Red Dead Redemption 2

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've seen the prospector a few times but never bothered to look at his horse. I figured I could probably rob him for some money, but thought better of it, trying to be the good guy, but that point it moot knowing the ending, so probably just go around killing and robbing everyone now.

[Art Blade]

 

that's actually easier said than done for me, I wanted to do just that. Turns out that "honour" plays a bigger role than I initially thought: My honour slider was set around the middle, neither evil nor good, and when a guy I had helped before said I could get any one thing from a shop and he'd pay it for me, I went for outfits and the most expensive one was locked with a comment: "get a higher honour level to unlock this outfit." So I took the next best. Also ANY price tag in stores is related to your honour level. In the long run, it is very expensive if you pay like twice the price only because your honour isn't high.

So, in the end, I moved that slider up to the good side of the honour meter. But overall, I do what you suggested: someone looking funny at me and I kill them, then greet a couple of people to regain that honour I just lost.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I'm just not being as careful to not kill anyone if the situation warrants it. Like the scene I came across tonight, some guy had already killed two people and was looting them, and I killed him, looted everybody, then a couple witnesses came along and I had to kill them, loot them, more witnesses, etc. Until finally a kidnap victim and her captor came along, and I killed him, set her free and got some honor back. Normally I would have just left that first guy to his looting and been on my way.

I also came upon the chain gang escape again, the one that leaves a prison wagon empty on the road side. So I tried again, taking it to the stable to sell the horses because you can't sell the wagon at the fence. Cutting each one loose one at a time and patting them once to get them to trust you lets you sell them. You only get a couple dollars for them so it's not really worth the time to bring the wagon all the way back to the stable, unless you're really close to begin with.

[Art Blade]

 

[BinnZ]

To me, the game gently forced me being good. I viewed it as part of the story development and was okay with it. Then I found out there were achievements involved being the good guy (missable honour missions) and was glad to being good once more
I never had the desire to go full bad guy mode.

In online it's a different story. It is much easier to get your honour up, even for treating your horse right you gain honour quickly. That makes up for the fact that you can't go riding through st Denis greeting everybody. Well, you could, but the incredibly complicated ways of greeting people in online made that out of the question for me. First you have to press RMB, then tab (making sure you don't carry a weapon because that will open the weapon wheel) then 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 to do a greet or cheer. Then you can even choose what type of emote is preset under those numbers, which is even more complicated, it takes a day's study to figure out how. So *bleep*'m.
But the slider moves much faster in online than in SP. And there's this herbs guy you will know from SP, who gives you the option to reverse your slider to the opposite site, and being evil seems to unlock a different set of 'story missions'. So I might do that one day. You won't be able to play those missions if you aren't pure evil. Changing your honour costs 3 gold bars though, so I might just blas Valentines to hell to get it set to evil

[Art Blade]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I maxed out my honor level online pretty fast, just by feeding my horse. So it doesn't bother me too much being bad online, like shooting an NPC and looting them. A few pats and carrots fed to my horse and it's back up again.

[Art Blade]

I was a bit surprised to see that my honour limit was gone on hitting chapter six. I am pretty sure I didn't get it to 100% during my first playthrough while still being Arthur but it doesn't matter. 100% honour also means 50% off price tags which is really cool. Then again, the 50% thing might be a bonus from the special edition, there is something I can toggle in the menu related to that and I know it's a bonus "perk" but never disabled it, so I don't know how a "normal" edition works.

Also funny: I actually managed to avoid meeting ANY Murfree Brood guys until ch.6 when we cleared out their hideout. Which was also funny, because at one point Charles suggests "borrowing" horses from the guys of Butcher Creek which this time I declined, so we had quite a walk, as he said it would be, to the hideout location. There the message popped up like new compendium entry, gang discovered.

[Art Blade]

To my surprise, the "first encounter" with the Murfree Brood can still be triggered after taking their hideout Beaver's Hollow as Dutch's camp. I had to reload a save to undo that encounter which happened just before the final streak of missions of chapter six.

So now, finally, I reached the epilogue again, meaning Arthur is dead, long live John. During this 2nd playthrough I had Arthur grow his beard 10/10/10 which I never did during the first playthrough but instead I did that with John. Now I'll keep it reversed, meaning John will never grow a 10/10/10 beard during this playthrough. It will also help me prevent confusions with savegames that I've kept from both playthroughs.

Arthur's end
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(and yes, I noticed that it's almost the same pic as the one Binnatics posted back then, lol)

Without ANY upgraded satchels, I managed to play through the whole neck-to-neck series of final missions towards the end of chapter 6 without having to restart from checkpoints, at all. That was amazing. Like, quite handicapped by a very limited inventory (affecting how many health items I can carry, for instance, like only 3 bottles of dead-eye potions and only 5 items per type of cooked meats as opposed to 99 with upgrades) and still I pulled through. I was very surprised that it went that smoothly

I have only just become John, and I already "legally stole" a Tennessee Walker (of course) during the intro mission of the epilogue and even before reaching the first mission objective

After being allowed to save for the first time as John, I rode off to Strawberry to pick up my temp horse (that TW) which is now my main horse. I stabled the other one that's been given to John at the Pronghorn Ranch.

On my way to Strawberry (frightening, wilderness and no weapons..) I came across a guy on a wagon who was being robbed by two armed bandits. I didn't yet have ANY weapons but heroically took on those bandits with bare knuckles and won both the fight and some honour I resisted picking up the weapons dropped by the bandits because I didn't want them to stay in my inventory forever which they would have if I had picked them up. They were not among those few that I wished to keep. You may remember the list of preferred weapons that I posted. Now I still have a chance to prevent any unwanted weapons from sneaking into my inventory except I can't prevent John's personal revolver from being added.

I also went to see a trapper and a fence but wasn't allowed to trade with them as long as I worked at the Pronghorn Ranch. Great. Also, the satchel's inventory that I had stuffed with valuables, including one gold bar, while I was still Arthur, was barred of most items. I was allowed to keep all the watches (5 of each silver, gold and platinum) and a large jewellery bag. Else, just some kind of memorabilia like a brooch and otherwise valuables needed for items that can be crafted by and bought from the fence.

Well, still got a few things waiting for me.. part of the whole experiment why I did this playthrough in the first place

John "acquiring" a horse
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[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, I may get to that point someday, but right now the story doesn't interest me too much. I'm not sure if knowing the ending makes that more or less of a thing, because I know I would be mad after doing the whole game like I normally would do, only to have most of it taken away. Now since I do know I'm not too keen on going through all that, maybe rush it to be done with it, I guess.

I did find a way to get a Tennessee Walker to freak out though. Well, beyond letting a predator get too close like a mountain lion did one time, and was chasing me, so I led it past two guys on horses, you know a city slicker and his guide, hoping they would distract the lion, but it stayed back and when I aimed at it to shoot, the guide shot me instead, and the horse ran away. So anyway, get off your horse near a camp fire and dump a body on the fire so it catches and burns, which we've all done, right? Well, that just freaks out the horse to no end, and he will most likely run away from the burning corpse. Even an animal corpse will freak them out.

[Art Blade]

fire is actually the only thing that always works on any horse breed. When I was on foot and shot that Murfree Brood tent on fire, my horse ran away with a lot of complaining going on.

As to the end, I too knew what would happen but decided to procrastinate it for as long as possible, hence my prolonged "stay" in chapter 2 for nearly 700 hours It was a good time but when the end was near, it was very saddening.

[Art Blade]

here is the answer to one of my questions

Epilogue: Fence sells all satchels, no ingredients needed.
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[Art Blade]

and another question I had: What if you let the Aberdeen Pig Farm guys KEEP all of Arthur's money and return as John? It actually works. They vanished but the money stayed. Perfect if you visit them at the end of chapter six and let them take whatever money you've got, then return with (still) poor John and retrieve it. Normally Arthur's money vanishes after chapter six. It was particularly annoying during my first playthrough as I had like $13k to spare and John could have used it. Well, now we know.

[Dweller_Benthos]

OK I will definitely be doing that, though my Arthur doesn't have a huge amount of money, maybe $2K or so. But that is a nice way to "put it in the bank" so to speak and be able to use it afterwards. So when you come back as John, they are just gone and you can look behind the painting and get the money?

[Art Blade]

yep

Another question I had was: is it possible to keep only weapons you want when becoming John?

Answer: Not really. Partially, yes. It all depends on what you chose to pick up as Arthur and some weapons were simply forced upon him, like that double-barrelled shotgun. If you resist buying just everything that's available, then you only inherit those weapons you got with Arthur.

It didn't w0#k, that "not picking up weapons" when the first fight with John occurs. He'll eventually have all the weapons in his weapon wheel that Arthur had. So.. at least I didn't get any weapons that I would have had to buy, even if they didn't cost money, like that Volcano pistol. Sounds cool as a newbie but later on, it was essentially useless. Now I didn't get it and some other weapons, like the pump action shotgun, so I am kind of happy.