I just finished it last week. I’d say that if you only played straight through the story, you’re right, there is a lot that you haven’t seen yet. I wasn’t clocking my time spent with the game, but I’d estimate it at well over 100 hours.

I never really felt as emotionally connected to Arthur as to John Marston from RDR1

This wasn’t my experience. I connected with Arthur very early on. Going into this game, RDR1 was my previous favorite game, and I was very skeptical that I would like Arthur as much as I liked John.

But then, just five or six hours into RDR2, I actually did find myself liking Arthur more, if only because he seemed like a real person — John from the first game, by comparison, feels more like a caricature. (Perhaps I should say my memory of John from the first game, since it has been a while since I played it.)

When Arthur died, I didn’t have the same reaction. It didn’t feel too soon to me — I wasn’t left feeling that Arthur’s story needed to continue. I felt that his story reached its natural conclusion. It was a fitting end. On the other hand, I did spend two, possibly even three times as much time with Arthur as you did, before he died.

But then a strange thing happened. After Arthur’s death, once you take control of John again, my preferences flip-flopped again. I immediately began to prefer John over Arthur. My memory might be faulty — maybe John from the first game isn’t as much of a caricature as I remember. But I adored playing as John in the epilogue of RDR2, and I didn’t want it to end.

I would think that this is not how they talked back then. I am not a big fan of gore and violence either, but to a point I can understand what’s needed for a game like this. But the dialogue was sometimes just unnecessarily over the top with profanity.

It’s definitely not how civilized people talked back then, but Dutch’s gang is anything but civilized.

Whether this is how the criminals and the ruffians actually spoke, I suppose neither of us can say for sure, but it’s not without precedent. HBO’s Deadwood had far more profanity than RDR2.

The game is gorgeous and the level of attention to detail is astounding, the shoes, the spurs, the saddles, the faces, the fingernails, I have never seen it before in a game. But the trees? I think I’ve seen better. So maybe in RDR3 they’ll fix that?

I didn’t notice anything off about the trees myself.

But Rockstar has said that they were limited by the current consoles’ capabilities, which leads some people to wonder if they’ll be releasing a definitive version of the game for next-gen consoles, when those are out.