[ad_1]
A tree surprised me yesterday. While browsing my roll of photos, I stopped to fly over an image of the hill, possibly taken somewhere in the Sierras. The photo was captured remotely. I could not tell if the needles on the trees were short or long, which was the difference between a fir tree and a pine tree. The trunks, however, seemed reddish: Douglas fir? No, the branches did not seem slouching enough. Jeffrey pines? Perhaps. Frustrated, I used texting to my father's inclined: "Do you have any idea what it is?" His answer: "Probably ponderosa pine, not sequoias or redwoods."
The part I did not bother, including: It was not really a picture at all. It was a screen capture of Red Dead Redemption 2.
(Screen capture /Red Dead Redemption 2)
Enjoying the biggest opening weekend of the history of entertainment as well as the honor of being considered the "most realistic video game ever created", Red Dead Redemption 2 I still took it by surprise when I grabbed it earlier this week. I knew that I was expecting a "worldly" and "historically accurate" version of the Southwestern United States, through the eyes of an outlaw gang, endowed with "very good horses", from a "complex ecosystem" populated by 200 species of animals and photorealistic characters with complicated personalities, fragile egos and fast temperaments.
What I did not expect, is the euphoria of the plants. I want to say, just look at them:
(Prickly pear | Capture of screen /Red Dead Redemption 2)
(Dwarf Palm Tree | Screen Capture /Red Dead Redemption 2)
(Wild carrot, one of the plants used in potions | Screen capture /Red Dead Redemption 2))
There is of course a reason in the game for players to invest in Red Deadthe vegetation of. You can search for food and medicine for your character as you would in Track of Oregon, complete with needing to discern poisonous plants. In total, the compendium of the protagonist includes 43 identifiable plants, including desert sage, blackberry, tobacco, wild carrot, parasol mushroom and yarrow. You can even participate in a number of "herbal challenges", which involve tasks such as picking and eating four species of berries. I found myself absorbed in these peaceful quests, especially for a game staging a ruthless outlaw. Instead of shooting at another deer (or other person), you have the option to slow down and test your green thumb or draw a small plant in your diary:
(A burdock sketch | Screen capture /Red Dead Redemption 2)
Because of the level of specificity in Red Deadit's easy to get lost in the world around you, if only to look at every detail. The vegetation in Red Dead it's not just used as a regional indicator, with the saguaro cactus appearing as you head south to the Rio Grande's in-game twin, the "San Luis River", and the Spanish moss covering the trees in the bayous of Lemoyne, approximation of Louisiana. Plants are also altitude Specific: Oaks, sycamores and willows grow in the lowlands, while pines, firs and aspens are found in the mountains.
The most impressive of all is perhaps the uniqueness of each plant, even in species. There is no uniformity that makes the foliage of the other games a background or an afterthought. Dead snags are mixed in the forests, joining fallen trees, logs and saplings. Rodents jostle each other in the hollow of the trunks; the brush thickens in the ravines of the desert, where there would be more water. Plains grasses grow amorphous plates, which frustrates the efforts of amateur gardeners. Identifying these plants does not mean looking at pictures in a copied and pasted textbook. Observing the broken branches of a tree or bush with a rotten member is tantamount to trying to identify them, as well as all their uncooperative mutations, in real life.
It has led me, perhaps a bit obsessively, to try to question all parts of the world Red Dead, even the parties with whom you are not headed. This week, I downloaded a real pocket guide on sagebrush, during a failed expedition, to find out which bush touched the hills of the Twin Stack Pass (could it be Artemisia tridentata …?) While entertaining as navigating the flora of the regions I know best – California's forests, the valleys of Arizona – it's equally fascinating to delve into environments that I only know by play. I've never been to the Louisiana bayous, for example, but I've become obsessed with their trees:
(A bald cypress | Screen capture /Red Dead Redemption 2)
Attention to vegetation serves a deeper purpose than its modest role in establishing the realism of Red Dead Redemption 2. After all, why spend eight years making every landscape absolutely unique, every twig fallen right? It's certainly not for people like me, who walk around with the first-person view enabled to better appreciate the details of the digital barking.
No, I like to think the creators of Red Dead Redemption 2 are as thrilled as I am by the American desert. Why else spend hours trying to study Colorado's ridges, Arizona's highlands, the shores of the Rio Grande? Instead of taking liberties with the natural world to make a nice game, Red Dead embrace what already exists. The result is a breathtaking masterpiece, of a beauty as stupid as the country in which we live.
(Screen capture /Red Dead Redemption 2)
Only on the outskirts of the booming cities of Red Dead Do you begin to meet rows of fallen trees or chimney stacks signaling a nation at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution – and you begin to mourn the consequences of progress on nature.
It reminds you that it's worth stopping to watch this anonymous bush on the roadside once in a while. That he has a name and a place in the world. And that could bring you a moment of wonder to know what it is.
[ad_2]
Source link
