Originally published October 2015

Rockstar Games is a publisher that has managed to achieve the same sort of expectations with their games that Squaresoft had for its Final Fantasy games during their peak: Every big release of theirs will be praised by critics the world over, regardless of how good the game actually is. Perhaps that is a bit too harsh of a statement to start my review of Red Dead Redemption, so instead I'll quote my co-worker's opinion: "Rockstar makes the best mediocre games"... I guess that's not better, huh? What I'm trying to say is that Red Dead Redemption is a good game, but it does not deserve the overwhelming praise it was given at its initial release.

I actually got Red Dead Redemption when it first came out but put it down after playing up to a certain point, and I hadn't touched it until only just recently. After I had watched some good westerns a few weeks ago and suddenly got the desire for an Old West atmosphere again, I decided to jump back in and finish it. Since it had been so long since I last played the game, I had forgotten a great deal about the story, so I started over despite having made it to the final region of the game. Now, I have a very fresh experience with Red Dead in my mind and can safely review it on the single-player side as a whole. I played the multiplayer a while back and had a lot of fun with it at the time, and I'm fairly certain I still would like it if there were still a community for it, but I doubt that I would find even half as many players. That's the nature of aging online multiplayer games, I suppose.

I'll get into the story towards the end of this review this time since I intend to discuss spoiler-heavy topics. So if you still have not learned the important plot events of a game that is almost 5 years old and have managed to avoid them till now, skip my story section of the review.

Gameplay

If you couldn't tell from my opening statement, my opinion of Red Dead Redemption has shifted in the negative direction since I started over. It could be that enough time has passed and that the hype has worn off, which is the main purpose of doing these late bird reviews (aside from not having the time, money, or motivation to do it when the game initially is released). It could also be that I've grown to appreciate and expect more of the open-world sandbox with games like Skyrim and Saints Row: The Third.

Despite its lengthy development time and seemingly massive scope, Red Dead Redemption is a significantly smaller game than Skyrim, with a lot less going on. In fact, I would say that Red Dead Redemption is a significantly smaller game than the franchise Rockstar is known for. Having played through the storyline and done a fair amount of the side stuff all over again, I'd argue that even Grand Theft Auto III is longer and has more to do than Red Dead. I suppose that's what you might expect from a game set in the Old West, as they certainly didn't have much to do back then in the real world, but what there is to do here is only fun for a short while before it becomes busy work meant to pad out the experience.

Busy Work

Busy work is a majority of the gameplay in Red Dead Redemption. Of the game's entire story progression, 30% of the story missions provide tutorials to the various mechanics in the game, 60% of the story missions are rehashes of what you've already done (shooting a bunch of dudes and riding a horse or carriage all over the place), and the remaining 10% are unique and interesting segments where something new is accomplished or learned.

Outside of the story quests are the side quests and the various activities you can do in the meantime. The side quests involve talking to random strangers you meet who ask you to hunt animals, fetch items, or do other random favors. These are mildly interesting as some of the interactions can be quite comical or intriguing with the classic Rockstar dialogue, but they are often short-lived and have little lasting impact on the world as a whole, or on the story's progression. Sometimes, they're just downright inconvenient and serve only as a distraction to the other distractions.

When you're not doing side quests for strangers, you can be doing one of the various activities available, such as the gambling mini-games available like Texas Hold Em Poker, Blackjack, and Liars Dice. You can also do horse wrangling, which involves moving your joystick back and forth as though the character were walking on a balancing beam--because we all know that everyone's favorite thing to do in video games is to move the joystick back and forth to balance a character. You can even do such exciting activities like arm wrestling where you tap the button a bunch of times as you slowly push the other person's hand down. Does any of this sound exciting? Because it's not. I like poker and blackjack as card games, but the process of playing them in Red Dead removes the fun you have playing with friends and makes it as tedious and boring as arm-wrestling or horse wrangling.

There's also the dueling mini-game that is confusing as all hell to figure out at first because the interface is overly complicated. Dueling is initiated if someone challenges you in the street, on a mission, or if you're caught cheating at poker. You then have to master some timing and weird meter management to disarm or kill the opponent before they kill you, just like in the Old West. I will admit that once I finally understood the mini-game I enjoyed doing it because it made you feel pretty cool shooting the gun out of an opponent's hand before they even get to aim at you. However, there were specific missions and moments where you were required to kill the person in the duel, but the game didn't tell you. Rather than informing you that you couldn't win the match at all unless you aimed to kill, it would just let you fail over and over, leading to a fair amount of confusion and frustration.

If you don't want to wait for someone to approach you for a duel and just want to go kill some bad guys, there are bandit hideouts scattered about the world that you can assault and massacre through. These usually take about 10 to 20 minutes to complete as the hideouts are rather large in scale most of the time. Naturally, they always have a lot of enemies for you to clear out in classic shootout fashion. However, sometimes they have an extra task attached to it, like riding a carriage with a safe into town. Once you clear out the hideout, it stays empty for 24 in-game hours and then is refilled with new meat bags for you to shoot so you can do it all again, if so inclined.

If you want to channel your inner Django or Dr. King Schultz from Django Unchained, you can also hang around towns waiting for bounties to be posted. If you accept the posted bounty, you can hunt down the individual and choose to either kill him or capture him alive and return him to the local jail. Capturing him, like in most other activities that involve hunting a person down in this game, nets you more cash reward. Likewise, if you do too many ill deeds in public that are generally not approved, you may find yourself with a bounty on your head, leading to random encounters with hunters ready to kill you on sight.

Speaking of random encounters, there are also just the various brief activities that you just come across as you travel the world. They are perhaps the most filler of the bunch when it comes to any sort of progression. There are numerous different encounters you might have on the road with people needing help or trying to ambush you. They're never all that interesting and can sometimes be completed in less than a minute, but I feel that they serve a different purpose: they are vital to adding to the atmosphere of the game. You might see an overturned wagon with several bandits holding up the owners on the side of the road, or someone fleeing a pack of wolves, or a prisoner fleeing US Marshals. You might even be requested to save a person's loved one from being hanged by random villains. There's rarely much of a reward for such trivial activities, but they give life to the region and make it feel like there is constantly something happening in the world of Red Dead Redemption. If these menial tasks weren't in the game, the world would feel stale, empty, and dead, waiting for the player to initiate the next quest.

Outside all of those activities are the ambient challenges, aka obsessive-compulsive goals. These are assigned to you within your menu screen and simply involve you hunting animals, seeking treasure, or gathering herbs. Why would you do such menial tasks? For the special items and costumes, you can unlock in the process of doing so, of course! These net you special abilities, extra efficiency at killing more things, and outfits that make you look badass or silly. When I say obsessive-compulsive, I mean that this is where the game is at its most tedious. There is nothing really forcing you to do these tasks--or most of the others for that matter--except for the minor rewards and the psychotic desire to complete something. Even though I'm a completionist who gets a small bit of enjoyment out of clearing out a quest journal and completing all my tasks, after wandering a field for hours looking for skunks to shoot, or riding around the world looking for stupid herbs, the tedium overwhelmingly outweighed my desire for completion.

Padding

I realize that despite my initial statements, listing all the various activities available to you might have made it seem like there's quite a lot to do in Red Dead. However, keep in mind that a fair amount of these activities involve the same thing over and over again in different regions of the map. There's no real end to all the tasks except for those stranger side-quests, or the super tedious tasks assigned to you to get all the costumes. Even then, you still have to ride all over the place on your horse, kill a bunch of guys, and gather stupid herbs, over and over. So there's plenty to do, but not much variety.

It's surprising to me how much of Red Dead Redemption feels like busy work when I look at it now. I remember Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas having so much to do on the massive map. While there were certainly dozens of mini-games that were not the most fun or worth doing again in GTA, it still felt like a majority of the game and its "busy work" were worth the time. I wonder if I'd feel the same way now with my more pessimistic view of Rockstar's design. What I do know is that I feel that a majority of Red Dead Redemption is fluff for a relatively short story, which we'll get into eventually.

The real problem I have is that despite it being a relatively small sandbox by the standards of sandbox games, the game wants you to recognize how big the world is and how much there is for you to do in this massive expansiveness of digital land. You spend so much time on your damn horse riding through the areas from one destination to the next. Even in story missions, the goals are usually pretty straightforward and involve a shootout here and there, but you still have to ride on your horse to the destination for 5-10 minutes before the mission actually starts. This certainly adds to the atmosphere the game is attempting to build and allows characters to chit-chat and provide characterization, but after a dozen quests that require you to ride to an area and back, it starts to feel needlessly stretched out.

Outside of missions, there are several fast travel methods available. One requires you to be in town and have money to travel to only a specific list of local locations. The other is rather finicky in its requirements and can be a trial to set up before finally being able to fast travel, but it is simply a campfire you can set up in the wilderness. Regardless of which option you choose, you still have to sit through some lengthy loading screens before you finally arrive at your destination.

Like I said, the world feels too big. I think that in terms of a sandbox, it's spaced out rather well, especially in a world where towns are spread out across the region like they would be in the early 1900s. But there are so many quests or tasks that require you to go all over the map in such frequency that it just makes the game feel extremely padded with excessive horse-riding. Since your horse is never as fast as the sports cars in GTA, the length of time it takes to reach your destination only becomes more apparent, especially when it's just another shootout waiting for you.

Shooting

I realize that I've been harping on the game and its mundanity a bunch, but as the quote I used at the beginning of the review indicated, Rockstar is still really good at this mediocrity. The shooting feels good and the Dead Eye aim mechanic makes the smallest encounters an exciting and cool spectacle as you take out a dozen guys at once with your rifle from your horse. Dead Eye is the mechanic that allows you to slow down time to mark multiple targets and take them all out at once in a flurry of rapid gunshots. The shooting is quite satisfying and the range of weapons you have available only further enhances the experience of hunting or fighting in the world. Of the two saving graces of Red Dead Redemption, the shooting is the reason that the mundane and menial tasks are tolerable for so long.

It's also what made the multiplayer fun. I won't go into much detail on the multiplayer mode since it's certainly become less important as the game has aged. I will say that I remember having a good time with friends assaulting the hideouts and doing the various activities available. Much like the idea behind GTA Online, just having the threat of another player coming along and possibly killing you in the open world adds enough tension to the land to make things much more interesting. Every encounter you have in the wild of Red Dead Redemption has the possibility of being interrupted by a rogue player looking to ruin your day. Not much thought was put into its balancing because if that other player roaming the land has a sniper rifle, they've probably already won. Nonetheless, it’s similar to how one might play Dark Souls with the chance of being invaded, and that added tension only makes the experience more exciting.

Presentation

Despite being a game on the previous generation of consoles and being about 5 years old, Red Dead Redemption is still a good-looking game. Sure, there are plenty of NPCs whose details were not given much attention. Sure, there are plenty of blurred textures all over the world you might see. Yet, of all the games I've played that have tried to display realistic emotions on their character's faces, I can't recall many others that were as successful as Red Dead Redemption with its main character, John Marston. Even with the games that have been released since then that use motion capture technology, like L.A. Noire, or Until Dawn, a game that just came out on the PS4, I feel like John Marston is the best example of a character who is able to get past the "dead-eye syndrome" of the uncanny valley (no pun intended).

The details on Marston's face and around his eyes move and adjust properly to match the emotion he's supposed to be feeling, so it doesn't look like some weird silicone skin on a robot trying to mimic emotions. Just the edges around his eyes and how they expand and contract help make his eyes look more lifelike than those of games on the current generation of consoles. I think if anyone wants to make Heavy Rain-like games with a focus on characters and their expressions, they need to take some notes from Rockstar's Western.

It also helps that the voice acting is as good as it is. This is where Rockstar usually succeeds and it's no different here. Red Dead Redemption has quality voice acting as usual and the characters successfully match their intended portrayal. There are a series of unique characters you meet who are all rather convincing thanks to the committed voice work. John Marston's Bill Paxtonish, gravelly voice is a joy to listen to from start to finish, especially when he's shouting out insults and threats in broken Spanish. If it weren't for the solid and convincing voice delivery, the game's atmosphere would be way less interesting.

I already mentioned how the random encounters add to the atmosphere of the game, and the atmosphere is definitely another area where Rockstar typically succeeds. Red Dead Redemption oozes Old West atmosphere. It's part of what makes the menial tasks more tolerable. If you watch some classic westerns and want to play a game that matches that style and grit with some convincing atmosphere, Red Dead Redemption is a good place to start.

Finally, the music, though mostly residing in the background with occasional strums of a guitar or trumpet calls, adds more to the atmosphere and the style of the game. It's always just noticeable enough to add to the experience and not so overpowering that it becomes a distraction. Even when the music is suddenly replaced by an actual song with singing, it's used sparingly and where appropriate, for the most part. I didn't care for the songs they used, but again, they were infrequent.

Story (SPOILERS)

Finally, we come to the crux of my review and what I consider the tipping point for my overall opinion of Red Dead Redemption. As I said, despite the overwhelming tedium, the gameplay has some quality mechanics that go hand-in-hand with the presentation to evoke an atmosphere you're not likely to find in any other Old West video game. But all that atmosphere is not much use if the story that is meant to motivate you through the world is no good. So... is the story good?

Yes and no. The story is simple and actually quite brief if you break it down to the actual important pivotal points in it. Despite being a 20+ hour storyline, the actual events that have any real impact on characters or their goals make up about a rather small amount of the total "story" missions in the game. The rest fall into the category of filler.

You play as John Marston, a former outlaw who has tried to go straight in his life of crime and wants to become a normal rancher in America in the early 1900s. Unfortunately for him, his past catches up with him and he is forced by the US government to track down members of his former gang and bring them to justice. If he is unsuccessful in tracking or killing his former comrades, the government claims that it will harm his wife and son. In a botched initial attempt at killing one of the former gang members, Marston is shot. He's then nursed back to health by a local ranching family and the game officially starts.

A majority of the story missions that follow in the first hour are tutorials for various mini-games available. Eventually, you slowly start building a posse to go after the man who shot you, with a lot of filler in between. Of those missions that are not filler, the plot of the whole game is essentially broken up into halves. The first half has you going after one former friend and chasing him from the US into Mexico. The next half has you going after another former comrade, as well as trying to live a normal life till the inevitable classic Western ending. The first half is certainly the more involved one, as it introduces a plethora of characters and involves you chasing down the same man all the way into Mexico, getting you involved in the local rebellion.

As though John Marston channeled my inner irritation throughout the game, he becomes rather vocal with all the back-and-forth he has to do to accomplish his goal. A fair amount of the time you are just looking for one or two guys, but you have to do so many favors for everyone else who is willing to "help" you, it takes forever to actually move the story along. So, when you're tasked with finding yet another former gang member, Marston gets just as irritated as I am with the impending tedium.

Perhaps that's a reason why I like Marston so much. I would actually say that John Marston is the other saving grace of this game. If there is something that Rockstar can still do right in their games, it's characterization. Marston is a very likable protagonist as he is rather consistent from start to finish in his behavior and beliefs. Sure, being an open-world video game, the player could make him go against that. However, in the moments when John is interacting with other characters in a dialogue or cutscene, it's easy to latch on to him. His reluctance to do the job for government officials who are just as evil as the men they're hunting, his frustration in having to do seemingly endless favors for lowlifes just to get what he needs from them, and his simple aggressive attitude you would expect from a former outlaw all help build him into a believable, likable, and awesome character. Not to mention the stupid things he says in gunfights in Mexico are hilarious: "John Marson! Remember the nombre!"

Thus it is rather unfortunate that John has to die by the end of the game. This was not unexpected for me as not only did I learn of the spoiler, but that's pretty much the way it always ends in a Western for anyone who was on the wrong side of the law at one point. If Batman's story took place in the Old West, he'd certainly die by the end of his movie, several times. I actually don't have a problem with Rockstar's decision to kill off Marston at the end of his story, I just have a problem with how they handled it in terms of game design.

For practically the entire game, you are with John, doing all the main and side missions, getting enveloped in the environment, and latching on to him as a character. They reward you for doing all these quests and challenges with new weapons, badass outfits, and enhanced abilities. You build John up as you go through the game so that as he experiences the various trials and rewards, so do you.

Yet, when John is killed, the game doesn't really end. Instead, you take control of his son, Jack, four years after John's murder. Jack inherits everything from his father: money, abilities, guns, outfits. He's identical in every way when it comes to game mechanics. However, he is not the same character who earned all these rewards. He's not John Marston, who proved throughout the game to be a likable character. In fact, Jack Marston made some bad first impressions when he first made his appearance in the game.

The character of Jack Marston isn't introduced until the final chapter of the story. He's mentioned in dialogue beforehand, but the players don't see him until the last chapter as John. During this time, he's a young, rebellious, immature, and stupid 15-year-old who, while probably an accurate depiction of a dumbsh*t teenager in the Old West, gets annoying real quick. Hormonal and bipolar, the crap he says to his dad goes immediately from loving and friendly to hostile and bitter and vice versa. The whole point of this game's chapter is to both emphasize John's desire to finally be at peace in his new life and to provide all the necessary details to Jack's character sheet before he takes over. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if Rockstar hadn't decided to emphasize his attitude and age so much and focused more on the details. There were different ways in which Jack could have shown how he craved his father's respect and would be righteously vengeful for his death, or how Jack was still an idealist who loved to read books and didn't trust the government, without having to make him an ungrateful and irrationally dumb teenager.

So when we finally take control of Jack 4 years after his father's death, he's still only 19. While he's certainly seen horrible things and it’s understandable that he would now have issues that might make him appear as a hardened individual, it's hard to shake off the first impressions we only just got of that character. The angry things he says when he shoots government officials, the more eloquent vocabulary that would come from being an avid book reader, and the distaste for prostitution he has based on what he thinks his parents would say all add to his character, certainly. Yet it just makes me wonder why Rockstar decided to even bother to put all the angsty teenager crap in there at all for him because those details don't have much of an effect on his older self at all. All it does is make me like him less than the original protagonist, whose cool outfits he's now wearing.

This leads me to ask why Rockstar would also limit John Marston's costume choice in the final chapter. I knew that John was going to die and that Jack would take over, but I was unaware of the fact that once you start the final chapter of John's story, you are stuck wearing his cowboy outfit. Considering it's not easy to get some of these outfits and the tasks involved require you to play a fair amount of the game, it's a tad irritating that you're essentially getting them for a much less interesting character to use. If I had it my way, the game would simply notify me to create a separate save before John would be locked into his final days, so he can still die and I can be given a choice to tie up my loose ends with John and all his equipment he's earned, or continue through the game to the epilogue as Jack and continue to explore the open world with him. They could still keep Jack and all his material after the story's end, just give me the option to enjoy the game and its finer points with its better protagonist without forcing me to look at a walkthrough beforehand.

Since I didn't know about this decision I had to make for myself before it was too late, I just rolled through and finished the game without looking back. I now have Jack as my character, but I've lost all motivation to do any of the other menial, mundane activities in the game. Since Jack has all his own dialogue recorded for the side-missions, excluding one particular string, it might actually be better to just save them all for him when you play Red Dead Redemption and just use John Marston for strictly the story missions. That way, there's more opportunity in the game to build Jack up as a more interesting character than the dumb kid you meet toward the end of the game.

Closing Thoughts

I know I've gone on a while with this review (much like how a game that's not actually that long if you strip out all the fluff and unnecessary horseback riding does), but there's a lot to talk about, especially considering how universally praised the game is. Red Dead Redemption still has some strong core mechanics and the two saving graces I mentioned. However, around those three pillars of a great game rests a sea of mediocre fluff and odd design choices. Red Dead Redemption is a good game that loses its steam far before you notice it and once you do, it can become difficult to stay on board, especially when one of the best things about it goes away.