Red Dead Redemption Review

Okay, I think I've played Red Dead Redemption (RDR) enough to get some perspective on it. The honeymoon is over, so to speak. I'd been looking forward to it since I heard about it last year, and... it was about what I expected, but not what I had hoped for. It's still a good game, I'll still be playing it a lot, and I can heartily recommend it if you like Rockstar's games, but I feel it could've been better.

Let's go over what it got right:

• It's absolutely gorgeous. The characters, environments, cutscenes — everything looks amazing.
• The Old West is a vastly interesting and vastly underutilized motif for games. Rockstar did it well, but they also added a twist by setting the game in 1911. The juxtaposition of the Old West and the dawn of industrialization and electricity is spectacular.
• The morality system seems to be fairly standard compared to most similar games, but it's still a vast improvement over prior Rockstar games. There are now some long term consequences for killing or robbing civilians.
• John Marston is one of the most complex and nuanced characters I've seen lately. His background story sets the player up so that regardless of the moral choices the player makes they can work in the story. He wants to do good but there is the temptation to slip into his evil ways that the player can indulge. I feel he's a brilliantly designed character for that reason. He's not the blank slate character a lot of RPGs cop-out with. He's got a background, but the player can make their own choices without breaking the role of John Marston.

And now the foibles:

• Killing the player for stepping into a river, pond, or any body of water larger than a mud puddle is inexcusable in a modern game. It absolutely murders the immersion in this beautiful open world. Rockstar had actually "fixed" this "feature" in San Andreas and GTA 4. Since RDR uses the same engine as GTA 4, I cannot fathom why they brought this back.
• Poker, Horseshoes, and Liars' Dice should have been included in the Free Roam multiplayer. I'd love to play those things with my friends!
• Another annoying Rockstar convention is the tutorials explaining gameplay features that will only be used in a single mission and then promptly forgotten by the player. The messages frequently pop up during frantic firefights, distracting the player at the most inopportune times with unnecessary information.
• Additionally, the controls are overly complicated mainly due to a lack of consistency between what buttons do what. The X Button changes functionality a lot depending on context, and the use of the Left Stick to aim in Horseshoes when the Right Stick aims 99.95% of the time in games is very jarring.
• I've always said Rockstar is a bit schizophrenic about their games. The morality system helped RDR by giving the players actions some consequence, but the storyline missions are still very linear. In an open world game if I need information from someone I want to get it quickly by whatever means necessary and move on. I don't want to do five missions for them then have them disappear until I've done five missions for another guy. I feel like Carl Johnson, Nico Bellic, and John Marston would have much preferred just to hold a gun to someone's head instead of running errands, but they never do and the player is never given the choice. This diminishes the player's connection with their otherwise badass avatar.

All in all, RDR is the best Rockstar game yet, but Rockstar games are a strange sub-genre. They write amazing stories for their characters, and they create exciting open worlds, but, to paraphrase Lazlo from GTA 3, these two things often go together like pizza and ice cream. Separately the story and open world have the potential to be great, but Rockstar's games (after GTA 3) seem so obsessive about delivering their story, they limit a player's choice in the open world. Rockstar hasn't quite figured out how to blend their amazing stories and their living worlds, although RDR is definitely a step in the right direction.

Since I'm playing the role of John Marston (RDR is an RPG too BTW), I don't try the things I would if I weren't John Marston. I once lassoed a criminal, then drug him behind me while I rode off on horseback. I rode around in circles, getting a perverse thrill from hearing him scream behind me. Then a weird thing happened: I felt guilty about it. I felt guilty about it because John Marston would've felt guilty about doing it in my game. So, I finally got off the horse and tied up the criminal and delivered him to town.

That connection with the character is amazing, and I'd like to think that's what Rockstar was going for. However, if I believe that, I cannot rationalize the extensive cutscenes without player interaction and missions that have only one predetermined path to success. In the future, I'd like to see their games with branching storylines and missions, and I'm looking forward to Alpha Protocol proving that type of gameplay in a AAA title is not impossible. Once Rockstar gives me the ability to threaten important NPCs for information, or to actually choose how I complete a mission or storyline, they'll have one of the greatest games ever on their hands.