Player completed Red Dead Redemption 2 a second time and realized they had missed half the game the first time

A player going by bushGiant shared thoughts after replaying Red Dead Redemption 2, noting how much his perception of the game shifted the second time around.

The first playthrough happened on a borrowed PS4, and he rushed to finish before returning the console. Short on time, he stuck strictly to mission after mission, occasionally breaking away to hunt for gear upgrades.

The second attempt came years later on PC, this time with no intention of touching the story at all. He just wanted to ride around the map and gather herbs while listening to an audiobook. Getting a fresh take on the game before GTA VI launches was part of the motivation too.

He loaded an old save left over from showing the game to a friend. The spot was right after the snowy prologue, at the gang camp near Valentine. That starting point skipped the intro entirely and worked well for aimless wandering.

Within the first ten minutes he stumbled onto a random scene involving two men who had stolen a safe and were arguing over the loot. The audiobook got paused right there.

Within the first ~10 minutes of playing I ran into two guys who had clearly stolen a safe and were bickering over it. Ended up pausing the audiobook because I realised there was clearly a metric fuckton of stuff happening around me that I’d completely ignored the first time. A few hours later I’d barely done anything related to the story and I kept finding new stuff I had never seen ebfore. Forgot to resume the audiobook.

I genuinely think I missed half of what the game has on offer during my first playthrough.

He figures his first run missed out on roughly half the content in the game. That experience also changed how he sees the usual complaints about the pacing of Red Dead Redemption 2. Sticking strictly to story missions really does make the game feel slow, and players who don't connect with the story or setting have little else to hold onto.

The discussion quickly turned to the snowy prologue, which many consider the biggest hurdle for new players. Some commenters insist the tutorial only takes about half an hour, while others point to a full 2-3 hours trudging through mountain snow at a crawl. During that stretch the game covers hand-to-hand combat, calming a horse, hunting and skinning, working with companions in gunfights, and navigating ledges.

A separate complaint targets the tutorial prompts. Rockstar Games displays instructions in small text in the corner of the screen, and they vanish before players can finish reading them, especially mid-firefight. One commenter admitted missing the lesson on Dead Eye entirely and spent half the game convinced the mechanic had been cut compared to the first game.

Some suggested the failed Blackwater heist, which the game only describes secondhand, would have made a better opening. Others pushed back, arguing that leaving the scene off-screen is deliberate – different characters describe it differently, and the version where Dutch shoots a woman remains nothing more than a rumor. Showing the event directly would undercut the slow burn of Arthur losing faith in his gang leader.

Defenders of the prologue add that the snow section shows off the weather tech and doubles as a filter for the audience. Footprints in snowdrifts, snow melting off character clothing, and howling wind set the tone for the whole story, and the descent from the mountains into the valley works as a contrast. Critics counter that a slow pace doesn't excuse the dead stretches where players spend minutes just walking from point A to point B listening to companions talk.

Players also listed discoveries that many hadn't noticed even after hundreds of hours:

• a devil in a cave

• a missing man named Gavin whose friend searches the whole map for him

• a mechanical man

• a vampire in Saint Denis

• a ghost train

• a wolf man

• a giant skeleton

• a UFO

• an invisible giant that talks to Arthur

• a traveling zoo

Hunting for premium pelts came up too. One player claimed the game reduces spawn rates for animals tied to an active order the character has open. Another pushed back, saying that's only been confirmed for Red Dead Online, and offered a technical explanation instead.

According to that theory, small carcasses and feathers get stored as regular inventory entries in the bag, but a large carcass strapped to a horse becomes a physical object. The engine constantly calculates its weight, collisions, and decay rate, which cuts down on the variety of dynamic objects nearby. The target animal shows up less often in the spawn table while the player hauls other cargo around.

The experience of players who never rushed in the first place turned out to be just as telling. One person ran a second playthrough with the interface and map completely turned off, navigating by the sun and by verbal cues from companions during missions. Another described a hunting trip lasting an entire in-game month, after which a shopkeeper in Valentine reacted to Arthur smell.

Some players ran into the opposite problem. Several admitted to reaching only Saint Denis after 140 hours and losing interest in the story because all their time went into hunting, fishing, gambling, and camp upkeep.

The most extreme case involved half a dozen attempts at 200-400 hours each, none of which reached the ending.