this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Finally I got a chance to play Red Dead Redemption 2 for the very first time, and the graphic is clean sharp and none of that blurry mess most of the AAA games have nowadays. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 5 days ago by ColdWater@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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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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[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 86 points 5 days ago (12 children)

I really wanted to like this game. I wanted to so bad. I can acknowledge many of its pros, and I can understand why many people like it.

But everything is so. Fucking. Slow. And every mission is "hold A to ride your horse for a long time and then do a small amount of actual action, if you're lucky".

[–] who@feddit.org 38 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

There's a lot to like in there: The environments are gorgeous. The main characters are full of texture. The wildlife feels alive. The soundtrack is excellent. The voice acting is good. The details are fine and abundant. I'm really impressed with the team members who worked on these things.

But sadly, the slapdash user interface, hostile save system, unskippable cut scenes, and absolutely garbage mission mechanics (mostly having to do with robbing the player of agency and imposing ridiculous failure conditions) ruined it for me.

The time I spent wandering around the world simulation was mostly enjoyable. The time I spent playing it as a game was mostly miserable.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 7 points 5 days ago

Yeah I think I agree with you on all counts. I haven't finished it, mind. I also sort of got taken out of immersion constantly by the enormous body count you rack up in every single main story mission. You're essentially committing genocide, and nobody fucking cares. It's such a bizarre clash with all the immersion centric features of the open world sandbox. Even the story tries to be grounded, and then you murder like a thousand O'Driscolls and several hundred sheriffs.

[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

The UI is why I couldn't finish it. My gaming PC is hooked up to my TV and even with a 70" screen I couldn't read hardly any of the maps or menus. I even dusted of a pair of readers but still struggled. It's a beautiful game and looks incredible but after a few hours of that I just got tired of squinting and moved on.

Maybe someday I'll come back to it and try to find a mod or something but it's just not worth giving myself a headache when there are so many great games out there.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I agree with you that it's slow -- and yet, it is one of the very few games I actually finished. That's highly unusual for me. And then I went back and played it again.

It's a game designed to be sipped, not gulped.

[–] GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Say what you will about Rockstar, but they make games that 20 years later you still want to return to them (I guess just about 8 years later in this case).

[–] ushmel@piefed.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think this holds up anymore. RDR2 was supposed to be a lot more, but GTAO really derailed the company. I expect GTA6 to be worse than GTA5 and 5's endgame was anemic and boring.

[–] GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Can't speak for you, but I'm still playing both pretty regularly. I still play GTA IV quite a bit too, and return to San Andreas often enough. Vice city is still a classic, but those older ones are just getting a bit janky, which is ok considering they are 20+ years old. All of these games were ahead of their time.

Definitely sets the bar pretty high, maybe impossibly high, for GTA 6

[–] Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago

Yeah, when i played through it i quickly discovered that I'd have to set aside a few hours at a time in order to actually let myself enjoy it.

Luckily, this was mid 2020 and i had just gotten laid off, so i had time.

[–] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 10 points 5 days ago

Maybe it will make a good HBO show one day.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 8 points 5 days ago

Yeah, I'm kinda with you. I played a lot of it, in the tens of hours, but I didn't finish it. It may be at the peak of self-indulgent simulation for simulation's sake in open world games.

I think I'm glad it exists. Somebody had to do this, like somebody had to do CJ getting fat when he eats and slim when he runs, right? That's a fun thing for someone to have done in a successful mainstream game release.

But there's a reason that didn't show up elsewhere, and that's also a good thing.

[–] GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 days ago

It's really slow for about 1/3 of the way through, and then you get to Saint Denis and it starts taking off a lot harder.

It's a masterpiece, but definitely a slow burn. It's a top 3 game for me for sure.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

Yeah on chapter 1 it played like Life is Strange game or Telltale games, but I enjoy my time with it because of good writing and great scenery

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[–] _lilith@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

when characters eat a meal they actually cut up their food and eat it, not just a few motions on loop. Lots of love and detail in this game

also the horses balls go up when you ride into cold water

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 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.

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[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Oh so I'm not a crazy old man? I always thought UE5 games had that weird motion blur I just thought it was my computer/eyes.

[–] captain_oni@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Since UE4 motion blur has been on by default. And I absolutely despise when devs don't include the option to turn it off.

Motion blur makes games look like absolute garbage and I will die on this hill any day.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 days ago

I will die on that hill with you, friend.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Bloom, DOF, motion blur. Settings I always turn off if given the option.

[–] slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 2 points 4 days ago

For some games it works really well. The finals is a prime example for ue5. At least for me.

[–] VivianRixia@piefed.social 21 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Are you describing Motion Blur by chance? A very common graphical effect used in AAA games these days that try to mimic how objects look blurry when moving quickly in real life. I hate it and always turn it off when I'm able to.

[–] Aquila@sh.itjust.works 19 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

No hes talking about TAA temporal anti aliasing. Makes everything look smeared

[–] accideath@feddit.org 12 points 5 days ago

RDR2 does have TAA though.

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[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago

nope, they're talking about blurry pixelated messes when running on epic settings on a 5090, rendering at 25% scale at single digit fps.

tldr: unreal engine 5

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago

Side note, why the FUCK do devs turn motion blur on by default?!

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't think so, in Cyberpunk 2077 I disabled motion blur and depth of field (also tried FSR) but the image is still blurry and jagged edges everywhere (even with 8x AA) same with Control and SH2, in RDR2 I forgot to enable AA only FXAA and it still sharp and crisp also older AAA games like Doom Eternal SOTTR don't have this blurry image and jagged edges problems

[–] Steve@communick.news 13 points 5 days ago

Jagged edges are the opposite of blurry. Blur smooths out sharp edges.
When edges are sharp and crisp, that's when the jagged nature of square pixels is visible.

The screenshot you posted here has lots of blurred edges. Look at the grass, trees, and hair.

Maybe you could post a screen shot of the problem you're talking about?

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

First thing to do when starting a new game. Go to visual settings and turn off motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration, vignette, film grain, and depending on the game, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and texture filtering.

Maybe it's just because I'm stuck in 1997, idk, but all that stuff just looks bad to me.

[–] Schmuppes@lemmy.today 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Also, fuck Bloom. It's bad enough that my eyes are starting to do it at night, I absolutely don't want that in video games.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Wrong. First thing you do is turn off TAA, DLSS, Frame generation, upscaling, Lumin, and if possible; anything related to sub-pixel geometry.

Ir better yet; don't play UE5 where most of these things are forced upon you.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

I have no idea what any of those are, heh. I stopped playing fancy games about ten years ago and now play 2d indie games.

[–] Vrijgezelopkamers@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely loved rdr2. It’s a gem. I played story mode three times and I love it to death.

If only rdr2 online wasn’t the pvp obnoxious pay-to-win microtransaction-riddled cesspit that it is, I’d still be playing that now.

[–] janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Three full story playthroughs is a lot of dedication lol I love rdr2 but it sure drags on towards the end. Ive played to the late game probably six times but only actually pushed all the way to the end twice. Kudos!

[–] Vrijgezelopkamers@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Stretched out over a couple of years, with about 10% of game time actually spent on progressing the main story, it’s not that bad ☺️

I loved loafing around, really.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 12 points 5 days ago

If you don't disable TAA RDR2 actually does look quite blurry, especially the vegetation looks terrible. I found the best results from using DLDSR as anti-aliasing, but it does take a heavier performance toll.

Also I should get around to finishing RDR2 some day.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 11 points 5 days ago

I mean, it's a very nice looking game, which may have something to do with it having about ten times the budget of your average game from a major publisher (the term AAA is now entirely meaningless and I refuse to use it without clarification). Guessing that helps.

I'm not sure "clean and sharp" is a positive value, though. This becomes a problem because I don't know what people mean, and people often don't know what they mean, either. Good picture quality doesn't need to be "sharp". Things that are in focus realistically aren't impossibly pin-sharp, that's a videogamey thing. Shadows definitely aren't ever sharp. And of course the picture you presented is anything but sharp, since it's... well, a pretty low-quality 1080p image, so the trees are blobs, the hair is a grainy mess and distant models are blobby.

OK, here's a true fact I would think is common knowledge but it may not be: A slightly older game on higher settings often looks better than a newer game on lower settings. Remedial performance options are often very compromised and not really meant to be used. Expensive features can look bad on minimum settings and newer games can be built around more expensive stuff and look off when those settings are toggled off. Lower resolution rendering of a better looking image can produce worse results than higher res output for a worse looking image for a number of reasons.

That doesn't mean newer games look worse, though. It's just the nature of the beast in PC gaming and it has been for forty years. That's why it's always been cool to go back to old games when you update your hardware.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

I was looking forward to play it once it was on GOG. I had avoided all spoilers for years. Only for Lemmy to spoil the apparently unavoidable ending via a meme on All...

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I played it a little after release. Yeah, no. I needed an upgrade for it, but I played it anyway, and it was blurry as shit. Worse than modern games. Their version of TAA was so much worse than the modern DLSS/FSR TAA we have today. It was purely a temporal blur, adding previous frame data to new frames. It still looked good, but it was blurry. I should try it again now that I've upgraded...

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 2 points 5 days ago

I feel exactly the same. My rig is much better now. Need to try it again.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

I just watched a good Any Austin video on RDR2, he studies the power line infrastructure on the map. Makes me want to play again.

[–] Romkslrqusz@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago

So glad it’s finally like this because this game was rough at launch (on PC)

On a GTX1080, I played the entirety of it at 50% of my native resolution (3840x1440) with a lot of settings turned down. I could barely maintain 60fps, with stuttering / dips to as low as 16fps and random crashes.

Since they patched it up, I got a 3080 but have only played the endgame content. Really ought to do another playthrough and experience it properly.

[–] mmhmm@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Does anyone know how it plays on the switch?

[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes, it doesnt

[–] mmhmm@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

Thanks!

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