Review: Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption

Rockstar - Rockstar SanDiego

The Wild West is a genre often ignored in video-games. Red Dead Redemption applies the open world mechanics of GTA to the Wild West and it works quite well. The Wild West is an ideal setting for the game, the combination of desolate country side and rough looking towns fit the over-arching feel of the game. Red Dead is the story John Marston's redemption, his attempt at escaping the life he had left behind in order to live peacefully with his family. John Marston as a character is both sympathetic and respectable, from the on-set of the game he lays out his somewhat ironic moral code and this makes him one of Rockstar's most likable protagonists. At the same time however John Marston does fall into a similar trope as most of Rockstar's protaganist as he becomes the quintessential errand boy, running from objective to objective in the hope that he'll find what he is looking for, often to no prevail. This game-play trope offers plenty of opportunities for character development for both Marston and several tertiary characters but stands in stark opposition with John's man of action persona.

John Marston stands out as one of the more likable RockStar protagonists

The core game-play revolves around 3 aspects; Combat, exploration and vehicle sequences. Combat, an open world weak spot, is enjoyable to an extent. The cover mechanic can be frustrating at times and shooting is very hand-holding with the default lock on controls which never makes combat very interesting, except for the RPG-like Dead Eye mechanic. Like VATS in Fall-out 3, Dead Eye allows you to slow down time and carefully line up shots, it regenerates at such a pace I found myself almost exclusively using it to attack. Dead Eye suits the theme in that it makes John Marston into the fast-handed sharpshooter of the old wild west films.

Exploration is in my opinion the best part of Red Dead Redemption. The open world is fun to ride around and is populated enough with game-play opportunities that you never feel bored. With hunting challenges, treasure hunts and random missions their is almost always something to fill time and feed anyone's need for artificial accomplishment. The wild life makes the Wild West far more believable, unlike most games, Red Dead's wild life is not strictly predatory which makes for a more believable virtual ecosystem, and makes animals more than just bullet sponges.

Horses, have always been a difficult aspect to implement into games, yet RockStar has implemented a horse in the best possible way since Shadow of the Colossus. It isn't flawless, the horses can be frustrating in smaller spaces and changing directions can be tedious but for the most part riding is an incredibly enjoyable experience.

The Landscape of Red Dead is perhaps its greatest feature

-Minor Spoiler Warning-

Structure wise, Red Dead Redemption's narrative is mission oriented. You head to a marker, talk to a guy(or girl) and do what he says, this narrative structure works for the most part except for several instances in which the chronological order of events seemed bizarre. Immediately following a mission in which a farm house was assaulted and a majority of the farm hands were murdered, I did a mission in which I attempted to scam the same farmers into buying a product. The immediate change in tone is a huge flaw of any open world game that attempts at making a linear storyline. This experience took me out of the narrative and lost any sense of emotion the previous scene had had.

The game opens well and immediately immerses you in this mid-change 1911 western world. The game gives you a society struggling to adapt to a changing world, in a way the entire world reflects John Marston's struggle, the struggle of an old fashioned man in a new world trying to find peace.

The games second act, despite offering a nice scenic change of pace, felt entirely throw away. John Marston gets stuck in a power struggle between two opposing factions. Marston meets Ricketts early in the Mexican act and Ricketts makes it fairly clear that neither faction is 'good' in this conflict. Reyes' and De Santa's forces are equally as twisted and morally void, the sole difference being the overwhelming righteousness of Reyes rebel group. Every Mexican character in the act is either a coward, ignorant, desperate or morally corrupt. I found myself almost offended by this fact and made the fact that Marston had no real investment in this conflict all the worse. Marston felt merely like an observer, yet he played such a huge role in the conflict that he should have had more of an investment in the conflict past finding the location of the man he seeks.

The games finale, which I want to go into serious depth at another time, was very well done and interesting, from a narrative standpoint it was very effective but did expose some flaws in previous experiences throughout the game.

Red Dead Redemption is a great game that succeeds and fails by the faults and successes of the open world genre, it is successful at telling a story of futility, change and redemption and is best in class in its genre.

My Score 3 Stars out of 4;