One of the main reasons I wasn't rushing to the shops on release day is that I'm simply just not really into Westerns. This isn't always a deterrent in video games land but with Rockstar it kind of is. They sort of make up for their obnoxious Euphoria engine and all-in-all fairly messy gameplay with a strong sense of setting and good writing so you just kind of get lost in it, if that part fails then the whole experience is probably going to come down like a house of cards. In that sense there's must be something to Red Dead because it grabbed me really quickly, right from the start of the game my brain instantly adjusted to the idea that gunfights at long range probably weren't going to go anywhere fast. Also unlike GTAIV where pedestrians were basically just crash test dummies filled with jam I didn't really kill...anyone in Red Dead. It just seemed wrong and a needless hassle, riding into these nice people's town and shooting the place up, I've got to be back at Bonnie's place by 7am and what would she say? Wait, this is just a game right? Where am I?
What I really like about Red Dead Redemption in the story department over pretty much any other Rockstar game is it establishes a clear goal and it STICKS TO IT. You are John Marston, you are being blackmailed by the government to chase down your old friends and gang members so they give you your family back, and 90% of the story missions are you working on that. This is a significant leap over GTAIV which kept forgetting it had a story and panicked by getting the final boss to phone you for plot check ups, and of course GTAV which thought the best way to have an overarching plot was to...not really bother. And as is standard for Rockstar these days the in-mission dialogue is mostly gripping and I felt obliged to put the subtitles on just to make sure I was on top of it all. The dialogue does kind of have that Dark Knight Chris Nolan thing going on though, where all the characters openly discuss their philosophy or lack therefore as the audience scratches their chins and takes notes as opposed to just...living that philosophy.
One major issue with the in-game dialogue though, and this happened enough to me for it to be worth mentioning. When you're riding horses to the mission destination there's a button that has you follow your companion at the exact same speed which I always did, but still half the time we would get to the destination before the dialogue finished and it got cut off. How does that make any sense? The designers literally planned the exact amount of journey time to the second and the dialogue doesn't match it? This might seem like a needlessly petty point even for me, but I consider the fact I'm bringing something like this up as an issue makes a point about the quality of the writing itself, so MEH.
Although he's a fine avatar for the player as he's bitter and morally neutral on a lot of the idiocy going on around him, I'm not really a fan of John Marston as a character. The weird thing is other characters call him out on most of his bullshit, I don't know if this is Rockstar calling themselves out on their bullshit or if I'm just not supposed to like him that much. One thing he doesn't get called out for is his stupid behaviour towards the end of the game. His entire motivation is to work with the government so they give him his wife and kid back, but in the latter part of the game where he's dealing directly with government officials in nearly every mission he has some dumb comment along the lines of "WELL WHAT IF I SAY NO" and another character has to remind him "...then we kill your wife and kid...idiot..." This sort of stuff is just in there to make Marston a BAD ASS ACTION HERO but it's so illogical and out of place with the rest of his actions in the first 10 hours of the game it just makes him come off as a prick.
As ever Rockstar let themselves down on the gameplay, which wouldn't be able to support a ball of tumbleweed by itself. The core cover based shooting mechanic is serviceable, it's not challenging as regenerating health and auto-aim essentially do all of the work for you (when they don't screw up anyway). The game doesn't really evolve past that though, and all the other mechanics like cattle herding and whatnot are typical Rockstar, over tutorialised and boring. The worst parts though are when the game occasionally breaks out a Gatling gun, which you think would be pretty cool considering the early 20th century setting but nope, they're actually way more difficult because you don't have the auto-aim that the game let you grow accustomed to any more and you can't hide behind a nice juicy rock to suck the bullets out of your chest when health goes low. One of the handful of sections the game forces you to use it, and this is no exaggeration, lasts 50 billion years. When your gameplay segments start breaking into the billions of years you've probably done something wrong, but 50 of them? C'mon Rockstar GET IT TOGETHER.
The thing that baffles me the most about Red Dead Redemption is all the side content, I'm sure someone will take issue with this but...it's all pointless. Like...all of it. Okay, they help with world building and setting and have their advantages that way, but what is the gameplay benefit of hunting or helping random strangers or cattle herding? Well to get you money, what do you need money for? Erm, guns, upgrades, health items? Oh okay, the story missions let you play with all kinds of guns and there's ALWAYS tons of ammo, and the game is piss easy so I don't exactly feel urgency to upgrade anything. Also, HEALTH ITEMS, my health regenerates you silly game what do I need health items for? Well, side missions give you extra fame and honour, so what do they do? LET YOU SPEND LESS MONEY ON STUFF! I seriously don't recall spending money once in this game, I went into one shop to see what was there and never returned, and paid one bounty on myself because the game forced me too. John's a family man so even prostitutes are out, we're not on the same page at all Red Dead...
I'll admit I didn't do many of the extra "Strangers" missions, I did three of them (not counting the end one you have to do) and all three of them were just role playing a mail man, I didn't even get to shoot anyone. Really, Red Deads main selling points are centred around its narrative, and without any purpose or gameplay benefits all this extra side fluff is just there to distract you from the selling points. So I thought "screw it" and just powered through the main story from then onwards.
The final thing that needs mentioning...is the glitches. Now, if you haven't played Red Dead this too might seem like a petty complaint but it's seriously an issue (I installed all the patches before playing...all SEVEN of them, granted most of them were probably for DLC/online but they must have fixed something). I swear of the final 15 or so story missions my progress was halted by some ridiculous error on the games part in particularly all of them. It's hard to stay immersed in the story when you lose THREE horses inside the environment on one journey, or you get shot by an invisible enemy that won't register on your radar when he's apparently right next to you, or enemies fail to spawn and you have to kill yourself to restart the mission...or the textures just fail to exist for a good 15-20 seconds and you end up trying to fight at 10 frames per second inside the set of Woody's Roundup. Probably my funniest/most annoying one was when I got killed in a firefight because some tumbleweed blew into John causing the Euphoria engine to freak out and shove him out of cover into the sights of 20 angry Mexican army snipers.
Once again Rockstar have saved a somewhat messy and unfocused game with the power of their pen and research. It must be wonderful being a company that is particularly guaranteed to your games sell out regardless of what they are, so you can just make whatever you want and do it lovingly...even if the engine programmers aren't entirely on board. I'd say Red Dead overall is a much stronger game than GTAIV, and its story elements are certainly way above GTAVs. The final two hours especially took some risks and it all ended quite nicely (I don't know if "nicely" is the right word to use but y'know...don't want to spoil it for the three other people who haven't played this yet).
Red Dead Redemption gets a YEA IT'S GOOD NOW STOP BOTHERING ME out of 10. Go plug that into Metacritic and see what happens.
Red Dead is something that took me awhile to get into also. You're spot on in your review about so much of it.
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