50 Years of Video Games: Red Dead Redemption (PS3)

After the phenomenal success of Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar Games devoted most of its attention to fleshing out and iterating upon the 3D open city exploration that game featured. Even as they grew in size and added new development teams, their gradual refinement of the open world ideas featured in GTA III were still exploring urban environments. Many imitators were trying to find the breakthrough needed to get their piece of the profitable open world pie, and while some also attempted the city-focused approach, one question hung over this format: what could other settings bring to the table? Eventually Rockstar would seek to answer that themselves, 2010 giving us a game set almost 100 years in the past in the Wild West. Red Dead Redemption would not only be giving the player freedom to roam the land in the era of cowboys and outlaws, but it would be able to implement everything learned from the gradual growth of the open world format.

 

Red Dead Redemption takes place at first in a fictional state called New Austin, this Texas-inspired land able to rope in other elements from other classic Western settings like Arizona and New Mexico to build itself into a conglomeration of genre staples without being beholden to any need to be accurate to reality. Large stretches of arid land dotted with cacti and dirt roads connecting small towns do an effective job of immediately painting the expected portrait of such a land. An abandoned ghost town, military forts, an enormous canyon, and ranches all fill this space nicely and the game gives you plenty of reason to ride into new parts of this expansive space. Red Dead Redemption isn’t afraid to depict the ruggedness of the kind of people who make a living out in a land where law isn’t always on hand to help and the elements often don’t play nice, many people wearing a bit of their history on their face and packing an attitude of tenuous trust even to someone willing to lend a hand. Eventually you can take a trip south of the border and enter a sliver of Mexico called Nuevo Paraíso which is in the midst of a revolutionary war and soon a spot up north taps into a more frontier aesthetic, West Elizabeth a more forested location with established cities, mountains, and even snowy spaces.

 

Red Dead Redemption’s main character is John Marston, the player taking control of him as he begins a mission to round up the old members of his gang and bring them to justice. Forced into this task by the government as they use his family as a bargaining chip, Marston understandably has a pretty close focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately, the men he used to ride with are now entrenched with other criminals and powerful individuals, John not only having to first find out where they are but also needing to recruit locals and gain the kind of equipment needed to even get near the men he used to consider friends. Much of Marston’s past and life before the game are told sporadically at different parts and perhaps not as fleshed out as they should be for the confrontations with his old outlaw buddies to be impactful, but the world of Red Dead Redemption mostly makes up for it with the kinds of characters you need to work with to have those showdowns with the old gang’s members. The game gets off to a very strong start when one of the first people Marston receives help from being Bonnie MacFarlane, her spirited chemistry with John introducing some of the game’s artful phrasing and clever dialogue. There are many missions where you’ll be riding to your destination and characters start chatting with John to fill the time, some of these exchanges compelling simply because the characters have a way with wording their comparisons or turning a statement back around on someone. The snake oil salesman West Dickens stands out as a particularly fun character to observe as his education and deliberate deflection in hawking his wares provides a good counterbalance to Marston’s emotional straightforwardness.

Heading to Mexico will introduce you to the conflict between the current corrupt government and a band of rebels lead by a man named Abraham Reyes, and while Marston works both sides at first to try and get closer to the answers he needs about one of his targets and thus gets his hands dirty in some less than moral ways, this perspective also allows the player to see the two sides of the conflict aren’t as different as they say they are. You do eventually get to focus on doing the right thing in this small war, but it is around this point where some of the writing begins to slip. Marston’s conversational partners aren’t as creative with their replies anymore and topics are retread rather often. It makes sense John needs to explain his mission some to new people he encounters, but it feels like many of the story missions at this point and after involve a reiteration of his goal only to be told he needs to perform another favor, Marston himself even getting rather impatient with it all as his replies become less conceptually interesting and more based in general growing irritation and barely restrained anger. This does mean some of the late game quests suffer a fair bit since the people you work for are less interesting characters. An anthropologist called Professor MacDougal demands your attention for a fair bit even though he only really seems to ever talk about his antiquated understanding of Native Americans and his reliance on cocaine. Never does he develop beyond repeating the same ideas that are meant to be humorous but are beat a bit too much into the ground since he can talk about little else, and while an unhinged character like the graverobber Seth is certainly as eccentric in the early game, he is at least unpredictable in his unusual behavior. However, characters like MacDougal do one thing well, showing that the setting isn’t one that is dictated by justice. Good men can die and bad ones can be rewarded, this harsh land lawless at times and at others harmed by the presence of the law. Ultimately, while the story loses some steam and doesn’t explore some areas as well as it could have, it does provide an appropriate through line for Marston’s search for redemption and an opportunity to explore the wide reaches of the open world.

 

Missions in Red Dead Redemption come in a few different forms, although one commonality is that you will be riding horses across the land quite a lot. Either because it’s a required part of a task or just the act of transit to the next mission area, you certainly will spend a lot of time on horseback even after you can start utilizing camp fires to fast travel or can afford to ride things like stagecoaches. The desert isn’t without things to do, there are small hunting and gathering challenges that give you something to look out for while riding, many of them simple and the game carefully rolling them out so you aren’t too distracted by trying to shoot down every bird or hopping off your horse every few minutes to skin a coyote or deer. Similarly, you never know when you might come across a small scene out on the road. You might spot some men chasing another down, the player able to intercede to earn a little cash but things aren’t always what it seems. Sometimes you might be helping a lawman catch a criminal or rescuing a stolen horse, others though an innocent man might be chased by gangsters. Pulling out your gun and firing blindly can impact an Honor system that treats how both good and bad people will treat you, so figuring out what’s even going on and acting before its too late can determine how well these little interactions go. You never know when that poor young lady on the side of the road is legitimately in danger or simply a trap set by some clever outlaws, but that does mean over time you might become cold to stopping for them since the rewards are often rather minimal. A few dollars do go a long way in Red Dead Redemption so even small rewards help, but these randomly appearing interactions are simple and quick and more there for someone searching for an interactive moment rather than providing anything too exciting.

 

Stranger quests push more into diversions with a proper story to them. A few characters marked with a question mark on your helpful minimap will need a bit more involved assistance than the roadside encounters. A few of these are certainly worth interacting with, some like finding a comedic writer trying to spin a yarn about the Old West for the paper appropriately funny, others like I Know You featuring an interesting mysterious character to string together its multiple little morality tests, and one of the quests is even a bit of an epilogue to the main plot. Others are rather shallow or simply consist of doing a task to see a strange conclusion to a minor story, not many of these events too involved or compelling and some even more like little bits of busywork like collecting all the materials needed to patch up a flying machine a man is trying to develop. Their optional nature and ability to tackle them as you please keeps them from weighing down on the experience, but this potential avenue for a greater amount to do across the frontier isn’t quite as well realized as it could have been. You can, however, play some card games and find other amusements in the little settlements. Arm wrestling and stabbing a knife between your fingers quickly in Five Finger Fillet are twisted into little minigames while games like poker and blackjack are present in their traditional forms, this another way to earn cash or spend some entertaining time away from firing guns and riding horses.

The story of Red Dead Redemption, when you’ve actually reached destinations for a mission, does begin to provide plenty of special gunfights and other activities you might want to experience in the Old West. While your weapons will get the most use, the game does have moments dedicated to driving cattle, racing horses, or even helping West Dickens with one of his cons as you need to show the supposed effects of his patent medicine. The game usually gives you the freedom to approach a few characters for missions at a time until you start working your way through them, so it can toss in a new type of gameplay or challenge before it gives you the kind of firefights that will make up much of the game’s action. The third person shooting can be freely aimed if you so wish and you can take cover behind pieces of the environment to recover your gradually regenerating health, but one feature exists where you can press the aim button to lock onto the target closest to your reticle. Quickly firing after is usually accurate enough to at least hurt your target although you may want to adjust your aim a little if you want to go for a guaranteed kill with a headshot or avoid shooting cover. This feature is practically a necessity at times such as when riding on horseback, the bounce of the gallop and the moving targets not really gelling with trying to point your firearm in a high pressure situation. However, this can mean more typical gunfights can be made a little less dangerous as you can quickly pop your aim between targets and dispense with them in short order. The speed does benefit a lot of the firefights at least, the game throwing many outlaws at you at once so you need to quickly take care of them to avoid being filled with lead. Some men will use civilians as hostages to require some careful aiming, and big targets sometimes involve duels where you need to draw and fire quickly and accurately to ensure your bullets do their work before the opponent can land any shots on you. There is a slow down during a duel to allow for the precise aiming, this slow down also a skill you can use in normal gun fights called Dead Eye. Allowing you to set up multiple quick shots while time is barely moving, Dead Eye actually again pushes down the difficulty some, and while you do have moments like mounting a gatling gun, utilizing a sniper rifle, or utilizing a lasso that require a bit more work than pressing the aim and shoot buttons in quick succession, much of the game will have gunfights that lean on the target lock.

 

Luckily some mission variety and enemy numbers do mean many encounters can still bring some excitement to the affair. Pushing your way through a mine, fighting off the Mexican army, trying to survive an ambush, or even bombastic things like stealing a train give the game some thrilling battles that account for your ease of aim. Similarly, in the online multiplayer aiming precisely becomes much more important as even though the snap mechanic is present, human players are far more mobile and hard to put down than enemies meant to meet their end as part of progression. Entering the online first throws you into Free Roam where the open world of Red Dead Redemption can now be explored with other human players and small tasks that were available as side content in single player can now be tackled as a group or as a way to build up experience. Taking down forts full of outlaws or hunting down animals is one way to earn experience for the unlockables in this mode, but the competitive side of things provides much more variety and opportunities to get new gear. Shootout and its team variant are typical races to get the most kills in recontextualized and contained areas from the story while Grab the Bag, Hold Your Own, and Gold Rush are all variants on grabbing an important item and transporting it to a designated spot, players competing to deny points or snag the objects themselves. A progression system that can reward better weapons to longer and more devoted players does lead to the unfortunate small skew where players with more play time are able to lord advantages over newer or less experienced ones, but most guns are able to put down a person in one or two shots and it is more the help in accuracy that serves as the difference in the weapon’s utility. Thus the multiplayer modes are still able to be entertaining either as a long time player or newbie, and with options like being able to pick up special weapons in the match or man weapons like cannons the action can still be an experience with some variety before you’ve unlocked the extra content.

 

One small unfortunate thing worth mentioning about Red Dead Redemption’s general experience though are the glitches. Some are simple visual ones like a character floating a little in the air or objects passing through each other when they shouldn’t, but there are some that can prevent missions from properly resolving or require a reload of the most recent save. One time when I went to hide behind a rock for cover Marston got stuck to it and refused to move in any way, and while I never had the honor of seeing it many people report human players sometimes inexplicably being replaced by animals. Open world games are generally prone to little technical glitches though due to the breadth of systems and content and most of these can be prepared for with smart saving, but saving can also only be done at specific areas like bought properties or campfires you can freely but not always whip up while on the road. Autosaves do help as well, but the game prefers to activate those after substantial missions so if you do get occupied with side content it’s important to make sure to save manually for the rare moments Red Dead Redemption does feature a damaging error.

THE VERDICT: Red Dead Redemption’s wonderfully condensed but remarkably open picture of the Wild West provides plenty of genre appropriate activities over the course of the story, and while that does lead to a little bit more horse-riding than is interesting, it also gives the player exceptional moments of action as their reward. Many of the interesting and well-written characters and scenarios are a bit front-loaded admittedly, but the game does find a good balance for the player being an incredibly powerful and capable gunman with the simple controls while still needing to be attentive since the opposition is often numerous or well placed to still put up a good fight. The side content can provide decent ways to fill the time between the well executed plot objectives although they’re not particularly compelling diversions, but a sterling start and the moments it breaks out creative settings or cleverly written conversations ensures Red Dead Redemption provides a lot to latch onto still.

 

And so, I give Red Dead Redemption for PlayStation 3…

A GREAT rating. Small glitches, mostly underwhelming side quests, and extended horseback riding with little to stimulate the player are all important factors to note for why Red Dead Redemption isn’t quite the wild west masterpiece some might have expected from Rockstar’s ever-improving open world design, but it shouldn’t be understated how well the game constructs and populates its setting both with appropriate and interesting characters and exhilarating and varied activities across the story. The freedom to do things outside of that core adventure does have its moments like the money-making minigames or briefly getting sidetracked with some animal hunting, but being able to pull off train heists, fighting on both sides of a guerilla war in Mexico, and breaking the gunfights up with things like wrangling cattle or breaking in new horses gives the a game a more well-rounded feeling despite some of dips in writing quality as the compelling cast of the start is swapped out for less fleshed out character concepts. Red Dead Redemption aims to embrace many parts of the cowboy fantasy while not forgetting to include the grit of such a life, the player on one hand performing classic showdowns in the middle of the street but on the other seeing the sometimes harsh realities of living in a lawless land first hand. It’s a setting with some texture as you gradually come to treat it the same way as the characters you meet, the player not always able to trust people in trouble on the side of the road and sometimes you might just kill the witnesses to an accidental crime so you won’t be bothered by a bounty hanging over your head. Multiplayer does give the game a bit more focus on precise action than the main game’s willingness to make you extremely adept without too much input, the game usually laying things out so that it can still challenge you in some way even if an individual enemy goes down to an almost thoughtless press of two buttons in quick succession.

 

One reality of using the Old West as a setting is that there would have to be plenty of open plains and small towns to feel accurate to the world at the time, and Red Dead Redemption mostly manages to get around the reality of the immersive elements by making its moments of greater activity compelling. Picking up your gun for a fight or interacting with the plot’s range of characters is mostly a rewarding cap to all the traveling you did on horseback, but the gradual decline in its writing quality does make it a little easier to notice that not everything you’re doing is as deep as you’d hope. Fleshing out the side content that peppers the world would help things be more smooth, the world not needing to be packed to the gills with optional extras but the time you spend engaging with other activities or making your own fun  feels like it would have been key to breaking up the open world traversal. Red Dead Redemption is still able to put together some exceptional moments thanks to the standout characters or moments it fully realizes the potential of its setting and shooting mechanics so its less a bumpy road and more one could have gone more interesting places with a greater commitment to the totality of the experience. John Marston’s journey to redemption is still one with many unexpected but thrilling activities and plot developments to be worth hopping on that horse again and again, Rockstar’s journey to the old west not only eclipsing Red Dead Revolver’s more structured approach by doing its ideas better but outshining the early Grand Theft Auto games because of the commitment to fluid action and memorable personalities linking together your work in a well realized congealing of the fantasies and facts of its historical yet fantastical setting.