Every Rockstar Games title aims to be a masterpiece, and almost every one does achieve that status. Red Dead Redemption II is no different, offering what could be this console generation’s defining title and yet another expansive and detailed reimagining of the old Wild West.
Following up on Red Dead from 2010 was always going to be a tough task, and as that’s one of my favourite games of all time I knew that all too well, but they’ve done a sterling job that surpasses it on many levels, although misses the mark on some others.
The story itself follows Dutch Van der Linde’s gang just after a heist gone wrong, that sees them move from the kings of the Wild West to a rag-tag bunch of on-the-run outlaws desperate for their luck to turn and escape their pursuers. This makes it a prequel to the first Red Dead Redemption, where Dutch himself is one of the main antagonists, and indeed the game does feature the first title’s main character John Marston in all his glory.
Here you play as Dutch’s enforcer Arthur Morgan, a slightly older and slightly rougher version of John Marston whose loyalty to Dutch stays strong and his ability to get the job done remains second-to-none.
Much like any Rockstar game, the story will take you on a journey through an incredible world full of deep and interesting characters and stunning places. This is where Red Dead II is at it’s best, boasting perhaps the most fully-realised open world we’ve seen in games before, which is bursting at the seems with wildlife, plants, mountains, snow, rivers, lakes, hamlets, villages, towns, cities and, most importantly, people. No matter where you go you will always see or hear something to speak to, engage with or, perhaps, shoot. There’s no “dead space” anywhere, the entire map grounds you an immersive setting and it really is a testament to the work of Rockstar’s developers how realistic it feels to be setting across the plains on a horse and feeling like you’re there.
All this is also to say that the graphics are as good as they’ve ever been, with amazing levels of detail right down to the smallest blade of grass. Comparing to the old game is like night and day, and this makes everything feel that bit more exciting and realistic because of it.
One area that hasn’t changed all that much is in terms of the actual gameplay, and in particular the gun mechanics. Naturally, working with old-fashioned guns does suggest a less delicate approach to the movement here, but shooting isn’t exactly a joy throughout the game. There’s been more work here to make sure different weapons have a different feel, and while there was fantastic work on the sounds and visuals of the guns, and the ability to customise them at will, the general aiming mechanics are still not up to the standard we’d expect of a shooter in this day and age.
Coming into the story itself (keeping things spoiler-free for now, but with added discussion on the next page), it features a long and winding tale about the Van der Linde gang’s trial and tribulations. Led by Dutch, they enter into myriad schemes and raids to earn the money they need to stay alive, or better yet escape the Wild West with their lives, but time and again things go wrong. The set pieces themselves are generally very good, and the missions are fun, but at times the direction around them seems rather aimless (although that plays into the character’s feelings towards leader Dutch himself).
The highlight of the story itself are the characters you meet along the way, with the gang itself having many incredibly likeable and well-detailed personas. They all serve to play a part in the camps that are formed throughout the world as the story progresses, which provides a nice way of collecting people for conversations and light-hearted set pieces. The highlight for me is Sadie Adler, a widow met early on who is adopted into the gang, going from inconsolable sadness into inconsolable anger and revenge, and becoming the most badass woman in almost any game I’ve ever seen. There’s also lots of good moments with Lenny, particularly a drunken mission towards the start of the game, and Charles, who seems to be the most reasoned of the gang despite his young age. All of these characters have very believable personalities and motives, which all feeds into you feeling loyalty towards them, which I believe is a key component of the story’s theme.
There’s a fair amount of twists and turns in the game, most of which keep you on your toes and help define some new antagonist or direction in which the game goes, and these are generally the highlight of the game. However, some of these are more well-presented than others, and a particularly key plot point is, for me at least, given far less exposition than it needed to be.
The story also features a rather fitting epilogue, which for me was actually the most enjoyable part of the story, which helps set the scene for the events of the first Red Dead Redemption and brings the story to a rather good conclusion.
Taken all together, I think the story is good – with a good level of pacing, some really fun and exciting missions and plenty of material to keep you interested, but it does fail in some ways to deliver the presentation and story-telling elements that could really make it a classic.
For me the most fun parts of the game, and the reason I’ll keep going back to it, are the parts outside of the story. There are always random people on the street asking for help, or waiting to attack. There are always animals to hunt or fish, or towns to visit. There are always games like poker, blackjack or dominoes to play. The game is packed with things to do outside of the main story, and with the elusive 100% still in this title and lots of interesting challenges required to get there, it’ll keep me engaged for a fair while even though I’ve completed the main campaign.
The online offering is still technically in beta, allowing Rockstar to make more sizeable tweaks to the gameplay and missions of the game, but is already shaping up to be a rather predictable blend of GTA V’s incredibly popular online platform and Red Dead gameplay. It come along with its own unique story, more missions in the form of dedicated “strangers”, as well as all of the trappings you’d expect such as team deathmatches and other objective PvP modes. As yet it doesn’t feature everything that you can do in single-player, with gambling being an interesting omission given the ability to buy currency in the online world with real money, but no doubt it’ll be expanded upon readily as the year(s) go by.
From my first impressions it does seem fun, and its posse system works much in the same way as GTA V’s multiple businesses to group players together, but it will be interesting how they envision the game in the long-run and whether they aim for it to match GTA V or not. My guess is that they’ll struggle to maintain an online player-base as fervent and as keen to replay missions as they were in GTA V, and that that game will also prove more lucrative for them, so they’ll keep developing there, but there’s still hope that Red Dead Online can carve its own place in the online gaming sphere.
Red Dead Redemption II is a classic of its time, managing to push the boundaries of its Wild West genre and open world gaming and produce a story that’s worthy of its predecessor. It’s not without its flaws, but these still don’t detract from what might be one of the most complete experiences you’ll find from a video game for years.
For more in-depth story discussion move on to page 2
Knowing what we know from the first Red Dead Redemption, we always knew that bad things would happen along the way in this prequel. From the very start of the game the Van der Linde gang lose two members, and as we know the gang more or less disbands between then and the first game, we know that there’s going to be rocky roads to traverse here.
For the rest of the game we see the gang move from camp to camp and failed robbery to failed robbery to try to make up for what they’d lost in the Blackwater heist, revealed through a newspaper to have been worth $150,000.
For the most part these missions are good, and there’s certainly highlights in the missions that bring things to a head in different locations. Shooting out Strawberry and Valentine both felt like fun and intense missions, attacking the Grays in Rhodes did too, and then the heist in Saint Denis was particularly brilliant, riding as one together into the city then escaping across the rooftops when things went south.
Then comes a curveball I didn’t see coming, being shipped off to the island of Guarma and taking part in a revolution against the guards. This little mini-campaign was excellent, and the shock of being shipwrecked somewhere entirely new was something else.
Luckily you come back to the South as it were and re-unite with your gang, and although things don’t quite look as though they’re headed in the right direction, they at least feel like they’re not getting worse.
Then, almost at random it felt, Arthur was dying of tuberculosis.
I’ve seen another article that praises Arthur’s tuberculosis as one of the biggest masterstrokes in gaming since the controller was invented, but for me it was one of the most poorly executed plot points I’ve seen in a Rockstar game. The origin of the disease for Arthur comes from what is almost presented as a side-mission, collecting money for gang member Herr Strauss and helping collect from an illness-sufferer Thomas Downes. Downes later succumbs to his illness (or Arthur’s beating) and his wife pops up sometimes as a random character forced into prostitution.
After the gang have their stint on Guarma, they return and continue about their business. Then, while travelling through Saint Denis outside of missions, Arthur has an uncontrollable coughing fit, is taken to the doctor, and diagnosed. One minute he’s riding around with impunity, the next he’s given a death sentence. To my knowledge, there’s no coughing before this that seems to suggest he’s ill, there’s certainly no visible or player-impacting burden to suggest this, and of course no dialogue that obliquely mentions it. For me this came as a total bolt from the blue, and one that didn’t feel fair.
For the rest of the game, this changes Arthur’s perspective – as he now views the world as a dying man trying to set things right, and he turns on Dutch as he realises that the situation for the gang is unrecoverable and that his legacy should be to protect the younger members of camp (such as the Marstons and Sadie Adler). This worked for me, as I played my character as one that was honourable, but I’m not sure if it would have worked so well for those playing as a darker character. Another problem with this perspective change was a gameplay one, with stamina and other abilities hampered by the TB. This made it a little more difficult towards the end, which although different, wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been.
In the end of Arthur’s story, the gang finally disperses after several people had already bailed. It’s revealed that Micah was a traitor delivering the Pinkertons information, which seems obvious in hindsight but was a well-revealed shock and played into the character’s dislike of him. Eventually Arthur is caught between Micah and Dutch and dies, either watching the sun rise as my honourable character did, or by being killed by Micah. I think this mission was done well, showing Arthur getting John Marston out of the gang as best he could and then feeling his work was done.
The epilogue thereafter, taking place years later as you play as John Marston, was well-needed and for me the best part of the game. It shows how Marston got to his new ranch that you see in Red Dead Redemption, wraps up the story with Micah’s death (which everyone wanted to see), and also shows how the story was set in motion for the first game. It’s maybe light on action, but I felt it was a really good balance between showing real Western life and the true nature of Marston – and it was perhaps what we would have preferred from the similar epilogue for the first game.
As I said in the main review, the story is really good and there’s lots of missions in their that are very fun, but my overriding feeling is was that it was a missed opportunity to do something more moving and more exciting. If or when there’s a Red Dead 3, I really hope it can show the gang in it’s prime, or perhaps Sadie Adler’s bounty hunting adventures, as they’d be the real fun that I’d hoped to see from this game.