Just watched this show for the first time (loved it)
I'm being a dumbass and am not understanding what the point of March of the Falsettos is, what does "Falsettos" mean? Seems to be some kind of comment on masculinity but I have no idea what that has to do with the rest of the show.
This is gonna be kind of a rant but I’m pissed off about this rn.
I don’t care at all if you want to hack in relics to play solo, or play with other people who are hacking, play however you want. But the audacity to join a random queue with hacked relics, and force that experience on people who want to play the game legitimately, is crazy. Especially if you lie about it. There’s no shame in hacking in relics, it’s a video game no one cares. But don’t force that experience on me if I want to actually play the game and fight the bosses for more than 10 seconds.
Like, why do we play deep of night? Why do we play souls games at all? Because we want a challenge, right? If you want the game to be easy, if you want to incinerate bosses in 3 casts of beast claw, just play the normal game. What’s the fucking point of queuing up to play DON with hacked relics that allow you to do the same damage you would do in the normal game? Just to gain imaginary points in a video game?
Also, I’m one of the few people that enjoys the relic system as it is. I think it’s way more interesting to have to construct builds out of a limited and flawed pool of personalized relics, rather than freely being able to pick from all the most busted strategies. It allows for real creativity and interesting build decisions, and de-emphasizes “meta”.
Please hello, fellow Sondheim enthusiasts.
This post has been a long time in the making, with me returning to it every few months after rewatching one of Sondheim's shows and wanting to record my thoughts. Mostly, this is a chance for me to gush about Sondheim and his work, which I hope will be appreciated here, and also an opportunity to generate discussion.
This is of course a subjective ranking, based on my own opinions and preferences.
I really love most of the musicals that Sondheim wrote, and since they are all so different, comparing them to one another is difficult. If I made this on a different day, my order might be slightly different — however, the top few and the bottom few will likely always remain the same.
For the sake of not rendering these rankings entirely meaningless, I'm only including full stage musicals that he wrote the score and lyrics for (so no West Side Story or Gypsy, no Evening Primrose)
And now, the rankings. Thank you for reading!
16. The Frogs
The best thing I can say about The Frogs is that for a musical that Sondheim wrote as a favor to his friend, premiered by a college swim team in their swimming pool, it's not actually that bad. There's some witty humour and catchy tunes (the titular song specifically has no right to be as catchy as it is). But I think The Frogs is supremely uninteresting. The characters are caricatures more than individuals, most of the songs are just eh, and the story is so padded with low humor that it fails to provide anything of substance.
15. Saturday Night
Saturday Night was a young Sondheim's first dive into writing for professional theater. It's actually quite charming. There are plenty of witty lyrics, and the opening "Saturday Night" melody is infectious. I'm also a fan of "What More do I Need?" But it's obviously not particularly interesting or serious. At best, Saturday Night is sufficiently entertaining for an evening to the theater, but it is certainly not meant to be dwelled on for any extended period of time.
14. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
This is nothing but fluff — very clever, entertaining fluff. The book is very well written, and the music is quite lovely. Like Saturday Night, this was written in Sondheim's early years, before he really found his voice. The opening number "Comedy Tonight" is a lot of fun, and I also like the songs "Free" and "I'm Calm". The rest of the score is somewhat mediocre though. I like Forum, but it doesn't deserve to go higher than any of Sondheim's other, more substantial projects.
13. Road Show
I feel conflicted about Road Show.
This project went through 4 major iterations (and 4 titles) over the course of 10 or so years before Sondheim and book writer John Weidman finally felt content with the finished product. They believed strongly in it — there's a reason they kept coming back to rewrite it over and over for 10 years. Sondheim especially was very proud of the final result, as he expresses is in his book Look, I Made a Hat.
I think Road Show is an ambitious musical, in terms of its artistic scope. It tells the story of the Mizner brothers, Addison and Wilson, real people who were famous in the early 1900s for being successful American pioneers. Through telling their story, Road Show explores the American attitude of ambition and frontier seeking. In the musical, the two brothers embody two contrasting versions of this attitude: Addison embodies the constructive desire to create and to find his own calling, while Wilson embodies a more destructive "Get Rich Quick!" impulsiveness, which sees him forsake the things and people he cares about in search of money and thrills. As such, Road Show is simultaneously a story about two individuals and their individual conflict, as well as a story about two conflicting branches of American ideology. I think that is an very interesting idea.
There's just something about it doesn't work for me. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. Maybe it's that the quality of the writing and its comedic tone doesn't sit right with me; I find that the lyrics and dialogue have an unfortunate tendency to feel cheesy, take for example the songs "Brotherly Love" and "The Best Thing that Ever Has Happened". Maybe the insights this show has about America are... somewhat irrelevant in the face of current political events (I think it's safe to say Willy is running the show entirely these days). Maybe it's that I struggle to care about the main characters. Road Show opens by informing you in an uncerimonious fashion that the Mizner brothers ultimately failed to do anything important, and their legacy was nothing but wasted potential. I find it somewhat difficult to care about two guys that lived 100 years ago and wasted their lives fighting with each other.
Or maybe this musical would come to life for me if I were able to watch it in full rather than just listening to the soundtrack and watching clips. Whatever it is, despite how interesting the premise might be, I don't feel much fondness towards Road Show (besides the song "Get Out/Go", I love that song).
12. Anyone Can Whistle
Despite putting it so far up the list, I really like Anyone Can Whistle. I appreciate when shows aren't afraid to be weird, and Anyone Can Whistle is about as weird as musical theater gets. It has many great moments. To list some of my favorites: I love when the actors applaud the audience at the end of act one. I think the opening of act two is great, with everyone passionately marching in their assigned groups. Hapgood is a wonderful character. "Simple" blows my mind every time I listen to it. The song "Anyone Can Whistle" is great, and I adore "With So Little to be Sure Of".
However, Anyone Can Whistle unfortunately doesn't deserve any higher than 12th on this list, because it has a lot of major hiccups that detract from the moments I've described above, and ultimately result in a musical that is more confusing than it should be. Sondheim himself identifies the show's biggest issue to be its inability to articulate its own premise. Essentially the entire first act is spent clumsily trying to introduce us to the town, its mayor Cora (and various other people in positions of power), the Cookie Jar and Nurse Fay, Hapgood and his backstory etc etc... and it just doesn't quite work. There are too many moving parts and philosophical implications thrown at you in such a short amount of time, that one ends up not quite understanding what precisely the show is about. Is it commenting on capitalism? Religion? Science? A two-party system? Stress? Love? And if the answer is all of the above, then I think that makes it fundamentally unfocused. The latter two acts do a better job at pacing the story, but face a similar issue of feeling confusing at times, as well as being somewhat disjointed from the first act.
11. Here We Are
I was lucky enough to see the original cast of Here We Are live. Here We Are is weird and creative and funny. I enjoyed it a lot, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it was going over my head. Maybe that's because I haven't seen the movies it's based on, I'm not sure. It's clear to me that Here We Are is saying something existential and potentially profound. But I can't grasp what that something is. The people who I saw this with are much more knowledgable than me when it comes to cinema and the movies Here We Are was based on, and they didn't feel the same way as me. So I assume I am missing some required reading. I'm curious what you all thought of this show.
10. Follies
I consider every musical from here on out to be basically a masterpiece, so it hurts to put any of them in 10th place. Follies has the misfortune of taking the spot.
Follies is wonderfully clever. It is a show inside of a show, where the characters are performers in more sense than one.
Follies alternates between diegetic pastiches reminiscent of the 20s and 30s, and nondiegetic character songs. This is a very intentional use of pastiche. It emphasizes both the deep nostalgia that the 4 main characters feel, and their attempts to “perform”, to hide and hide from their profound melancholy.
As the show progresses, the characters each reveal more and more of their existential regret until, at its dramatic height, the stage shifts and the show transforms into a series of 4 performances each sung by one of the main characters, each a mockery of their life. The line between diegetic and nondiegetic is blurred. It's theatrically brilliant, as the ultimate "Folly" of their lives is finally brought to center stage.
The reason Follies lands further down my list is mainly due to how unlikable the characters are. Though you feel for their suffering, they come across as kind of pathetic. They seem unable to take control of their own lives, and are constantly stuck in the past. At a certain point, I feel, their situation is nobody's fault but their own. Also, some of the pastiches feel just a tiny bit tedious.
9. Sweeney Todd
I think Sweeney Todd is masterfully crafted and very entertaining. It is enthralling, slowly unfolding before you as you gradually come to understand all of its sinister details. One's first time watching this show is a complete joy, and the second time through you notice all the little details that seemed inconsequential at first. "A Little Priest" is insanely clever. And the image of Sweeney's barbershop on top and Mrs. Lovett's pie shop on bottom, running their charitable little business, is so iconic.
Sweeney Todd lands further down my list simply because I do not feel particularly attached to it, at least not compared to a lot of Sondheim's other shows. I enjoy it a lot whenever I see it, but it doesn't speak very deeply to me.
8. A Little Night Music
Aww this show is so lovely. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but it is a deeply entertaining comedy with a luscious score and a good heart. Send in the Clowns is a beautiful song, and its reprise is a lovely note to end on. Now/Later/Soon is one of Sondheim's cleverest creations. "The Miller's Son" might actually be my favorite song from the show — joyous and wild and unexpected.
7. Company
When I think of Company, the first word that comes to mind is "dated". I generally dislike the idea that art can even be dated. I think Sondheim said something along the lines of "all art is always relevant", and that's a statement I passionately agree with. Still, it is difficult to talk about this show without acknowledging that it is, at least on the surface, very heteronormative and "of its time". Every gay person I've watched this show with has had a gut reaction of repulsion, especially towards the comedic scenes that portrey wives and husbands fighting with each other. I felt that repulsion too initially. On first watch, it can feel like you are getting preached to and told: this is how your relationships will look like.
The first act of the show in particular can come across as dated and irrelevant in 2026. Other types of relationships, beyond "man marries woman for life", are so much more widely recognized as real options now, so a show whose characters seem trapped by societally imposed requirements of marriage, monogamy, and heterosexuality, while still trying to say something meaningful about the nature of human relationships, can be difficult to care about.
That said, after watching Company and listening to it more, I found myself falling in love with it. My defense of the show is always that it is simply about heterosexual (mostly) people in the 1970s, and even though it is using those characters to say something universal, it is not universalizing their kind of relationship as more legitimate. For me, that initial repulsion dissipated once I realized that the show is really about Bobby's self-discovery, trying to understand what he wants from life and from love. This musical also possesses a subtle irony that I think it is easy to miss. The reason it dwells so much on couples fighting is because that is exactly what Bobby is worried about. Those are the points of interest. And it simultaneously acknowledges those fights while also making fun of them. “You see what you look for, you know?”
Another Hundred People is a gorgeous song. Being Alive is also stunning. Sondheim is always very good at endings, but Company’s ending is particularly remarkable in the way that it makes the entire rest of the show suddenly make complete sense, its full emotional impact finally resonating with you.
6. Assassins
Sondheim is so fucking good at irony. It's there in a lot of his work — Company, Merrily, A Little Night Music, Sweeney — but nowhere is it more central than in Assassins. This show eloquently articulates a lot of America's ideological problems. It feels very of the times these days. It is also extremely funny.
Assassins is wonderfully meta and creative. The narrator, the "balladeer", presents everything under a traditionally optimistic American lens, the idea that anyone can achieve success and happiness if they simply work for it. Of course, that is the very ideology that our assassins are desperately rebelling against. So the show's central conflict is between the narrator and his characters, a conflict that escalates to Another National Anthem, which sees them directly arguing with one another. As Sondheim says, "content dictates form", and what a clever, apt form in which to present this content. It really captures the two-faced nature of a lot of American ideology.
Assassins is pretty unique among Sondheim's musicals in that most of the action happens outside of the songs. The score functions kind of like a backdrop to those more impactful monologues and dialogues. The ones that have really stuck with me are Santa's final monologue before Another National Anthem (I forget the name of the actual character lol), and of course the scene between John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Weidman's work here is truly outstanding.
5. Pacific Overtures
Pacific Overtures is the single most unique musical in existence. I am about…… 80% confident in this statement. You know how there are some works of art that are just so unlike anything you've seen before or since, that they become difficult to really talk about because you have no real point of comparison for them? That's what Pacific Overtures is to me. It feels like it was made totally outside of a lot of musical theater conventions, probably because it was primarily inspired by kabuki theater.
I adore this show. It is insanely clever. The plot, the storytelling, the aesthetic — it is all so imaginative. Also, out of all of Sondheim's extended song-scenes, Please Hello is without a doubt the most brilliant, witty, and rewarding one to really engage with.
Musically, the show is strung together by a repeated drum beat that seems to signal narration, and the songs are otherwise self-contained events that are often microcosms of the show's larger themes. This is most obviously the case in "Bowler Hat", "Poems", and "Pretty Lady" — songs that function both as moments in the narrative and as self contained metaphors for the entire show.
Someone in a Tree is... strange. The concept of a song that is about the fact that "we can't write a song for this scene because there is no Japanese account of this moment in history" sounds crazy. And yet it is one of the most profound moments ever written for musical theater. I don't know how to describe it. The song is almost comedic, and yet it's like the show just ascends to outer space suddenly, out of nowhere. No other song has made me stop and marvel at Sondheim's ridiculous creativity to the same degree.
My only issue with the show is that the ending has never quite worked for me. It seems like "Next" is supposed to be mourning the death of traditional Japenese culture, and yet lines like "the air quality in Tokyo is now acceptable!" seem to undercut that and make me think — like ok but isn't that actually a good thing?
Pacific Overtures also unfortunately suffers from the existence of cancel culture. A group of white men writing about japanese culture and history, mimicking japanese style and using asian actors, is a tough sell, at least in the circles I find myself in. Which is a shame, because once you know it, it is obviously progressive.
4. Merrily We Roll Along
God this show is just bursting with creativity. Merrily We Roll Along is a tragedy in a pretty unique way. Normally when we think of tragedies, we think of stories that progress from normality to despair. Merrily, on the other hand, regresses from normality back to a height of intense hope. It begins at the end and moves progressively backwards in time, so that the finale, which is so full of optimism and life, is the most soul-crushing moment of the entire piece.
I find the dynamics between the characters very compelling. Frank is both the hero and the villain, and you really feel for him despite his own bad decisions. Charlie and Mary seem like victims of their own loyalty — Mary especially, whose love for Frank (which we can understand since we see Frank's goodness) runs so deep that she is unable to move on from him.
The music is brilliant. Merrily does something unique in that its main theme is kind of diegetic — it is used to represent Frank's musical compositions. It works so well. We get to see the main theme literally evolve (or rather, devolve) as Frank's composition progresses (regresses), while it also gets developed nondiegetically in other parts of the score, and those nondiegetic developments are poignant since it is so clear what the theme represents.
Merrily also takes the crown for being Sondheim's catchiest score. This music is insanely infectious. It's actually unfair. I'm not a big dancer, but I can't listen to this score without my body moving of its own volition. Do be warned that after listening to this a couple times it will get stuck in your head for like the next year.
3. Passion
As brilliant as all the previous shows are, 3 musicals in Sondheim's discography stand head and shoulders above rest — and those are his collaborations with book writer James Lapine. These men working together are a force of nature. They cannot be touched. Passion, the final musical they wrote together, takes the 3rd place slot.
There are very few songs in Passion — rather, it plays out like a constant stream of singing/talking, only resolving into an actual musical number very rarely. This is an enthralling method of storytelling. I remember my first time watching this show; I was so entranced I didn't even realize the show didn't have an intermission until it was over. The music is gorgeous. "No One Has Ever Loved Me" brings me to tears.
Passion is Sondheim's most criminally underappreciated work. It's not necessarily an entertaining musical, and it lacks Sondheim's signature wit, which would be entirely inappropriate in a show this serious and melancholy. What Passion is, however, is the most genuine, moving reflection on true love that I have ever seen. It took me a full day to emotionally recover from it. This is the kind of art that sticks with you and haunts you, and I find myself thinking about it often.
2. Into the Woods
Into the Woods was my introduction into the world of Sondheim. I first saw it when I was very young, and I adored it. I listened to this musical constantly growing up, and it continued (and continues) to blow my mind. This show is utterly brilliant. Every lyric, every note, every corner of Into the Woods is brimming with artistic intention. I've listened to it more than any other musical, and every time I come back to it I am reminded why.
Into the Woods is about so much. It is about yearning, about how there will always be more to yearn for, and so we will never be entirely fulfilled. It is about coming of age, and the loss of innocence. It is about the dangers of individualism, and the importance of community. It is about how morality is never as simple as we'd like it to be. It is about the lasting impacts of our simplest decisions. It is about coming to terms with the past. It is about parents and children. How to be a good parent. How to be a good person.
The magic of Into the Woods is that it can be about all of these things, while remaining entirely cohesive. These themes are seamlessly woven together so tightly, such that every time I listen to this musical I hear something new. A new implication I hadn't understood before, or a repetition of a musical motif I hadn't noticed before. Into the Woods is a feat of artistic creativity, and my second favorite musical of all time.
1. Sunday in the Park with George
How do I write about this musical? I have so much to say about it, and yet I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it justice.
Sunday in the Park with George changed so much for me, about the way I think about art and the way I think about the world. More than anything, it taught me what I value in art, and how to express that.
In trying to explain to friends what this musical is about, I landed on the following phrase: "Art is life, and life is art." Meaning: art is profoundly important, and life itself has inherent beauty. Of course, the musical is about more than that, but that's the most succinct and accurate way I have found of summarizing what I find so meaningful about it.
This is Sondheim at his most poetic and his most deeply personal. If I were the kind of person to get tattoos, there would be many quotes from this musical that I would want to get tattooed on me. A lot of them from "Move On."
I cannot for the life of me understand how "the second act is weak" has become a common point of critisicm for Sunday. It seems to me that one must fundamentally misunderstand the show in order to pose that as a serious critisicm. Analytically speaking, the second act is perfectly structured as a mirror to the first act, which aids its function as a deeply profound resolution. Move On is a contender for the greatest moment ever written for musical theater, and its intense profundity is a result of how well structured the entire rest of the show is. "Sunday", and its reprise, are also contenders. "Past the verticals of trees, forever...."
I mean I could talk for ages about the music and plot of this show, but that would be a post in and of itself and this is already long enough lol. So I'll leave it at that.
Spoilers are marked as such
This is a long post. If you want a TLDR skip to the end. Just know that you might not understanding my reasoning.
This was difficult to write. I want to love this game — it is hard not to want to. In the moments when Red Dead Redemption 2 shines, it shines incredibly bright. Such a gorgeous setting, with such fleshed out and well written characters. Two seperate times during my playthrough I tried to abandon the game, and both times I was pulled back by the irresistible promise of a real and alive open world, and by a strong desire to see the story through to its conclusion.
It's a good story. But I don't think it's told as well as it could be. I have a lot of issues with this game, and those issues stack up to create an experience that was more often frustrating than it was enjoyable.
THE OPEN WORLD
When it comes to spectacle, RDR2 is king. It feels obvious to talk about the way this game looks, but it really is impressive. It is remarkably easy to get immersed into a world that looks this real. The way the sunlight shines through the trees, the fog that rolls in during the mornings, the impromptu thunderstorms — these are stunning sights. Even through the epilogue I found myself still marveling at the simple beauty of this game's environments. There is so much attention to detail. This game has an obsession with realism, and while I think that has pros and cons, the visuals are definitely one of the pros.
Upon first arriving in The Heartlands and getting access to the open world, I spent a good hour or two just riding around and taking in the scenery. I imagine this is a fairly common experience, and that initial interaction with the open world is magical. The open world holds up at least for the first few hours of exploration.
Personally though, even before the end of Chapter 2 I was starting to get weary of the open world. It’s not “empty”, per se. There is a lot of open space, but there are also side quests and interactions between NPCs and other stuff to find. You can hunt, fish, play minigames. There are things to keep you busy.
It’s just that I found most of these side quests and minor activities to be pretty boring and unimportant. Hunting involves following a line on the ground until you see your prey. Fishing involves waiting around for a fish to bite and then holding space bar to reel it in. Too many of the side quests feel at best like mildly entertaining diversions, rather than something actually worthwhile to be spending your time on. The side quests that felt like they were meaningfully adding to the story were far too rare.
At one point I found myself watching a 15 minute magic show inside of the game. And I remember thinking, on the one hand yeah it’s cool that this is here, but on the other hand I just spent 15 minutes of my life watching a digitized magic show with no real purpose or meaning, and those are 15 minutes I’m never getting back. And that, in my opinion, pretty well encapsulates this game’s open world. Full, but uninteresting to engage with beyond its sheer spectacle.
THE GAMEPLAY
If I had to sum up Red Dead Redemption 2's missions in a single word, that word would be: Tedious. The gameplay of this game is unrelentingly restrictive and repetitive. It is almost insulting, the level to which Rockstar refuses to allow the player any sort of agency or use of their brain.
Every mission is entirely scripted. You are given a set of instructions that you have to follow exactly: walk behind this person for a few minutes, hide behind this specific wall, kill this guard in this specific way, etc. If you so much as walk in front of the NPC you're supposed to be following behind, that NPC will sometimes stop and wait for you to walk back behind them before continuing — that is, if its ai doesn't break entirely, which happened to me several times. There is essentially no room for creativity or choice of any kind. (Some missions do let you choose stealth vs. no stealth, but that’s not an interesting decision because both options are trivially easy). I often found myself wishing I could just lean back in the chair and let the game play itself, since my engagement with it as a player felt entirely meaningless.
This is also where realism becomes a big issue. There seems to have been no thought put into which "realistic" activities are meaningful or enjoyable, and which ones should be skipped over in a cutscene. Wanna blow up a bridge? Have fun running back and forth to place each individual stick of dynamite. Wanna steal some sheep? Have fun riding all the way there, taking the sheep, then riding all the way back. A big chunk of this game's gameplay boils down to waiting for the game to tell you what button to press, and then pressing it. The game has you do so many menial, mind-numbing tasks, that at a certain point I really started to feel like my time was not being respected.
Every mission also ends in a shootout. And while some of these can be exciting, most of them are rendered completely boring by their predictability and simplicity. It's like Rockstar thinks they need to put a shootout at the end of every mission in order to hold your attention, which is funny because I found the shooting to be similarly tedious. Hold right click to aim, press left click to shoot, rinse and repeat. Run up to the next set of cover when one of the characters tells you to. The game’s one and only combat mechanic, "dead eye", lets you stop time to aim. So, you don't even have to aim! (also it seemed like I would sometimes arbitrarily get headshots even if my aim was off). There is so little opportunity to feel like you've actually accomplished anything as a player. This gameplay is insanely shallow and undemanding.
The worst part about this is it undercuts the rest of the experience in a few important ways. First, all the work that has gone into making the world feel hostile is rendered irrelevant the minute guns are drawn. This shooting is so friendly. It rarely feels like there is any real danger or stakes. For a game that is trying to be gritty, dangerous, and heartfelt, this gameplay is nothing but sterile and safe for the most part.
Second, realism, which this game is obsessed with to an unhealthy degree, gets thrown out the window at the end of every mission in order to have a shootout. A constant stream of enemies start appearing for you to shoot at, whether or not it makes in-game sense. This makes it hard to take the rest of the game's intense focus on realism all that seriously.
Finally, and most importantly, the narrative is not able to deal with the constant shootouts. You end up in these ridiculous situations, where Arthur Morgan is reluctant to kill someone during a cutscene, or is berating a camp-member for harming someone else, and then — bam, shootout time! — and you just mindlessly mow down 20 faceless dudes without a second thought. This issue is especially glaring in the last couple missions before the epilogue, where >!the entire story is revolving around Arthur's character development and his decision to value life and love above all else, and yet he still is just mindlessly killing hordes of enemies the second you leave cutscene-land and enter gameplay-land.!<
Overall, the missions in Red Dead 2 felt like something I pushed through in order to get to the cutscene at the end and see the story progress. And I can't help but wonder why this frustratingly simple and repetitive gameplay even needs to be here at all. Why can't I just watch this as a movie?
THE STORY
I've been very critical of this game so far, so I want to start this section off by giving praise where praise is due. This is a great story. The overarching plot is extremely compelling, and the quality of the writing and voice acting is mostly off the charts. This game definitely has moments of being moving. I'll list some of the moments that really stuck with me below (massive spoiler warning).
>!- I found Mary and Arthur's relationship very compelling. Their incompatability is emblematic of the central conflict between the gang and Society. Mary sending back her ring to Arthur broke my heart, and that same ring ends up finding its way to John and Abigail. It’s an elegant way to show how despite the tragedy of Arthur's story, he was able to help create an eventual happy ending for John.!<
>!- I think Dutch is a fascinating character, he is so loveable at first and the gradual reveal of his true personality was very well done. The moment (actually there are two) when he leaves Arthur to die feels like such a deep betrayal.!<
>!- The cutscene where the nun reveals Arthur's goodness to him. I don't have much to say other than that it hit hard.!<
>!- Arthur's death, facing the sunrise. What really struck me about this was that he dies alone. The tragedy is not just that he dies, but that he dies having lost the family that he held so dear.!<
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My biggest issue with this game's story is how difficult it is to get to these good parts. They are simply too few and far between. It also seems like a lot of the more interesting plotlines could have been developed more, rather than "Mission where you rob a stagecoach, for the 8th time".
I find most of the subplots and side quests to be pretty uninteresting, and even the ones that are interesting are plagued by tedious mission design. For example, >!the mission where you go to help Mary with her dad is one of the most important ones in the game in my opinion. And that mission involves... trailing behind Mary and then running after a carriage to steal a necklace!< WHY??? Why does the game insist on filling every space with meaningless filler? It is so frustrating to me.
Also, too many of the missions are too safe and predictable. Often you are told what you need to do, and then you go and do it, and nothing really goes wrong or is surprising in any way (I should clarify that enemies showing up for you to shoot at doesn't count as surprising since it happens every mission). One instance that was particularly disappointing to me was >!the subplot between Beau and Penelope. It was almost incredibly done. Except that they didn't have the balls to actually follow through with the story they had set up — you are able to simply escort the couple to safety and they presumably go on to live happily ever after. That's not how Romeo and Juliet works! Imagine how striking it would have been if they had actually followed through and had Beau get shot by his cousins, and then Penelope die out of despair or something. That would have been a real ass subplot. Instead, we get this weak ending to what was otherwise a very well told story.!<
Speaking of weak endings, I want to briefly talk about the end of the epilogue. >!What the fuck. John just spent the entire epilogue finally coming to understand that living a simple life with his family is the way to real happiness, and the entire game is about how robbery and revenge will never lead to good results. Except at the end it suddenly does, John just goes and gets revenge on Micah and steals his cash and lives happily ever after. I guess the entire story was meaningless after all. Roll credits. Edit: Ok this point is kind of irrelevant since this sequence sets up the events of the first game. Still kind of a flaw since those that don't know about the first game would assume what I initially assumed!<.
IN SUMMARY
I think Red Dead Redemption 2 is bloated, and that results in a game that forces you to put up with hours of monotonous filler in order to experience its story. This would make a great movie or tv show. It’s already half way there, with its long cinematic cutscenes being the highlight of the experience. As an 80-hour video game, though, it didn't feel like my time was respected.
The story, at its best, is epic and beautiful, but so much of this game’s run time is dedicated to tedious gameplay, unimportant missions, and shallow spectacle. So I suppose I don't recommend this game unless you are very patient and have a lot of spare time.
I adore The Witness. I think it is one of the most beautiful and intelligent games I've ever played. I often find myself thinking about, its one of those games that really left its mark on me.
And I think the discourse surrouding this game is pretty terrible. It has built up a reputation of being pretentious, postmodernist nonsense, and I don't think that reputation is fair. It saddens me to see so many people dismissing this game out of hand. Now, I also understand that a lot people are angry at the game's creator Jonathan Blow. I know nothing about this guy — I have not researched him and don't really care to. From what I've heard, he sounds like an asshole. But I'm not interested in talking about Jonathan Blow. I'm interested in talking about The Witness. Bad people can still create beautiful things.
I think the game is fundamentally quite simple in what it's trying to say — indirect, but simple — and some people end up missing the forest for the trees. The Witness is an exploration of the human search for meaning. That's it. I think that everything in the game can be contextualized under that fundamental idea, and then things start to fall into place.
Most of the audio logs have something to do with Science, Religion, or Art, all of which are ways that people try to make sense of the world. These audio logs are the butt of many a Witness joke, but their purpose is pretty simple. They are food for thought as you go about your journey, and they ask you to reflect on the various ways that people look for meaning. If they seem random and unrelated, it's because the game is trying to capture the vastness of its central idea.
The brilliance of the Witness is the way that it ties its gameplay into this. From the very moment you boot up the game, not a single word is spoken to teach to you how to play. There is nothing resembling a tutorial or hints of any kind. You are forced to discern the mechanics of the puzzles simply through observing the puzzles themselves. In other words, the game is replicating the experience that it is reflecting on, by forcing you to make sense of its mechanics yourself, forcing you to search for understanding. The puzzle mechanics are mostly about being curious and learning to think in new ways, rather than the more mathematical precision and mechanical depth that most other puzzle games ask for, which reinforces this experience.
This is also why the game is intentionally obscure and confusing at first. It wants you to be confused. It wants you to search for meaning, that's the whole point. "The Witness" refers to anyone who is witnessing the world — or the game, for that matter — and trying to find meaning. The artist, the scientist, the religious person.
Then there are the environmental puzzles. At a certain point in your playthrough, you will suddenly realize that the entire world of The Witness hides the same circles and lines that form the puzzles you have been trying to solve. You'll find them in the sun, in the clouds, on buildings, in the water — anywhere you can think to look. It's such an awe-inspiring realization, that the whole island contains these secrets — if you search for them, you'll find them everywhere. The metaphor is clear.
Anyway, if you found The Witness overly abstract and confusing, I hope this helped. A game this true to its own vision comes along very rarely, and I worry that a lot of people were primed to dislike this game from the negative discourse surrounding it.
Thanks for reading.