Red Dead Redemption (RDR) is the western-themed, third-person shooter game developed and published by Rockstar (R*) Games, San Diego. It is technically a sequel to 2004's Red Dead Revolver, but the two games are vastly different and largely only share 2 words in the title. The game took R* nearly 5 years to complete and it really shows, all of the pics used here are taken from in-game graphics and are not pre-rendered animation.
R* is the gaming company made (in)famous by the
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of games, of which I'd only ever played parts of the first 2 deciding both times that the game was gratuitously amoralistic and not much fun to play. I tend to like games that allow you to do things you can't do in 'real life', while the GTA games are all about what the player
can get away with that they might not in 'real life'. I am also not a big fan of westerns in general and tend to avoid those kinds of stories, anyway.
So when I heard that RDR was simply, 'GTA with horses', I pretty much dismissed the game entirely. But then I picked up
Final Fantasy XIII (FFXIII) and after about a day and a half, I realized that I absolutely despised FFXIII and wanted to take it back and trade it in. GameStop has a neat policy that if you don't like a used game, you can bring it back within 7 days and trade it for the full price you paid to get another game. Since I only had a few days before I'd be stuck with FFXIII, I chose to pick up RDR because it was the only thing that sounded remotely interesting.
Now I wish I had pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition of the game.
The story is set in 1911 in the waning days of the American Frontier as modernity and the 'rule of law' encroach upon what was known as 'The Wild West'. The player assumes the role of John Marston, a former outlaw who has tried to become an honest citizen. Unfortunately, the new formed Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI) has decided that John's old gang mates have gotten out of hand and they need John to help capture or kill them.
To compel John's service, the Bureau has kidnapped his wife and son and are holding them hostage until John meets their demands and apprehends his former buddies. John is placed on a train in Blackwater, a modern 'city' that has electric lights and automobiles, and ends up in Armadillo, which looks exactly like you'd expect and old west town to look and is in the middle of a desert bustling with wildlife.
From there he will meet various and sundry personalities from the local drunk, to a gravedigger, a snake-oil salesman to a lawman with questionable ethics among many others. As his fame increases, John is stopped by random people and asked for his help on a regular basis.
Eventually his quest will even lead him to cross the border into Mexico to apprehend one of his former gangmates before getting back to his family and his ranch in the northern territory that seems to be a combination of the Pacific Northwest, the Great Plains and the East Coast all rolled into one.
And just like other R* games, the player can decide to make John a complete scallywag and not help anyone, killing everyone they meet, but the game becomes significantly more difficult for a true outlaw and the rewards aren't as great. One of the best things about this game is that R* tailored it to reward those who don't ride around being a complete poo.
The game itself is absolutely gorgeous both in visuals and sound. The landscapes are lush and look very organic, they look just like real life. And while the same Joshua tree is seen all over the game, R* was good enough to set them at different angles so that if you soften your focus, it's difficult to even see they are the same.
The game has ambient music that runs through the entire game - all of it very Badalamenti-esque and helping to set the mood and tone with great effect. If the player is just tooling around peacefully in the desert, the music will be a softly whistled tune and will switch to a fast tempo piece when the action starts. The music even changes in style as the game progresses for instance it gets a Latin flavor to it when the player crosses into Mexico. The music is so perfect that it blends with all the visuals and carries everything just like in a movie.
And, as I've said several times, it's actually a really good movie, too. That is, all of the various cutscenes that contain the story strung together make a very good movie. In fact, John Hillcoat who directed
The Road, made a 30-minute short film using the game to animate it. As usual with R* games, the story and the general tone of the game is filled with social commentary/criticism much of which has direct parallels to modern times.
A preacher attempts to make the argument that the Native Americans are savages that only kill settlers because they don't share his Christian faith. A faith he believes, without irony, lets people worship how they want and doesn't kill anyone. The Pacific Union Railroad Company is burning down Native American settlements to make way for their railway system and a local Marshall, who is paid by the company, has to look the other way. And eventually it even gets around to questioning whether or not we've lost freedom as we've become more modern.
As someone who enjoys this kind of thing, I fell in love with the way the game viewed the oncoming modern world and I agree with many of it's viewpoints and criticisms of such.
But the game and the story are not all seriousness all the time and actually have moments of genuine humor. Some of the characters are really odd, like Seth Briars the gravedigger who tends to hold unusual conversations with himself - or whatever body he's exhumed.
Some of the products in the world are amusing, such as Wakefield & Bakeman's Baking Soda and Tain't Toilet Powder. And, of course, the one pictured above...
John Marston himself has some really great lines. When the umpteenth random person pleads with John "I need help, mister!", John finally replies "Yeah, you and every damn fool around here."
Or when in a poker game in Mexico that goes sour, everyone stands and points their guns at each other, Marston breaks the tension by commenting: "Well, there's gotta be a name for
this."
The major criticism I've heard about the game is that many of the missions seem similar, which is understandable in a shooter game, since the game revolves around shooting enemies to achieve some objective. As an aside, I had a person tell me that he couldn't wait for
HALO: Reach to come out because "all you do in RDR is run around and shoot people" as if
HALO isn't just like that.
But I have a feeling these comments come from impatient gamers who skip the cutscenes just to get the action. If you skip the story and don't ultimately care about the characters, don't be surprised when the game gets a little monotonous.
But quite frankly, the gunplay in the game is super fun. All the different weapons from the Hunting Knife and the Cattleman revolver to the Buffalo Rifle and Dynamite give you a bevy of option to play around with.
And also R* added the game with all sorts of side-missions and mini-games. The player can capture bounties placed on wanted posters - shot dead or hogtied with the lasso alive. Duelists will call the player out to challenge his skills. Gang hideouts are all over the map and can be re-done over and over. Poker, Blackjack, Liar's Dice, Five Finger Fillet and Horseshoes are all available to while away the hours.
And then there's the multiplayer version of the game, which I initially wasn't going to even bother with since I've had nothing but bad experiences with multiplayer games in the past.
And, just as I expected, as soon as I logged onto the server, the nearest person made a beeline and came gunning for me. Luckily, I killed the guy so it wasn't totally unpleasant, but then he followed me all over the map even though I clearly was not interested in a fight due to the fact that I kept leaving the area.
The private room where only people you invite can play was better, but at the time I had no friends with the game, so it got a little boring. But then R* put out the first Down Loadable Content (DLC) for the game - a free pack of Co-operative mission called
Outlaws to the End.
These 6 co-op missions are by far my favorite thing in the multiplayer game and I have met several others there and now actually have a sizable posse of really good players to do the rest of the games. These missions are designed to make the players work together rather than constantly be at odds with each other.
Recently R* added online Poker to the mix and several of us are probably going to see if we can establish a poker night through the game.
Needless to say, I've gotten hooked on the multiplayer game. However, I don't think this is going to translate to other games because I haven't liked anything as much as RDR enough to even want to bother.
Basically, I've been playing video games since there were video games, and this is easily within the top 3 games I've ever played in my life. I'm really having a hard time letting this one go, to the point that I even have a small stack of games people have lent me that I haven't even touched.
This is some good poo, right here.
