Tuesday, September 07, 2010
   
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Red Dead Redemption

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Written by Hank Brown

     Rockstar Games, the developer behind the highly controversial video game series, “Grand Theft Auto,” has always managed to bridge the gap between gaming and art. Instead of relying on the usual clichés of space marines and orcs, Rockstar Games has cemented itself in popular culture by always pushing the envelope of what should be allowed in a videogame. Gangsters, prostitutes, drugs, and obscene violence have always been a part of Rockstar’s previous efforts, but that’s just what is seen on the surface by soccer moms across the globe. The games are much more than that. Character development, drama, humor, social commentary, and an extreme attention to detail is what make Rockstar’s games really shine. The most recent effort, “Red Dead Redemption,” is a huge leap forward in what is possible in an open world, or “sandbox” game, and delves into a genre that is practically untouched by developers: the western. 

     “Red Dead Redemption’s” storyline is unfortunately one of the game’s weaker areas. John Marston, a former outlaw-turned family man, is betrayed by his old gang buddies, and is left to fend for himself in a rapidly changing early 1900s landscape where bandits and sketchy folk of all sorts run rampant, and the fabled “wild west” is crumbling because of industrialization. Yes, stories of betrayal are commonplace for movies and videogames, but it’s really only the stepping stone for the events that unfold later on in the game. The characters are well-crafted, as usual; a schizophrenic grave robber, a British snake oil salesman, and a flaky drunken Irishman are a few of the colorful people you conduct business with. The beginning is similar to that of any of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games; you first have to get your bearings, performing somewhat mundane tasks until you work your way up in the world. It’s a tried and true formula, but I must say it’s starting to get old.
     As many of you may already know, this game uses an upgraded version of the GTA 4 engine, so graphically, similarities between the two games can be drawn. RDR’s graphics are equivalent to a golden field filled with dancing leprechauns and rainbows, which translates to utterly gorgeous. Complete day and night cycles, dusty-orange rock formations, frighteningly realistic lightning storms, violent wind, rolling tumbleweeds, and basically any other landscape that you have seen in a western film is captured brilliantly in RDR’s world of New Austin. It makes me wish graphics were this good in real life. The game also utilizes Natural Motion’s “Euphoria” physics engine, so no bandito takes a bullet the same way. Bodies will roll down stairways, get caught in a horse’s stirrups, and react to nearby objects with frightening realism. Dragging a bank robber through a town on horseback with the game’s lasso is satisfying and hilarious. Not to mention that the horse animations are easily the best I’ve ever seen in a videogame; muscles are seen smoothly shifting under the skin, and the horses control perfectly after a little practice.
     RDR’s gameplay is brutal and unforgiving; each gunshot makes a jarring blast, and the weapons each have a completely different effect on a body. The mission structure in RDR is exciting and cathartic in the beginning, but I must admit that however you frame it, killing scruffy bandits in each mission gets old after a while. I would’ve liked to see a little more variety in the missions, maybe a few here and there that don’t require shooting anyone in the kneecaps, but it’s really not a huge deal because defending a train from Mexican banditos will always be exciting.
     The most unique part about RDR’s gameplay are the random encounters within the game and the honor system. When not on a mission, you may suddenly encounter a woman being assaulted by a drunk or a man being lynched. You may choose to save or ignore these people, and the game will judge you accordingly. Choose to rescue the damsel in distress, and you will be rewarded with honor points. This is basically the “good guy” path to take. Instead you may choose to take advantage of the situation and rob the woman, and in that case you will be deducted honor points and tread down the “evil” path. You may also receive a bounty on your head if you are witnessed performing an unsavory task like robbing a bank or kidnapping an innocent person. If the bounty is high enough, a posse of lawmen will hunt you down until you pay off the bounty, turn in a pardon letter, or poor John’s body is gunned down in the middle of nowhere. This creates a more exciting law system than in the GTA series, where you are chased by infinite cops until you escape.
     The game also features multiplayer, where you can roam the world with a group of friends. Like most games featuring multiplayer modes these days, you can grow in rank and be rewarded accordingly with new mounts, weapons, and characters. Riding around with your friends is good fun for a while, but like GTA 4’s free mode, there’s not a whole lot to do since most of the single player activities are unavailable. I can see free roam holding my attention for a few months, but unless additional content is released, it could wear thin.
     My last issue with the game is that there is a certain amount of loneliness to it. In GTA 4, Niko Bellic’s friends would nag him about going to the bowling alley, or going out to dinner. As much as that annoyed the heck out of me, and I have no interest in doing things in a game that I would rather do in real life, at least it felt like I wasn’t alone in the world. In Read Dead, you are 100% on your own in a landscape about 2.5 times the size of GTA: San Andreas’s world. I know it’s a cowboy game, and the whole lone ranger shtick makes sense, but come on! I’m losing my mind out here! Not to mention that there’s not a lot of real interaction with the NPC’s or “Non-Player Characters” around the world. I wasn’t expecting Rockstar to make individual dialogue trees for each NPC, but a little dialogue outside of missions would’ve been nice.
     Overall, “Red Dead Redemption” is solid take on a genre that game developers usually avoid because of the weak sales. Rockstar Games has once again created a game that has raised the quality bar by a mile, and has avoided the “it’s just a videogame” stereotype that pieces of testosterone-pumped trash like “Gears of War” and “Halo” have failed to do. If you are a fan of western films, “Grand Theft Auto 4,” hog-tieing people and putting them on train tracks, or all of the above, than look no further than “Red Dead Redemption.” I mean c’mon, I know you want to rob a bank in a poncho.
This article originially appeared in the June 2010 issue of the Tam News.

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