By Connor Gray, Senior Reporter
The Old West: the age of cowboys and outlaws. An era that others and I romanticized growing up as kids.
Some of fiction’s iconic films are westerns like “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” “Django Unchained” and “Tombstone.”
Video games on the other hand haven’t necessarily had as much success with the genre before 2010. This changed with Rockstar’s “Red Dead Redemption.”
“Red Dead Redemption” is a story of redemption. The year is 1911, and the Old West is becoming more civilized, and is on its last legs of lawlessness. You play as former outlaw John Marston, who was part of the infamous Van Der Linde gang. He is sent by the federal government to hunt down the few members that are still running amok across New Austin and eventually into northern Mexico. Initially you are supposed to only hunt down Bill Williamson, but eventually you also go after Javier Escuella and Dutch Van Der Linde because the government keeps altering the deal.
SADDLING UP
John’s sole motivation is to reunite with his wife and son who are being held hostage by the government in order to force him to hunt down the men he used to call family. Though John no longer views them that way after they left him for dead during a train heist after he was shot.
John has been trying to move on from the past, so he took up ranching with his wife and son. But sometimes you can’t escape your past.
After taking a train to Armadillo, Texas, you try to bring in Bill Williamson peacefully. But it ends up being futile as he has his own gang now and you are shot in the side and left for dead. Through an act of kindness you’re found by Bonnie McFaland and taken back to her ranch to be healed and get payback for the bullet wound.
Over the course of the game, you gain allies that will help you take down Williamson in the first act of the game. You meet quirky characters like a con man, a grave digger and an Irish drunk, just to name some of them.
You also can meet strangers along the journey that will give you special requests to do and you can make choices to decide their fate.
I played this on my Xbox Series S, which has backwards compatibility. This meant I could buy the game without having to stream it. (Thank you, Xbox, for that, because I lost my PlayStation 3 copy for the game.)
There is an honor system that will determine how characters outside of the main story will react to you, depending on your actions.
You have a wheel system of different guns you get over the course of the story or you can buy them at a local gunsmith. You get better types of guns as you unlock different regions of the game. The game has a shooting mechanic called “dead eye,” which you can slow down time for.
You can select different targets and shoot in quick succession, which comes in handy when you are dealing with multiple enemies. Depending on the level of your dead eye, this will determine how much time you will have to use it.
Riding horses is satisfying, but after replaying the game for this review, I’m reminded that some of the controls at times are stiff, and sometimes my horse went in a direction I didn’t want him to.
The game also has subtle and not-so-subtle commentary about government overreach and how it handles its people, capitalism and the gray nature of right and wrong.
The landscape of the game is breath-taking, even 12 years later, because of how different each region is. Some might look similar, but all are different. The weather is also unpredictable when you play the story, as no one’s play-through is exactly the same.
New Austin and Mexico are parts of the desert with a different variety of rocky terrain. Introduction into Mexico is the best part of the game. As you start riding into the beautiful wilderness, José González’s “Far Away” plays in the background to give the player an understanding that John is a long way from returning home.
The second act will put you in between finding the men you’re looking for and dealing with the Mexican Civil War, which John doesn’t want apart of, but he will have to use both sides of the conflict to get the men he’s after.
In the third act of the game, John will travel to the Great Plains, which has more diverse animal life and is more civilized versus the rest of the game. This is where his farm is.
Though the game has been out for 12 years, I will not spoil the game’s ending in case some have yet to play this roller coaster of an experience. It’s a gut-punching moments that left me in tears.
The game is actually the second game of the series after Red Dead Revolver, but the only thing similar about them is the Old West and the dead eye mechanic. Otherwise, they are not remotely related.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Red Dead Redemption has sold more than 20 million copies during its lifespan, and this is well deserved.
One warning, however: Because of the era it is in, some language used by some characters might offend some people, as the game doesn’t hold back with how some people acted back in 1911.
My overall score for Red Dead Redemption is a 9.5/10. There were few shortcomings in the game. The game’s story is one of the best out there, and John Marston is one of most brilliantly written and portrayed characters in any video game.
The game got a sequel eight years later, Red Dead Redemption 2, but it takes place 12 years before the first game.