“Red Dead Redemption 2” on PC: Good port for some players, a disaster for others.
It took a while, but players can finally enjoy the fantastic “Red Dead Redemption 2” on PC and experience the unforgettable journey of outlaw Arthur Morgan in the events that precede the original 2010 game.
Unfortunately for some, the experience has not been the best in the computer version of what was voted one of the best games of 2018 for PS4 and Xbox One. Searching the internet it is possible to come across players who are having various performance and technical problems in “Red Dead Redemption 2”, including the game closing itself after a few minutes and also inexplicable stuttering.
To be quite honest, during all the hours that I was (and still am) playing the game on the PC, the only serious bug I found was one referring to not being able to run the benchmark twice in a row, that is, after running it once, I can only use it again after restarting the game. I couldn’t reproduce any of the other errors I’ve read about.
According to the PC Gamer website, those who have slower processors, such as Core i3 or Core i5, are experiencing slowdowns, crashes and sudden closures. This explains why I haven’t seen these errors so far, since I use a Core i7, apparently immune to these problems.
Players with video cards with 6GB of memory or less are also experiencing problems, but in this case it seems that it can be solved by reducing the graphics quality of the game a little, something I will talk about now.
Stay away from “Ultra” if you don’t have a super PC
Addressing the performance, honestly it’s what I expected from a game of this size, only the nomenclatures in the graphic options should be different. There are some where the discrepancy in performance between “Alto” and “Ultra” is so great that maybe Alto should be called Ultra and Ultra should be called Insane or Extreme, or something like that, like for example in “Gears 5 ”.
Digital Foundry ran a pretty elaborate test of every graphics option in the game to find out which settings you should be using if you want an Xbox One X-like experience at 4K and 30 fps. Based on this test, it is clear that if you have a GeForce RTX 2070 or similar, you will be able to play that way, leaving even room to increase one or another option above what was used on the Microsoft console. I say this because following the instructions I obtained an average of 45 fps this way in the benchmark using an RTX 2070S.
In case you’re complaining about performance saying that the game was poorly optimized, I don’t think that’s the case, although it does give that impression. As I said, the “Ultra” in “Red Dead Redemption 2” in some of its visual options, such as Water Quality, Reflection Quality and Lighting Quality, is stupidly heavy, seeming to have been made with graphics cards in mind. future. Again, things like this can also be seen in “Gears 5”, one of the best optimized games released for the PC recently.
There are even videos on YouTube showing this and suggesting graphics settings so that you maintain a visual quality superior to that shown in the game on Xbox One X and at the same time running it at 60 fps. The best of them I’ve seen so far was the one presented by the Hardware Unboxed channel, offering a 40% or more gain in performance compared to playing with everything on “Ultra”.
That said, the only thing I recommend and a lot that you use in “Ultra” are the textures, but if you don’t have enough video memory, the best option is to stick with the “High” option. However, keep your distance from “Medium” and “Low”, as their quality is appalling. I’m not exaggerating, they are truly awful to the point of negatively affecting the experience.
Conclusion
Is “Red Dead Redemption 2” on PC a good port? Yes and no. On the one hand, it offers a vast amount of options so that you can, with patience, optimize the game to run in the best possible way on your computer. But on the other hand, its launch was a disaster in the technical aspect, as players with more modest PCs, but within the recommended specifications to play, are experiencing real difficulties, since the game closes by itself, crashes, chokes, freezes, without any explanation.
My suggestion is that if you don’t have a powerful processor on your machine or a video card with at least 8GB, wait a bit before buying “Red Dead Redemption 2”, at least until Rockstar fixes these more serious problems that were mentioned . She has already said that she is aware of all this and working on repairs, so it is only a matter of time before this whole situation is remedied.
A copy of the game was provided by Rockstar for this writing.
