What are everyone playing lately? Just started Red Dead Redemption 2 with some of those texture mods and it looks incredible -- really sucked me in after about an hour.

Opening thread commentary.

Red Dead is a masterpiece, man. I played through it twice already — first for the story and second just to see everything again because the world-building is honestly insane. The texture mods make a huge difference too; those lighting overhauls are basically mandatory if you're going for the cinematic look.

If you want something with similar scale but different vibe, check out Elden Ring — I know it's hard, but the exploration payoff is worth it. Or Cyberpunk 2077 after all the patches, which looks incredible at high res and has some of my favorite NPC side quests in years.

RDR2 is phenomenal -- I still find myself getting lost just riding through Saint Denis at night because the lighting engine does something with reflections on wet cobblestone that I've never seen matched in another open world game, and it carries over into a lot of my other games now where I keep expecting the same level of environmental fidelity. But honestly what got me this time was definitely those texture mods -- there's one specific pack for the horses that adds realistic mud accumulation on their coats and coat textures are probably worth more than the actual gameplay loop in terms of immersion value, which is a weird thing to admit because I keep finding myself staring at my horse instead of actually doing quests. That reminds me of this time about three years ago when I bought an old Nikon DSLR and spent like two weeks just photographing things around my apartment building -- not even good photos really just the process was what got me, there's something about a manual focus lens that makes everything feel intentional rather than automated which is exactly why those mods work. Anyway back to Red Dead, if you haven't already download the 4K texture pack for the interiors specifically because the buildings are where it shows most -- I spent like forty minutes just looking at one cabin interior last night and didn't actually progress anything in the story.

Red Dead is a masterpiece but man, that opening chapter — Thunder River — feels like eternity for new players because of all the slow walking and detailed side content. I remember it took me about six hours just to get out of that section on my first playthrough. If you're already hooked after an hour with the mods though, keep going because once you hit Chapter 2 and things start opening up the game becomes this incredibly rich world where everything matters.