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Final Analysis: Red Dead Redemption

What I thought of RDR: Decent story, dull shooting and sandbox
Would I play it again? Probably not.
Did it deserve to lose round two? Yes.

"It's important to look at your game and say 'okay, fifty percent of this is riding a horse, twenty-five percent is storytelling and cutscenes, and twenty-five percent is shootouts. Is riding the horse really the best part of the game?'" - Videogamedunkey, Videogame Stucture Evolution

Here's a short list of the media I went through in the past month, while I played Red Dead Redemption:

- I re-read the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Sidell. Despite a slightly rough start with some amateur artwork and an overly stoic lead character, I thought this comic was really rewarding - it specializes in patient, long form storytelling. A lot of the story arcs take years worth of development to fully pay off, the characters undergo a lot of personal development, and the setting itself was fascinating. The stand-out character was Coyote, an unpredictable, constantly hilarious trickster with an enigmatic master plan that has yet to be revealed over a decade's worth of story progress.

- I read the first half of the Moomin series of books by Finnish author Tove Jansson, a set of absurd children's stories with the kind of philosophical undertones that make them engaging for older readers. So far these books maintain a really high standard of quality - Jansson is great both at coming up with funny scenarios for her characters and giving them a lot of depth and emotional range. The stand-out character in these books is Snufkin, the main character's laid-back, vagrant, park keeper-hating best friend.

- I played the newly-released Henry Stickmin Collection, which is a re-animated version of a set of comedy flash games about the misadventures of an bumbling stick figure thief (with an excellent exclusive bonus game.) I loved every second of it. There are a lot of really funny gags, the action escalates to hilarious extremes, and it's surprisingly great as a branching story. The stand-out character was Charles Calvin, a friendly, fun-loving, accident-prone helicopter pilot, to whom I became surprisingly emotionally attached considering he's a stick figure.

Aside from self-indulgently talking about things I like, the point of the above is that it was easy to find more compelling stories than Red Dead, and secondly that Red Dead needed a Snufkin, or a Charles - or a Mordin. Oh, there are some good characters. John Marston himself is probably the best one. But when Little My got hooked on a fishing pole in Moominsummer Madness and I turned the page to see by the illustration that Snufkin was coming into the story, I felt an instant rush of happiness and excitement. No one in Red Dead quite does that for me. A nice anchor character like that would've really helped motivate me to slog through the repetitive gunslinging and the endless horseback riding.

Well, I'm being overly mean to a certain extent. The shooting in RDR can be kind of fun. It's at it's best on horseback, when there's a unique challenge to both steering and aiming at fast-moving targets simultaneously. It might be the better shooter when compared to ME2, though that game has it badly beat when it comes to enemy variety. I appreciate how the gameplay and the theming work together, given that the constant random crimes and animal attacks help sell the feeling of living in a lawless frontier. Likewise, the section in Mexico does a good job simulating the feeling of being a stranger in a foreign country, understanding only snippets of the language, getting called offensive names, and dealing with the distrust of everyone around you. In general, the music, atmosphere, and setting are really detailed and well done, and although I grew tired of riding everywhere there it can sometimes be relaxing just to watch the scenery go by. The moment at the very end where you get one use of deadeye before the U.S. Army kills you off is a nice touch. We will actually be revisiting this kind of gameplay story mixing to convey futility in another game from 2010!

There are some persistent problems with Rockstar's game design. I hate having to mash the X button to sprint or keep up my horse's speed. There isn't much incentive to explore the larger world - if you come to a ranch, for example, you can't really interact with the farm-hands or loot the place or anything like that, which I thought did enough to make poking around the random corners of Skyrim fun. You end up staring at the mini-map for like 90% of the game - you use it for orienteering, spotting enemies, finding plants to gather, and just about anything else you can think of. A health meter would be really appreciated. The game's visuals are kind of indistinct to begin with and I often felt the need to squint to make out enemies, an issue that becomes all the worse when I got hit and the screen filled up with red fog. Crouching behind cover to wait for your health to regenerate is as much of a bore as ever. Dying out in the wilderness bites, probably more than it should in a video game, since you have to go miles back to your bed. Activities like gathering plants and playing Poker with AI are mind-numbing. I could go on.

Earlier in this thread I said that the story isn't complex so much as it is full of despicable characters. I admit that's an oversimplification. It has some complexity. John's family wanting to love him but feeling guarded because he's hurt them before is one example. There's some in characters like Bonnie, Dutch, and Agent Ross. John's own quest for redemption contains a little bit of it, since he's fighting the old outlaw instincts. Still, I do think Rockstar goes too far with making their characters evil or pathetic. I was mostly annoyed by characters like Seth, Dickens, or Reyes - and not in a way that serves the story! This was definitely a major factor in why I didn't connect with the game emotionally in the way I would've liked.

I think Red Dead Redemption exposed an unfortunate side to this project. I feel like I've been doing pretty well at choosing my own entertainment these days, but all the time I've had this big horse-shaped obligation looming over me. I'm probably being harsher on the game than it really deserves because of that. I would have stopped playing it if I had started it for any reason besides this project. Maybe I would've gone back to it later, or maybe not, but I probably would've looked back on it more fondly either way.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 6/129
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption