I purchased Red Dead Redemption II day one. I even got up early on that cold 26th of October Friday morning back in 2018 so that I could dash to my local shop and nab a copy of the game. Yet, despite owning the game since day one, I never finished it 100% up to 2023. So last year, I set myself the task to try to get that elusive 100% achievement within 12 months.

Now, I know what some readers will be muttering to themselves about now. “12 months? I’ve 100%ed RDR II 8 million times in a year, you noob!” Well, I gave myself 12 months for a few reasons. I have other things to do than play one game extensively. I play and review games for this blog, I review films and I write all sorts of other articles and editorials. I have a growing (almost) 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son to take care of. I write books and have just finished a first draft of a HUGE book that has over 430,000 words in it. I need to eat & sleep and such. I like to take time away from gaming and writing. In short, I really don’t have the time to invest in playing one game for hundreds of hours. So I thought with a year timeframe to aim for, I could dip in and out of RDR II as and when I liked with less pressure. I’d only play the game for a handful of hours at a time and sometimes, not even that. Knowing that there are quite a few tasks that you need to complete to get that 100% which are way, way too long and annoying, I gave myself enough time to casually go for that 100% goal at my own pace.

My plan was to just coast through the main story and the epilogue so that I had full access to the map – because some of the challenges have you going to New Austin, and I didn’t feel like being hunted down by the law every time I needed to do so. Making my way through the story, I would do the odd challenge or task needed to get that 100%. I’d kill a legendary animal if there was one nearby, and I’d do all the campsite and bag upgrades to make things a bit easier in the long run. I’d just mop up the odd task here and there and chip away at the % – but without really concerning myself with trying to get that 100% just yet. If I was in an area that had something that I could tick off the list of things to do with little fuss, I’d do it. But I’d leave all of the bigger and more annoying things to do much later. I didn’t bother doing the dinosaur bones, the dreamcatchers, hunting challenges and so on. All in all, it took me around 4 months to finish the story and epilogue with my casual playing time.

Once that was done, I still had a massive number of things to do to get that 100%. I had done some of the smaller and quicker challenges, but still needed to invest a lot of time playing poker and blackjack or catch fish and all of that gubbins. So, that was my next task. I just made my way down the list of challenges that needed to be done. Some were quite enjoyable… but some were so mind-numbingly fucking boring that the grind kept getting the better of me and I would quickly lose interest. Pick one of each species of herb, catch one of each type of fish in the world, and break every wild horse breed – fuck all of you! Even so, I did it, I eventually got all of the challenges done, it was tedious as hell, but I did it.

Because I had played through the whole story, I had done some of the 100% checklist without even thinking about it. Do 10 stranger missions, have 25 chance encounters, and survive a gang ambush. Several things just happen naturally and randomly as you play. But I also missed some easy-to-do stuff that I had to tick off the list. I didn’t watch a live show at the theatre, I didn’t play every table game at least once, I didn’t complete a home robbery, a shop robbery, a coach robbery and a train robbery, plus a few others because not all of those happen throughout the story. So there were a few odds and ends that needed to be mopped up. I must’ve been around 7 months into my 100% journey and I still had a lot of the bigger things to tackle.

Several side-quest strands still eluded me. Things like collecting all of the exotics for Algernon… which is immensely tedious and long-winded. Having to nab all of those perfect animal carcasses for Ms. L. Hobbs … which is also immensely tedious. I just kept doing a bit here and there and stopped playing when I got bored, which was somewhat frequent. After a couple of more months, I was pretty much there. Everything was done except for the stuff like the aforementioned dinosaur bones. dreamcatchers and a couple of other tasks that would have me going all over the map. With a bit more casual play of an hour or so now and then, I had everything done and at the start of June this year.

You see, I started this 100% in a year thing 1 year ago today, my birthday. It was the start of June 2024 and I had 100%ed RDR II in less than a year with a month and some change left to spare. But there was a problem…

That last mission is not greyed out. Oh, I’ve done it, it’s that one where you have to get all of those perfect animal carcasses for Ms. L. Hobbs and I had done them all. I got invited to her home to see the resolve of the whole thing. She gave me the little taxidermied squirrel. But, the mission is not greyed out. I had used a guide for a lot of the 100% checklist, because there was no way that I was going to waste time working it all out for myself. I watched a YouTube video of the entire A Better World, A New Friend sub-quest. I followed the guide to the letter, I did everything. There’s a bit at the very end of the game, when you have finished all of the main story missions and the John Marston epilogue. After the credits have rolled and are back in control of John, you have to return to your home at Beecher’s Hope and put the squirrel over the fireplace. It shows up as the very last mission that you have to do… it didn’t show up for me. There’s no mission marker and when I do go back to Beecher’s Hope, it’s just Abigail, Jack and Uncle there doing random things. No mission marker.

It’s a fucking glitch that, after 11 months of on-and-off playing, has screwed up my 100%. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the game. I have hard reset my Xbox. I have tried everything and I just cannot get that mission to pop. You know what? Fuck this game, I did it I 100%ed RDR II just because some annoying glitch won’t let me get that 100% achievement and even though I don’t have the little achievement picture that I can share with friends as proof, I’m still counting this as a win. There’s no way I’m going through all of that again to see if I can get the 100% to register. Playing through RDR II to 100% was boring, laborious and unbelievably tedious. There are people out there who 100% this game multiple times for fun… fun! It’s fucking dull and one of the most long-winded 100% completions I have ever had to endure. I’ve written a 430,000 word book and that was less laborious than getting 100% on RDR II.