Seeing as Red Dead Redemption 2 has officially been announced to the masses, albeit with no idea what the game is about (John Marston’s name is not even mentioned), I thought I’d voice some thoughts. While I wholeheartedly enjoyed both Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, I am worried by Red Dead Redemption 2. Aside from hype, which apparently can’t be stopped, seeing as the collective internet ethos freaked the hell out, let me explain why it’s important to be cautious with something like this.
The samurai western you should pay attention to is Red Steel 2 . When the first was revealed as a launch game the hype was through the roof. That was before we knew the limits of motion controls. Not good to say the least. So when a sequel was announced, I was admittedly shocked and a little hesitant. It switched the setting to a Western and even made it into a cel-shaded game. Felt like they were specifically baiting me into a trap, but the results were good. The controls were a lot better thanks to the Wii Motion Plus. There’s still a bit of jank there, but again, much better than the original. Just goes to show that developers can learn from their mistakes. Ubisoft is kind of the king of that actually. Remember the first Assassin’s Creed ? Yi
In a time where open-world games are a dime a dozen, my problem with most titles in the genre is that they rarely force you to engage with the world that has been laid out. Instead, developers just use the confines of an open World games Missions-world to place the structure of their game inside of, because it’s the normal thing to do more often than not nowadays. Simply existing in an open-world though isn’t enough when you don’t feel any sort of connection to the environment that you’re within. Forcing you to explore and take your time in the world allows you to get to know the area which you find yourself in. This is something that I think The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did so perfectly last year , and it’s something that I think finds success here in Red Dead Redemption 2 as well.
A few days later, John finds the newly freed man asleep on a bench at a train station. Waking him up, John realizes that he is stoned out of his gourd on opium. John reunited the man and his true love all right, a big ol’ pipe of opium. The man nonsensically waves John off, telling him he’s waiting for the train before dipping out into an opiate laden nap. Good job John; you just threw a man headlong back into a life ending addict
This isn’t revolting in the violence sense, but it’s morally reprehensible. Why? Because it’s so true to real life politics that it’s sickening. This type of blackmailing is so commonplace in the back rooms of politics, that it is one of the main cogs that runs the entire machine. Another example of how Rockstar is able to work relevant social commentary into their ga
All of this dynamic immersion works beautifully in Red Dead Redemption 2 , mostly through the ways that Rockstar has integrated so many layers of interaction and detail into its environments, characters, and how Arthur can create such an impact within the world as a whole. As much as Red Dead Redemption 2 still feels like a “Rockstar game,” in a lot of ways it also feels like it is a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the term. That’s not to say you should expect it to be Final Fantasy or The Elder Scrolls by any means, but Rockstar has gone to painstaking lengths to make its vision of the West feel as believable and real as possible, and they nail every detail that is part of it.
Before diving fully into my gripes with something that only has just shy over a minute of game footage that’s been shown, let me explain what made the other two games so special. Both, Red Dead Revolver/Redemption were games that touched on a part of American mythos in the best of ways. Even other cultural mythos play into what makes these games so great, with many different backgrounds showcased. Each game is a unique tail of one man’s quest deeply personal to them. Not only exploring the characters presented fully, but also putting forth some of the best storytelling for video games of such a genre at each respective time. Each felt like a true American western tale.
What Rockstar has built with Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t just a vast world of splendor and beauty within which they have place random mission markers and enemy bases to go clear. Instead, this is a place that they’re legitimately wanting you to live in. Can it be tedious at times? Sure. But more often than not, I think it gives me a stronger sense of intimacy with both Arthur and this setting of the Wild West, and that’s something I haven’t felt in an open-world title in quite awhile.
The Western genre is vast and expansive, and surely there are plenty of other deserving picks that we could go into further detail on. However, the five films we picked below were curated to give a variety of the Western film genre across the past several decades, while also incorporating some significant thematic or aesthetic ties that (likely) may appear in Red Dead Redemption 2 .
