(Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/31/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Red Dead Redemption
Developer: Rockstar
Publisher: Rockstar
Genre(s): Open-World, Third-Person Shooter
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3
Release Date: May 18, 2010
I have a feeling that much of the initial anticipation for Red Dead Redemption after it was announced was somewhat lukewarm. It’s not that everyone had reason to believe that Rockstar couldn’t sufficiently craft another exceptional open-world IP that further cemented their prestige as pioneering pillars of the subgenre. Rather, it’s the thematic realm that Red Dead Redemption delves into that I can’t imagine gamers in the 21st century would express all that much enthusiasm towards. You see, in the less sophisticated era of the previous century’s middle stretch of decades, westerns ruled the roost in the greater media landscape. People adored vicarious trips into the times of America enacting its “Manifest Destiny” initiative and sowing their imperialist seeds on the more arid, mountainous soil that exists on the other side of the Mississippi River. The conservative attitudes of the period caused people to adopt an almost wistful fondness for the unvarnished nature of this geographical range of settlements and the supposed “heroes” who adapted to its harshness the most proficiently. John Wayne couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, but his red-blooded, broad-shouldered screen presence in several classic western films made him the poster boy of the genre and a symbol of the stark masculinity that had ostensibly vanished as society progressed onward. In this evolution of American ideals, the western genre’s popularity was ousted by the radical potential of stories and ideas facilitated by the science-fiction genre, whose remaining dominance in our modern media proves its ability to innovate, whereas the western genre faltered due to its conceptual confines. The shift of relevance from one genre to the other was so pervasive that it was an underlying theme of Toy Story of all things. Similar to Woody being overshadowed by Buzz Lightyear, we are all Andys who crave the stimulation found in the unknown, hypothetical reaches of space and futurism that the western genre cannot provide. One could even use the middling reception to Rockstar’s Red Dead Revolver as proof that the western genre cannot thrive in our overstimulated society. However, Red Dead Redemption became a smash hit and a close critical companion to Grand Theft Auto because its open-world foundation taps into a facet of the western genre that its spiritual predecessor failed to foster. Among all that’s associated with its unmistakable iconography, straying further from the already-established American societies along the Atlantic coast carries the connotations of this budding range of land also separating from its laws and moral practices by proxy, hence the “wild” signifier often attached to the region. Because this territory is a little loose with its rules and regulations, one can assume that gamers can make as much mayhem here as they’re accustomed to with GTA’s modern, urban environments.
Given that a fraction of Red Dead Redemption’s appeal is the potential for unhinged carnage, certainly the game doesn’t subscribe to the traditional Western values of a black and white, good versus evil moral compass. The narrative of every single Rockstar game has been filtered under a lens of scathing satire that critiques societal standards, and this attitude being applied here implies that human civilization was rife with vice, greed, and other inadequacies far before the advent of various information age technologies. Take the scene surrounding the train ride in the game’s opening cutscene as evidence of the general ethos that Rockstar showcases regarding the practices and public sentiments of this supposedly idealistic period of American history. Two elegantly-dressed elderly women express their shared ignorant and bigoted opinions regarding the country’s mission to “civilize” the land’s natives, while an evangelist pontificates the gospel to a wide-eyed religious girl, who naively hangs on his every word he speaks, two seats in front of them. However, the talking heads exist here only to establish the narrative tone that the game is going to veer towards for the remaining duration. The focal point here we’re intended to direct our attention towards is the man in the cowboy hat silently seated in the middle, if the fact that this introductory cinematic has been following this man since he left the ferry in the opening moments didn’t explicitly give that impression. After he arrives at his next destination, an older gentleman escorts him to a fortress where the man loudly exclaims that he’s coming to kill the caretaker. However, the head honcho’s assistants subdue this potential grim reaper with a rifle bullet. While it seems like the man’s fate is sealed, a blonde woman and her male associate take this man and nurse him back to health before he bleeds out. By now, I think I can acutely detect a patented Rockstar introduction. Red Dead Redemption seizes our attention into the heat of action with enough ambiguity and tension to retain our sensory stimulation as grippingly as any of the Grand Theft Auto games, allowing our brains to insert pieces of context or at least laser its focus on finding out what’s missing as the game progresses. With the open credits scrolling as the prologue proceeds, Hideo Kojima would’ve corked open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the continued cinematic flair that he contributed to the medium a few generations prior.
After the opening series of cutscenes concludes, it’s difficult to say whether or not the excitement aroused by the masterful cinematics will be retained once the game sets the player loose in the wild west. This may sound either cynical or condescending (or both), but something about the biotic barrenness of unsettled land and its sheer immensity might not captivate most gamers. Using GTA as a contrasting example, the city setting consistently exudes a bustling, ever-flowing momentum of activity with people galore, even in the quieter, inconspicuous back alleys and in the rudimentary dullness that was Liberty City’s first open-world outing in GTA III. On the other hand, a world where tumbleweeds exceed the population of human beings might not deliver on the same promises of causing unbridled chaos on every corner. Sure, the player is technically free as a bird to proverbially excrete feces on anything that catches their eye from the air, but where’s the fun in this naughty activity if there are barely any targets around to agitate? Pockets of civilization are sparsely divided between the stretches of valleys, gulches, canyons, deserts, mountain ranges, etc, and the settlements are so small and intimate that the player will come to recognize almost every NPC that walks through the saloons and other modest establishments upon frequent visitations to save their progress. While the small scale of municipal activity may underwhelm many players who are accustomed to GTA’s frenetic urban flow, I’ll bet that listing the various organic, geographical features caused another faction of gamers to salivate. For those wishing to bask in the sublime solitude of unfettered wilderness in the gaming medium, accept no substitutes. Red Dead Redemption’s western setting is gorgeous with a capital G: a beauteous pastoral landscape rivaling the best of Albert Bierstadt’s paintings. It’s breathtaking enough to inspire someone to become a transcendentalist, commenting on how the canyons and cacti share a spiritual connection to God like a Ralph Waldo Emerson of a drier climate. Still, more so than just serving as earthy eye candy, the extent of which Red Dead Redemption lulls the player into its quiet, countryside ambiance immersed me like none of Rockstar’s games have ever done before. During a mission later in the game, two characters escort the protagonist to their destination by driving an automobile. Seeing this mechanical marvel, despite its primitiveness in its own right, juxtaposed with the unadorned environment that I had been experiencing, resulted in a jarring jolt of clarity washing over me. I felt the impending death of the wild west that would soon become industrialized and commercialized like the GTA environments that mark our modern day, and it was quite profound.
Unexpectedly, I also found that while Red Dead Redemption’s world was far less energetic than Liberty City or Los Santos, the topographical hodgepodge of habitats that comprise the game’s western world is more diverse than the wall-to-wall manmade constructions that compose a GTA cityscape. It’s unclear exactly where in the USA Red Dead Redemption takes place, besides its cardinal direction in relation to the union’s longest vertical river. Still, the player can make some educated assumptions based on some clear context clues. For one, it seems like the overarching territory is referred to as “New Austin,” relating to the capital city of Texas. As of writing this, I’ve never set foot in the “Lonestar State,” but based on the information I’ve gathered, a massive state that is somewhat synonymous with the aesthetic and lingering cultural values of the wild west that it was once a part of makes perfect sense to model it as the primary setting for a western, much less an interactive one. I’m sure the geological makeup of America’s belt buckle consists of plenty of prairies, swamps, and the other aforementioned environments usually associated with a hotter, drier climate. Armadillo is the spitting image of a frontier town, with its businesses running parallel to each other on a sandy, narrow road intended for horses and the carriages that they drag from behind.
The existence of a town like Armadillo supports my theory that this fictionalized stretch of the wild west is based on ol’ timey Texas because the majority of these settlements in this state resided along the USA-Mexico border, a relevant point of information considering that our spicy neighbor to the south occupies a significant portion of this game’s world map. Even though the narrative directly sends the player across the border during a mission about one-third into the story, one may not clearly detect that they’ve stepped beyond American jurisdiction because the aesthetic distinctions between the two available nations are barely discernible. While it existed outside of the USA’s coveted countryside, Mexico persisted as a prevailing secondary backdrop in most western-oriented media due to much of the nation sharing the same topographical characteristics. Given that it’s located in the same general geographical radius as this formally unsettled American expanse, it’s sensible that there would be canyons, dunes, and rocky plateaus aplenty–and in equal measure to the American area a hundred yards over the rim. The actual division between the two vertical sides of the map stems from clear cultural differences. Besides the fact that every NPC down here has browner skin and primarily speaks Spanish, the various villas, haciendas, and other architectural foundations that encompass each Mexican civilization truly instill the anxious, yet gratifying feeling of traveling abroad. That, and I suppose the volume of cacti runs more rampant in sand that seems to be brighter to illustrate the country’s slightly closer position to the equator. Rockstar offering a wholly different province to explore was a fantastic way to further engage the player’s curiosity, and the lively, distinguishing traits of Mexico are executed with great tact and respect. I’m not stating this solely because they didn’t drown the country in sepia tone for the sake of discernibility.
I’d wager a “true daily double” on the primary setting being Texas, with all of the evidence at hand, but the final district of the map unlocked inspires some reluctance. North of the anarchic bayou that is Thieves Landing is the peninsula of West Elizabeth, which is two central districts, not including the ultramodern (for early 20th century standards) governmental hub of Blackwater. Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven affirms that there are indeed miles of hilly, vacant plains where echoes probably resonate for hours in Texas, but the “Tall Trees” area to the west is so reminiscent of the northern California wilderness that I’m surprised the player can’t find marijuana plants growing along the road. Furthermore, I can’t name a state situated in the wild west with mountain ranges whose elevation is so high that snow perpetually covers the ground, or at least one that also borders Mexico. Am I letting the semantics of geographical rationale distract from the varied assortment of environments that Red Dead Redemption bestows? If the game did exhibit some historical fidelity to the time of Texas in the wild west and its respective urban and rural attributes, it’s likely that the experience would grow somewhat stale.
Like all of Rockstar’s previous sandboxes, with the term taking a more literal stance this time around, the immersion that all of this open-world exploring is intended to inculcate coincides with the story arc of the protagonist they are piloting. The wounded man at the helm of the game’s narrative is John Marston, a 38-year-old farmer and former high-profile criminal who was reeled into that disreputable lifestyle on account of his vulnerability and lack of direction as an orphaned child. He certainly looks the part of a stoic, dogged Western man with his cowboy hat, turncoat, and boots with clanging spurs. Still, his outward scuzziness, plus his felonious background, seemingly situates him as a character that John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart would stick the tip of a double-barreled shotgun up against his nostrils and call him a tepid disparaging phrase that would only offend an octogenarian. However, the contrast between Mr. Marston’s appearance and his demeanor is what makes him exceptionally subversive. Despite what his reputation might indicate, John exudes an air of gentlemanliness that all other southern men should follow as an example. He’s frightfully polite, courteous, grateful, an assiduous worker, and graciously declines all sexual favors from the stockpile of whores that secrete out of every settlement to maintain faithfulness to his wife, Abigail. We don’t know if John has always been exemplary in the department of manners, but if improving his decorum is a fraction of his “redemption,” I’d say that he’s sufficiently turned that new leaf. Still, John hasn’t verged too deeply into goody-two-shoes territory to the point where his behavior is uncanny. Surprisingly enough, I kept making comparisons between John and Niko Bellic as I spent more time with Red Dead Redemption’s protagonist. Between all of his chivalrous responses, John can get rather snarky depending on his disposition towards the person with whom he is conversing. There is also an underlying cynical attitude that John expresses whenever conversation verges on the philosophical or sociological side, but that’s to be expected from someone who has lived on the fringe of society amongst a gang of rogues for the majority of his lifetime. Similar to GTA IV’s Serbian soldier, John Marston is grizzled on the outside and charred on the inside, yet the circumstances of his past that have shaped his current day have not completely plunged him into the depths of despair and depravity. His heart of gold and strong ethical code certainly give him much more charm than initially imaginable, and we greatly sympathize with his striving to escape his checkered past.
But the extent of how severely John wishes to redeem himself might be misleading without the necessary context. The overarching redemption mission that will figuratively unshackle John is finding the whereabouts of his former gang associates and acting as their moral executioner. However, the bit of context surrounding this supposed deed of retribution is that John is literally shackled by the binding lace of the law. The Bureau of Investigation is holding John’s wife and teenage son hostage to coerce John into doing their dirty work, which is eradicating the surviving members of the Van der Linde Gang. This tidbit of information behind John’s goals may reveal that they’re driven by fear and not repentance, suggesting that he’s still a vicious, thieving snake at heart.
However, before you throw up your hands to celebrate and proceed to terrorize Armadillo and tie a prostitute to the train tracks while twirling your comically long handlebar mustache, know that the game features a few stipulations that might incentivize the player to keep John’s hands clean. If the player can’t resist the urge to slaughter the innocent, they should be aware that Red Dead Redemption does not feature the same punitive system as GTA. All of John’s potential crimes will accumulate like garbage in the ocean, even after he respawns once he’s subdued for his belligerence. All of his misdeeds will pile up in a monetary bounty, and the amount increases with every crime he commits. Because of the underdeveloped legal system that exists in this germinating society, bounty hunting provides a quicker way to make money than selling crack on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1985. Word will spread like wildfire surrounding John’s disregard for human life and tranquility within the community, and several gunmen will often attempt to put his head on a platter by bumrushing him at random occurrences. Once the player becomes irritated by the swarm of vigilantes and decides to liquidate their bounty via the contents of their own wallet, John will continue to feel the ramifications of his misconduct due to the depletion of his “honor.” Whenever John performs either an act of altruism or commits a sin most heinous, it will cause a meter to slowly veer towards the coinciding direction on a defined horizontal spectrum. Depending on whether or not the player decides to transform John into a saint or a name that makes people shudder upon its utterance, either greatly affects certain aspects of the game. If John is perceived as a hero, shopkeepers will lower their prices, and interruptions by hostile NPCs are much less frequent. If John verges towards the path of scumbaggery, he’ll have to defend himself from the blowback of the common folk like a white blood cell fending off pathogens. Maximizing John’s potential for evil will reward him with a cool-looking horse that is charcoal black except for its white face that resembles a skull, but I could never bring myself to trade my Kentucky Saddler (that I affectionately and referentially nicknamed “Blondie”) for any other steed. Also, be aware that there is another meter that allots John’s “fame,” which is on a fixed, irreversible scale. When the game is automatically increasing John’s popularity, it would be wise for the player to consider that it’s better to be bombarded with praise and peaceful offerings rather than screams and shootings. With deeper contemplation, I led John down the path of righteousness and virtue because reaching the highest honor capacity felt like a more gratifying achievement as opposed to making mindless mayhem that turns him into New Austin’s biggest scab. That, and acting on homicidal impulses, contradicts John’s amiability that the narrative clearly establishes for the character, and I didn’t want the dreaded LD phrase to rear its ugly head again.
Rockstar was seemingly aware that the temptation to cause chaos as John would be difficult to curb, so they implemented plenty of activities for the player to humor as a means to keep those indecent urges at bay. For one, increasing John’s honor meter doesn’t connote that he’ll totally abstain from violence and become a pacifist. Settlements such as Armadillo and especially Thieves Landing are brimming with bandits and domestic rapists alike, and meeting their transgressions with a steamy bullet is considered justifiable enough of a killing to warrant some good karma. The sheriff also tends to turn a blind eye to jackasses who challenge John to duels, with John pumping every bullet in his gun’s chamber to ensure that he’s victorious. John can also partake in some bounty hunting himself once a wanted poster of the target appears, which will involve John blowing holes in dozens of the criminal’s vagrant cronies with impunity. One aspect of this common optional escapade that I adore is the choice to spare the target’s life and instead lasso him up and deliver him to the local lawman, and have them decide his fate. Not only does the reward amount double upon bringing the man to justice, but the additional dimension of difficulty that comes with treating this terrible man more humanely makes the mission much more engaging than carelessly firing off a full round of bullets in all directions. John can also sign himself up for more stable work to gain currency, including horse wrangling and a nightwatch job where he follows a dog around the perimeter with a keen sense of sniffing out disturbances. As far as the more casual fare that Red Dead Redemption provides that isn’t attached to anything particularly productive, there are plenty of assorted minigames scattered about that might distract the player from molding John into a menace. Card and dice games like poker, blackjack, and Liar’s Dice are available in the saloons to possibly make some considerable cash with impeccable strategy, and drinks here are cheap enough that John can drink himself stupid without blowing the bank. You can’t functionally shoot a gun while you’re sauced, right? Remote locations often hold arm wrestling and five-finger filet tournaments with wagers involved, and the latter activity seems especially precarious considering that medical science at the time deemed it acceptable to use cocaine as an anesthetic. These distractions might seem quaint compared to the mod cons of GTA, but I promise every stubborn skeptic accustomed to modernity that they’ll become as worked up over a game of cards or horseshoes as beating Roman in bowling.
If the prospect of gambling and alcohol fails to quell the player’s murderous tendencies, one last avenue they can resort to is taking out their aggressions on the various wildlife that serve to spruce up the liveliness of this desolate domain, without any tangible consequences to consider. Despite their lack of defenses and the disgusting, screen-staining blood splatter of the skinning process that John can perform if deemed necessary, I support including animals into the fray of an unbounded murder simulator for its innovation alone and condone John’s unsolicited butchering of them–mostly because I know that annoying animal rights activists will become irate at the idea and protest it for misguided reasons. Cougars and grizzly bears should be purged on sight without question, for they’re as hostile and deadly, even not even more than, any human outlaw that brandishes a firearm.
Or, you know, the player can focus on continuing the game’s story via the missions, which are guaranteed to feature a dozen dirty malcontents for John to sear with smoking lead. Similar to GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption capitalizes on the prevalent shooting craze of the current generation by featuring gunplay for almost every mission. Except a few horse races, cow herds, travelling to destinations before sunfall, and one stunt involving a mine cart, the vast majority of the game’s missions involve John taking cover behind a large rock or a solid wooden or stone barrier and seek the opportunity for enemies to peak their heads out of their respective environmental shields like groundhogs so John can redecorate it with a bloody red paint job. The difficulty curve is consistent, but it retains a flat, predictable level of breeziness unless there is a minuscule additional factor included. For instance, protecting the hide of a government train from Mexican rebels had plenty of blind spots due to the running train obscuring one side of the enemy ambush, and some environments, like the more wooded areas and mountains, don’t accommodate the player with much terrain to shield themselves from gunfire. As far as the arsenal at John’s disposal needed to become a contender during these firefights, the essentials are a wide assortment of revolvers and rifles, with shotguns, scoped rifles, and mounted machine guns serving well in specific scenarios. My favorite selection of John’s incendiary tools is the wildcard ones situated in the eleven o’clock position on the weapon wheel. Throwing knives, Molotov cocktails, and sticks of dynamite are simply too passe for the contemporary GTA games, so I’m glad that this true period piece allows the developers to incorporate untested weapons that no longer seem outlandish given the circumstances of the setting.
Continuing the comparisons between Red Dead’s combat and its generational GTA peer, the inundation of inexperienced gamers trying out the shooter genre due to its popularity compelled the developers to streamline the aiming for the sake of accessibility. Holding down the aiming trigger on the controller will automatically pinpoint John’s line of sight on the target’s cranium, or at least at another vital organ that will ensure a quick dispatch. In addition to the slight hand holding at play, Red Dead Redemption administers another element to the shooting mechanics that practically guarantees that the player is the most piercing gunslinger alive. By pressing the lower analog stick, the entire screen will slow to a crawl and become washed in the color that Hollywood associates with Mexico in what the game refers to as “dead eye mode.” While in this manipulated perspective, John takes advantage of the glacial momentum to execute a bullseye shot on any piece of an enemy’s anatomy they desire. Later on, the player can even stamp multiple targets onto anything with a pulse and chain shots so proficiently that it’s almost comical, similar to Gene Wilder’s character from Blazing Saddles and his perfect shooting record. However, the skill involved with this flashy maneuver requires anything but proficiency. This is why I cannot firmly decide whether or not “dead eye” is cool or controversial. On one hand, this aidful mechanic cleverly allows the player to channel the masterful marksmanship associated with a sharpshooter from this era. On the other hand, the player should ideally aspire to earn this level of expertise organically. All in all, I think I’m leaning towards the former stance because the thrilling novelty of blasting the brains out of gangs of guys never exhausted, even when I realized I was using this mechanic as a crutch, which is bound to happen considering its brisk nature and that the juice required to fuel “dead eye” replenishes automatically with enough time. However, another facet of Red Dead’s shooting that fully rubbed me the wrong way is the regenerative health mechanic. Having John scurry away or block himself from harm momentarily while his wounds heal in seconds like Wolverine almost ejected me out of the time period, for this mechanic is so 2010 that I could faintly hear a Ke$ha song playing as the threshold of John’s mortality started to snap.
Still, despite John’s quickness with a hand cannon and his position in the narrative as a likeable, dynamic protagonist, Rockstar decided that the ultimate fate for their charismatic cowboy should be sealed with tragedy. Just to get it out in the open, yes, John Marston’s death at the narrative’s climax lives in infamy for being one of the most emotional moments in the gaming medium’s history, making teenage boys (me and my friends at the time) shed tears profusely without receiving any scrutiny. Also, I want to give a sincere “fuck you” to Rockstar for making the player feverishly fret even more by making them think that their “lack of skill” played a hand in John’s death, automatically engaging “dead eye mode” when he’s faced with an entire squadron of armed Bureau members in close quarters. Rockstar’s cruel conclusion for John shocked, angered, and saddened me, but I now realize that this is probably because my fifteen-year-old self wasn’t as alert and sagacious as my game critic adult self. Over a decade has passed since I first coped with the loss of John Marston, and I now find that the game’s narrative was clearly foreshadowing the protagonist’s untimely demise. Not only that, but it also seems to suggest that any chance at redemption with all of the circumstances of the setting and situation at hand is a futile, bootless errand.
First and foremost, how is John intended to reform when he’s forced to collaborate with the dregs of society? Isn’t that what got him into this mess in the first place? Because Bill Williamson’s stronghold of Fort Mercer is as guarded as Area 51, John must make like Seven Samurai and assemble a crew of people with unique talents in order to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable. The underlying problem with this specific coalition that John wrangles up is that their distinctiveness also applies to how disgusting and contemptuous John feels each of them to be. Still, this should be the natural reaction to being forced to cooperate with a pungent graverobber, a deceitful Irish drunk, and a pretentious snake oil salesman who plays up his pseudo-medical miracle elixirs so passionately that he seems to genuinely believe his own bullshit. I realize that John’s mission of murder isn’t exactly virtuous, but most of the horrendous things he’s seen and done that have scarred his soul involve the indirect actions of his affiliates. A significant part of straying away from the tumultuous life of crime was no longer associating with criminals, and really, what’s the difference between these reprobates and the ones John formally ran with? Once Bill catches wind of John’s Trojan Horse plan and flees the coop to Mexico to join John’s second target, Javier Escuella, John’s allies down in the Land of the Sun are even more despicable. For some reason or other, many westerns set in Mexico are situated around the historical conflict of the Mexican Revolution, and the second major arc in Red Dead Redemption borrows the worn, tattered page from this notebook. In order to gain information on Javier’s whereabouts, John ends up playing both sides of the Mexican power struggle. The tyrannical Colonel Allende and his second-in-command, Vincente de Santa, are two unscrupulous bastards who are liable to make the player’s skin crawl, and John working with their efforts to quash their resistance is not a redeemable sign of character, even if it is a means to an end. Then again, the resistance leader, Abraham Reyes, doesn’t exude a high moral fiber either. This assessment of his character has less to do with his womanizing and more to do with the fact that his eagerness for the power he wishes to gain after the Colonel is overthrown implies that he’ll just continue the country’s bloody cycle of injustice. Maybe John’s screws are a tad tighter than all of his allies, but as the saying goes, adjacent to refuse is still refuse.
John’s extemporized killing quest seems rather counterintuitive to his wish of keeping a peaceful, felony-free life, considering that he already achieved this while on his farm with his family. Perhaps what the narrative is trying to illustrate here is that this idyllic existence is impossible while the West remains, well, wild. After all, Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham, the so-called arbiters of peace ‘round these here parts, sure do enact their brand of justice very violently. They’re also a bunch of sticklers who elongate John’s servitude to them when they hear that his former gang leader, Dutch Van Der Linde, is in the neighborhood. A reconnaissance mission leads John to find his sensei, using his cult leader charisma to position himself as the chief of the local native outcasts that reside in the snowy mountains. Once John has Dutch cornered with his back against a cliff, the man who apparently always found a way to finagle his way out of a tight, tense situation finally concedes and accepts his fate. Dutch’s murmured monologue on how the advancements of the world are taking him and people like him (John) out to pasture is quite harrowing, and watching him fall off the mountain peak to his death with no hesitation is also a rather shocking display. Dutch’s final words are a disquieting omen for the former friend he spoke them to, but the main takeaway from this chapter of the story that I’d like to address is the stranglehold the Bureau has on John. Forcing John to comply with their further demands does not spell a smooth, amicable working relationship that will bode well for John’s future state of affairs. They may as well make John wear a maid’s outfit while on his assassination adventures to signify his bitch status.
In addition to the Bureau having a grip on John’s autonomy like a cobra squeezing the life out of a mouse, the scope and placement of the last few missions contradict all narrative logic. Once the Bureau finally loosens John’s chain and reunites him with his family, plus an old codger acquaintance nicknamed “Uncle,” the furious firefight that marked most of the missions leading up to John’s return to normalcy is shifted to blasting off rounds of ammo to fend off crows from consuming all of the corn in his silo, teaching Jack the ways of the land and how to become self-sufficient in them, and rekindling the days of herding cattle with Bonnie Macfarlane on his own ranch with Uncle. Every staunch gamer should know that turning full circle around to the game’s tutorial right near the finish line is never a story’s coup de grace, even though I’m sure a section of fans would invest more of their precious time playing Red Dead Redemption as this humble, Harvest Moon-type experience. John had to die in order to energize the game’s concluding chapter, but it’s not the event where the screen fades to black and “fin” is the last shot seen. After John’s family sees the horror of John lying stiff in a pool of his own blood, the scene then shifts to an adult-aged Jack, who is now the indefinite playable replacement for his father. This epilogue of sorts allows the player to continue roaming throughout the wild west regardless of the narrative constraint at hand, but there is actually one last mission that puts a period on the adventure. Well, it’s technically a mission in that it has a goal and objectives, but it's also a secondary “stranger mission” that the player could easily miss, not realizing they still had to be attentive to story progression. I’d advise everyone to stick around Blackwater to converse with a Bureau agent on the whereabouts of Edgar Ross, so that Jack can expedite the rotten old asshole’s retirement. A short string of conversations will lead Jack down to a Mexican river where Ross will stop fishing to engage in a duel with the vengeful, young aggressor, and the credits will roll if Jack successfully turns Ross’s body into Swiss cheese. Would I be in disagreement with Rockstar that Jack’s exploit shouldn’t have been relegated to something the player could approach as a lark, given its crucial narrative weight? If the developers felt that stretching this addendum would divert too drastically from the focal point of John’s story, then it should’ve been unlocked as a completionist reward to justify its position as a lark. As it is, the trivial scale of this meaningful falling action event is unfortunately rather anticlimactic.
If anything, I think that Red Dead Redemption serves as proof that I don’t inherently dislike the cinematic sphere of gaming. Admittedly, the game does exhibit plenty of traits that I often find rather unbecoming of titles that try to suppress the interactivity aspect of gaming in favor of implementing some more inert properties of film. Of course, I’m referencing the relatively formulaic mission format of covering and shooting, along with the assisted aspects of this gameplay that the title provides to ensure that the playerbase isn’t inconvenienced by a stacked skill ceiling. Still, I think I’ve realized that Rockstar’s open-world construct is what makes the seventh generation’s innovation habits palatable, for the breadth and liberal parameters of the genre are what uncage the suffocating linearity that binds most cinematically inclined video games. In fact, in a genre that pronounces player freedom, the cinematic elements can sink into their sensory glands much more effectively when they’re given ample room to resonate. Again, I have to reiterate that seeing a staple of human evolution in the Bureau’s automobile snapped me out of the setting like someone slapping me out of a drug-induced hallucination, so the developers must have found a winning formula to hypnotize me into a period that predates my cushy, 21st-century existence by well over a century. Still, it also helps that the story that the gameplay is tethered to is a western epic worthy of being spoken alongside the genre greats of Ford, Leone, Peckinpah, etc. Forget about gaming’s Buzz Lightyears, like those in Mass Effect and Dead Space; I wanna play with Woody a little while longer because he’s still a bad motherfucker (in the informal slang sense, meaning cool, of course).
