The steam train gently chugs through the stunning desert vistas of the American west. You sit gazing out the window, with the world bearing down on your shoulders. Two old ladies discuss how the world is a changed place at the start of the 20th century, whilst a minister reassures his daughter that God is there for her. The train then comes to a stop in an old, wooden burgh and you disembark – with your fate ahead of you. This is how Red Dead Redemption started. From the first cutscene I was hooked.
Red Dead Redemption was Rockstar’s 2010 blockbuster and a pseudo-sequel to Red Dead Revolver for the PlayStation 2, and is widely considered both critically and commercially as one of the finest games to have ever been released. It was a classic Rockstar mix of a great narrative, incredible setting and gameplay that worked. Red Dead really took video games up a notch and it still stands as one of my favourite games of all time.
As familiar and as interesting as we find the Wild West, before Red Dead Redemption no game had really captured the feel of the place – either from its reality or film-created perspective. There’d been a few attempts, for sure, with Call of Juarez establishing itself as a sort of B-list series that produced decent games now and then. Red Dead not only blew it out of the water but redefined the entire sub-genre. The game’s map was vast and expansive, with plenty of wide open spaces under starry skies or hot desert days, as you would expect of the Wild West. Towns were small, and felt true to our notion of the very early 1900s. Armadillo was the classic wooden town built around two things: its saloon and the railway station. MacFarlane’s ranch was a few houses surrounded by beautiful plains. Blackwater was a town of people beginning to adapt to modernities such as the motor car and brick streets. Spending time in the world is as immersive as could be, and achingly beautiful besides. Spending time on horseback travelling the dirt paths was never a chore to me, as there was always something to see. There’s no other game that made you feel a part of the world more than Red Dead Redemption.
As immersive as the setting was, it would have been nothing if the gameplay didn’t match. Luckily at Rockstar they have some of the finest minds in the industry for creating a game that offers variety that is both fun and relative to the narrative they want to tell. The introduction of wildlife made the deserts and the plains far more interesting than if they had left them fauna-less. I can’t count the number of times I strayed off the beaten path hunting deer, and then spying something smaller to hunt, and then something else and ended up miles from my horse with little idea what I was setting out for in the first place. You’ll never forget the first time you’re mauled by a cougar near the Mexican border, or face-to-face with a bear in the snowy climes of Cochinay.
Despite the old-timey Western setting, the game played very fresh and fluid. The gunplay was better than in Rockstar’s previous major release Grand Theft Auto IV and so was the cover system. You could slow down time, using a technique called “Deadeye”, and could paint targets on opponents to make taking out multiple enemies like an ol’ gunslinger a breeze. Horse-riding was the main way of getting around the country, and it was dealt with well with the rhythm of your gallop matching your tapping of the A/X button. It all felt good, and worked with the Western vibe of the game.
Red Dead also dramatically expanded on the “random encounters” with NPCs that were introduced in GTA IV. Titled “Strangers & Freaks”, you would hardly make a journey from town to town during the main story without passing by an NPC who would flag you down looking for help, or with more sinister intentions. These not only provided side quests that would often be more interesting than some of the main ones, but also added a great depth of character to the world. The strange and twisted views of the people gave a dark humour to the game that charmed me to it all the more.
The side quests were great but the main story itself was one of the strongest I’ve ever experienced in a game and I still believe that the ending is the best conclusion to a video game there’s ever been. Red Dead followed John Marston, a grizzled man with a chequered past trying to absolve his sins to please the federal government and his conscience. His journey across the deserts always felt realistic, and the progression in the story was very natural to anyone familiar with Rockstar games’ typical path – going from small-time jobs for the common people to working for the top dogs on hugely significant tasks. Marston was a great character. Despite being rough around the edges, you always felt for him. He was doing this so he could go back to his family and live a normal life.
The end-game for the story was a masterstroke (here’s some spoilers). After getting revenge on his former gang-mate and top government bounty Dutch, Marston returns home to his family. Although this would typically be the end of the line, with the story seemingly complete, there were still a few missions for Marston to do centred around maintaining the farm such as shooting crows, taking his son Jack hunting and rounding up cattle. It was a strange turn of pace for a game so late into the third act.
But then comes the final mission like a bolt from the blue. Marston was warned by Dutch that the government will find another “monster” to justify their wages once he was gone, and it turns out that monster was now Marston. Their ranch is attacked by a flood of army troops, and as much as you try to hold them off there’s always more. The family, minus the killed Uncle, retreat to the barn – where John tells his wife and son to ride away. You then take control of Marston coming out of the barn, attempting to Deadeye as many army soldiers as possible, but it doesn’t work. Marston is shot countless times, and there is a gruesome scene as he collapses to his knees with a distinctive death rattle and riddled with bullet holes. There was to be no true redemption for John.
The perspective then changes to Jack Marston, who hears the gunshots and then returns with his mother to the barn. There they find John’s body and grieve for him. He is buried on top of the hill overlooking the ranch and years go by. You then play as Jack, with the one mission on his mind being revenge. It’s a powerful end to a fantastic game that made me sit and take it all in after I’d watched it. It’s the only game ending to have ever had such a strong effect on me. Seeing all I’d toiled for and all my achievements blown away in a hail of gunfire was cruel and I felt upset. That has to be chalked up to great game design.
I absolutely loved the single-player aspect of Red Dead but there are some minor complaints that I think are valid. I hammered through the game’s substantial campaign in around 20 hours, over the course of just three days, and enjoyed doing so. However, many of my friends who also bought the game felt that the story progressed too slowly with the first missions in Mexico being the typical time for people to enter a malaise with the game and give up. I found the game’s pacing to be better than other open-world titles such as Fallout, but can understand that it’s harder to jump back in to a game when you’re not too into it. Towns were also said to be a little too bland at times, with very little in the way of accessible interiors and interactivity. The poor horses were also in the firing line from some, saying that their controls were too clunky and that mashing buttons endlessly wasn’t very fun, something that I can certainly empathise with having made the journey from one corner of the map to the other on the quest of an achievement. Red Dead wasn’t 100% perfect, but no game is, and these little qualms did not detract from an unbelievable gaming experience for me.
There was more to Red Dead Redemption than just the single-player campaign though, with a multiplayer component adding some replay value to the game. I didn’t really play too much of it, with comparatively little to do compared to GTA IV, and less capacity for mischief making with the comparative lack of explosives, but it was relatively popular. You could get together with your friends in ‘posses’ and take on bounties, raid gang hideouts and make up your own games as you wanted to. There were copious add-ons to the multiplayer element as well, including introducing mini-games from the single-player section such as poker and arm-wrestling. It certainly provided a great way of playing the game along with friends and something to do after the main storyline comes to its’ dramatic climax.
Red Dead is also noted for having one of the best ever pieces of downloadable content ever released. Undead Nightmare came out shortly before Halloween 2010 as a light-hearted but content-rich expansion on the game. Taking an alternate history approach to the main story, it follows a zombie outbreak in the Wild West and John Marston’s quest to find the cure. It’s amazing in what it does, bringing a funny story that is actually rather deep and has twists and turns you wouldn’t see coming. It doesn’t simply rehash old missions with a new context to make you believe it’s new, but changes the entire dynamic of the game. The towns and cities that were once your trading posts or mission start points now have to be defended from zombie attacks, meaning you have to get on your horse, ride there and deal with the swarms of undead. Instead of hunting for plain wildlife, you could try your hand at catching and riding mythical beasts such as the Chupacabra, a unicorn or one of the four horses of the apocalypse. It was a fresh take on the game, one that was tongue-in-cheek and an absolute blast to play. It’s definitely to the game’s credit that it managed to carry both a hefty, serious plot line as well as one so off-the-wall in the same style.
With its enormous success, it was a given that Rockstar would release another Red Dead game at some point – and there have been countless rumours about a new title in the near future, probably on next gen consoles. With no big game scheduled from the studio in 2015, and the recent announcement in an investor call that one would be released by the end of March next year – I’m hoping that we’ll see something Western on the bill should Rockstar make an appearance at E3. John Marston’s story is most certainly over, but there are plenty more tales of the Wild West just waiting to be told.