprint/gallop/kill/steal/laugh approach to gaming, developers will stop wasting time on options, nuance and realism. I play DCS, the professional level flight simulator for this reason, shoot em up console games bore me, but I love the Western setting so much I am curious to see how Rockstar does this one, hope they surprise us more demanding gamers.

Just for the record, the bow was not a 'weapon of choice' for Indians, they used them until they came in contact with and then when they could get guns. Tribes with guns displaced tribes without guns beginning in the 1700's. At the Little Bighorn in 1876, about 30% of the Northern Cheyenne and Sioux had lever-action Henry repeaters, this was mostly the veteran warriors and warrior societies; about 50% had some combination of bows, lances, hatchets and stone hammers, these were mostly younger warriors; the remaining 20% had whatever gun they could get, muskets, buffalo rifles, and single shot breechloaders like the army had at that time. Yes it is good the game will have them.

Benjo, please. Fighting in a WWII game does not glorify Nazis or devalue the Holocaust. Playing a Civil War strategy game does not glorify or devalue slavery. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Playing RDR does not glorify any of the atrocities committed by anyone during the era. Did you know that the Mexican state of Chihuahua put a bounty of $200 on any Indian scalp when 20$ was yearly salary for many? Guess what the result was? So if RDR made a mission set in that situation in Mexico, does it devalue the Indians, does it glorify scalp taking or is it racist for showing what the Mexicans did to the Indians? How many more self-loathing rabbit holes can we go down there? So anyway, the late timeline of RDR in general really hurts the massive game play possibilities, no one wants to play a reservation Indian whom the federal government has pacified with coffee, sugar, alcohol and Indian Agents that are the 1890's version of Obamacare. What a waste of potential and hell, talk about disrespectful, don't even allow the Indians to be shown in all their glory. Also this character in the screenshot looks like a black man, not a Sioux or Northern Cheyenne. He doesn't even look like a Comanche which were much darker skinned and shorter than the northern plains tribes. The scenery is looking amazing in the screenshots, shame we won't see a small band of Northern Cheyenne or Sioux crest a hill in full regalia and feathered lances, with headdresses of eagle feathers and buffalo or antelope horns, mountain lion pelt quivers, painted ponies, tasseled moccasins, quirts, stone warhammers and Henry repeaters. Imagine a series of missions where you are captured by a plains band, then you have to prove yourself as a warrior and you get to hunt buffalo, raid white settlements of wagon trains or other Indian villages? Nobody would trade that for a damn Model A clunking down the street.

Such an absolute waste by staying with the later dates, it's like doing a Vietnam War game and starting in late 1974. I'd much rather see roving AI bands of plains Indians hunting buffalo than a Model A truck driving down the street.