this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Even though I play it on my old low end laptop, I still able to get a stable 60fps on medium settings at 1080p (Linux) and the game is still gorgeous looking probably looks better than most if not all UE5 games released in the past 3 years.

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[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Honestly, this is just one more of the indicators that AAA development budgets have gotten way too large. I love when devs put care into their art, but it should be somewhere it matters. I can count the number of times I noticed my horses testicles retracting on my knee. It's just a waste of money.

In Dwarf Fortress, for example, when detail is added and actually relevant, it's great. We need more of this, where useful additions are done to create a more tactile world. When time and money are spent doing stuff like the testicles in RDR2, I just imagine how that could have been spent on a different game, instead of just inflating an already massively expensive game and adding essentially nothing, except something for people to post about online.

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I don't think it was their plan to make testicles things, game development is not one process but many separate processes tied together. So while several hundreds people were working on important stuff one dude could have finished their tasks and had nothing to do, so they thought why not do fun stuff quickly.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

but their point is that if there are hundreds of people working on stuff and some of them have nothing to do, then the budget is too big in the first place

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

True. That feature may have just been added randomly, though I doubt it, because it requires the artists to add things to the models, the programmers to add reactivity, and the designers to mark things as cold/hot. It's more than just a one person job on a game this big, because it touches so many things. In an indie game, sure. There's too much bureaucracy in a large studio to just go off and do this though.

Regardless, the point is they have way too many people working on a project. Instead we could get dozens of games for that same budget. Budgets have gotten ridiculous.

[–] Renacles@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Rockstar has well documented crunch. I can confidently say nobody there had enough spare time to add this on a whim.

[–] Ashiette@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I can't agree with you on this one. Sometimes, I think this is the kind of detail that benefits other games : the assets are there and can be reused, in other forms.

Plus, sometimes it's better to make one great game than a plethora of good games.

RDR2 wasn't my cup of tea but I have nothing bad to say about this game. It was a masterpiece, in all aspects and in all comes down, at the end, to the attention given to trivial things such as horse testicles.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

It cost $540m in just development costs! Skyrim, for example (from what I found online) cost $40-50m. That's 10.8-13.5 Skyrims. Halo 2 was $40m, and it was big at the time. The Witcher 3 cost $81m in total, not just development. Ghost of Tsushima (which is modern, so surprisingly low, but still not small) was $60m.

Yeah, no way in hell do I think RDR2 was worth it. I'm fine with some large games being made, but this is ridiculous. It's why the industry is in such a rough spot. They're putting ridiculous money behind singular projects instead of spreading out risk while also making more unique games. These massive games can't take risks, because the budgets are too massive. That's why they've all become so bland.