Friday, November 12, 2010

If the lone prairie looks anything like it does in Red Dead Redemption, then sure, bury me there.

Everyone called Red Dead Redemption, before it came out, "Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wild West". The thing about Grand Theft Auto IV is that it may be the most impressive feat a game developer has ever pulled off. Actually, if you count Episodes from Liberty City, it's the most impressive feat a game developer has ever pulled off three times. Calling Red Dead Redemption "Grand Theft Auto IV in the Wild West" sets a flatteringly high bar for Red Dead Redemption, but it also raises a troubling question: how in a lifetime of sweet fucks is that going to work? GTA4 is a living, breathing recreation of present-day New York City, the likes of which did not exist in the untamed American West, not in geographic size, not in population size, not in city structure, not in transportation, not in weaponry, not in communication infrastructure. If this game is just a reskin of that game, then it will make no sense.

Thankfully, everyone was wrong. It's not just a reskin. The first thing GTA4 veterans will notice about RDR is how small it is in comparison. The biggest town in RDR is smaller than the smallest neighborhood in GTA4. The second thing they'll notice is how uninteresting traveling from Point A to Point B is in comparison. You don't get to listen to "Strange Times" by the Black Keys while you're on horseback. You don't get to dodge pedestrians, telephone poles, and other cars. You rarely have to shake pursuing cops. It may sound like I'm saying this game is boring, but it's not. All these differences work! That is perhaps why I love this game so goddamn much. The setting asked the developers to change the way they do things, and they accommodated, even though the way they do things previously yielded one of the best video games to date.

And don't get me wrong, there is a lot of fun to be had in this game world. Hunt a grizzly bear. Shoot the rope from which some innocent woman is being hung. Break a rare wild horse. Lasso and hogtie a wagon thief. Play blackjack. Duel some drunken bystander. Honestly, if there's anything quintessentially Western, this game has it, and it's fun. And again, it adds mounds of quality and believability to the setting.

In ways that GTA4 was not, RDR is beautiful. Something about riding a dark horse up a snowy slope while the sun rises directly ahead, its rays piercing the spaces between the needles of the pine trees around you is breathtaking. Standing on a clifftop in Mexico overlooking a vast desert, moonlit and barren, is awesome. Catching a herd of buffalo grazing a golden plain while storm clouds gather overhead, faint flashes of lightning flickering in the sky, is wondrous. Being charged by a bear and activating the slow-motion, bullet-time-esque Dead Eye mode just as the bear rears up, begins to roar, and swipes at you with its claw, letting you know just how fucking massive it is and just how fucking dead you're about to be, is terrific. Accidental beauty is... well... a thing of beauty. It's one of the things that made Flower so great; rare is the moment that the player must encounter something beautiful. Instead, the encounter is usually the product of being in the right place at the right time with all the right elements doing all the right things. Like all things fleeting, these moments of accidental beauty in Red Dead Redemption are to be cherished.

The game is not without its flaws, however. Particularly, it has bugs aplenty.  John Marston tries to throw a woman off her horse and steal it. Instead, he simply mounts the horse without removing the woman. What results is some Frankenmarston with four arms, two heads, and a skirt. John Marston attempts to pull the reins to stop his horse in the middle of a city street. Instead of stopping, the horse and John teleport repeatedly to the end of the street and the camera pulls back rapidly. In a gunfight, one of the enemies was invisible. No good.

Still, that said, the story is enjoyable. John Marston is hardly a relatable character; he's violent and stupid as sin, and is only humanized by his family. Me? I'm not violent, stupid, or married. I'm nothing like John Marston. It's refreshing to find games that are less concerned about putting the player directly in the game via silent protagonist or character creation system or moral choice and more concerned about depicting a character's growth from start to finish via interesting dialogue and actual character traits and choices. With John Marston, Rockstar Games joins a slew of other developers in spitting on the grave of the ambiguous JPRG hero, in all his tough yet emo, haunted yet unflinchingly good, wise yet teenaged glory, and his friend, the nameless, faceless, voiceless WRPG hero.

Is this my favorite non-MGS game of the console generation? Probably. It's better than Assassin's Creed II, and she's my darling. Grand Theft Auto IV is undoubtedly a better game, but I'm a sucker for unfamiliar settings that are depicted with great detail and accuracy.

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