Finished the Guarma section of RDR2 and reunited with the rest of the gang.
So I'm honestly not sure what was up with that particular section. Suddenly you're locked away from the map on a tropical island that has it's own much smaller map, but there's almost nothing to do there other then a series of linear story missions(with one optional stranger mission) and the missions pretty much flow one right into the other so it's questionable why they even bothered making a mini-map. It's almost like I somehow wandered into a discount uncharted level(and I like Uncharted, but if I wanted that, I'd play that). The island is shown to be a lot bigger than the part you get to visit but you can only explore a fraction of that. And then after like an hour or two you're back to the main map and the story continues like none of it mattered at all.
I guess it's supposed to be an ironic counterpoint to Dutch's newfound T A H I T I "Plan" but it feels like it doesn't really work well enough to do that because it gets almost no development and you spend so little time there. It doesn't even really work as a series of action sequences because the set piece just after you get back where The gang has to fight off a Pinkerton Assault after Bill leads them to their new camp is far better executed then almost all of Guarma. The other possibility is Guarma at one point was meant to be a seperate open world map and had to be curtailed drastically due to running out of time, which I've heard was an issue with this game(like how New Austin is locked out till late game and Mexico is completely inaccessible despite being surprisingly detailed).
On a minor note, having the subtitles on actually makes some of the foreign language encounters a lot more interesting, because there's an automatic translation even though the characters don't actually know the language. In the bit where Dutch and Arthur are dealing with the Spanish Speaking Lady in the Guarma Cave, you can clearly tell what she's saying and what he's saying don't match up. Also interesting, Dutch pays her with a gold bar presumably worth $500(since the other gold bars in game are worth that much) which would worth quite a bit($14,000 or so) in today's money. And then she asks for more money, which begs the question WTF he promised her/what was she expecting.
So I'm honestly not sure what was up with that particular section. Suddenly you're locked away from the map on a tropical island that has it's own much smaller map, but there's almost nothing to do there other then a series of linear story missions(with one optional stranger mission) and the missions pretty much flow one right into the other so it's questionable why they even bothered making a mini-map. It's almost like I somehow wandered into a discount uncharted level(and I like Uncharted, but if I wanted that, I'd play that). The island is shown to be a lot bigger than the part you get to visit but you can only explore a fraction of that. And then after like an hour or two you're back to the main map and the story continues like none of it mattered at all.
I guess it's supposed to be an ironic counterpoint to Dutch's newfound T A H I T I "Plan" but it feels like it doesn't really work well enough to do that because it gets almost no development and you spend so little time there. It doesn't even really work as a series of action sequences because the set piece just after you get back where The gang has to fight off a Pinkerton Assault after Bill leads them to their new camp is far better executed then almost all of Guarma. The other possibility is Guarma at one point was meant to be a seperate open world map and had to be curtailed drastically due to running out of time, which I've heard was an issue with this game(like how New Austin is locked out till late game and Mexico is completely inaccessible despite being surprisingly detailed).
On a minor note, having the subtitles on actually makes some of the foreign language encounters a lot more interesting, because there's an automatic translation even though the characters don't actually know the language. In the bit where Dutch and Arthur are dealing with the Spanish Speaking Lady in the Guarma Cave, you can clearly tell what she's saying and what he's saying don't match up. Also interesting, Dutch pays her with a gold bar presumably worth $500(since the other gold bars in game are worth that much) which would worth quite a bit($14,000 or so) in today's money. And then she asks for more money, which begs the question WTF he promised her/what was she expecting.
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