Hunting has become somewhat of a staple in open-world games these days. The original Red Dead Redemption was one of the first games to do it so seamlessly, but Red Dead Redemption 2 takes the realism to a whole new level.
When you shoot certain animals (deers, wolves and the like), but don’t necessarily kill them on the spot, they’ll often try to get away, before falling over. However, when they don’t die, they’ll often scream out in pain and squirm around in their own blood upon coming up to them.
You’re then faced with the decision to put it out of its misery (with one final shot) or leaving it there in its own blood before it bleeds to death.
The first time this happened to me, I was incredibly uncomfortable. I was obviously still aware that I was playing a game, but the likeness of the animal, mixed with it screaming in pain, and remaining on my mini map (as an undead animal), I was faced with the task of leaving it, or riding over to it to put it out of its misery).
Skinning most smaller animals is a similar experience. Whilst Arthur takes his time with skinning bigger animals with a knife, rabbits, birds and other small marsupials will just have their guts or skins ripped off right in front of you.
Rockstar hasn’t left anything to the imagination in trying to make these animals feel like living creatures and subsequently hasn’t turned a blind eye to showing off how gruesome skinning these animals can be.
It’s often the case with other humans in the game too. Putting arrows into other people leave the arrows sticking out of their bodies, with them being left lying in a pool of their own blood. There’s so much detail in every little thing.
