Fisted Reasoning: Why Red Dead Redemption Could be the King of Westerns
Posted by Owen Johnson at 11:00 AM Apr 27, 2010
​Generally speaking the Western genre is a horse so thoroughly dead and beaten that the entertainment industry no longer knows what to do with it. Countless movies have been filmed, books have been written, and TV shows have been made that appear to have farmed that resource and left the soil barren. However, as the entertainment industry expands and evolves into new frontiers, so too does the field of each genre. Now when talking about video games -- as we tend to do here at Joystick Division -- the Western genre seems to me to be a virtually untouched, nutrient-rich field just begging to be farmed.
Enter Red Dead Redemption, not the first Western video game by any means (it is itself a spiritual successor to Red Dead Revolver on the PS2), but in this journalist's opinion it stands to be the biggest and the best to date - read on to find out why.
1. Do Whatever You Want in the Wild West
In RDR you play as John Marston, ex-gang member, current family man, and an all-around hard-ass. You've been tasked to track down former gang members by the government, with threat to your family's well-being if you don't comply. Yes, there is a story here, but considering this is a sandbox-style game, you're largely free to do whatever your heart desires. Do you dream of being a gun-slinging outlaw back when the West was still wild? Or if not that, how about a poker-playing gambler, or a headhunting bounty hunter? Still not your thing? Perhaps you'd rather travel the prairie herding cattle like the traditional cowboys, or just hang out in the saloons arm wrestling and playing five finger fillet. You can do all of this and more, but bear in mind your actions are not without consequence. There is a morality system in place, and based on your endeavors you can range anywhere from lauded hero to finding yourself WANTED with a bounty on your head.
2. The Combat
The game plays from the third-person perspective, with combat and gunplay the primary focus. Marston can take cover, target specific enemies, blind-fire, free-aim, all in addition to targeting specific body parts. To give the player the feel of being a true sharp shooting gun slinger Rockstar has included a feature called Dead-Eye. Dead-Eye allows you to slow down time -- similar to the likes of bullet-time in Max Payne -- and mark targets such as specific appendages or multiple foes. Then, once your allotted target selection time expires, Marston fires at the marked targets with extreme speed and accuracy. In the interest of keeping the combat fresh, there exists a multitude of weaponry to be discovered and utilized, including semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, shotguns, lever and bolt-action rifles, knives, dynamite, moltov cocktails, mounted gattling guns, cannons, and of course a lasso. Combined with the physics and graphics engines being used (more on this below), this results in what is sure to be hours upon hours of body-dropping entertainment.
3. Exploration and Random Encounters
There is a massive world to explore in RDR that surpasses all previous sand-box games, including GTA: San Andreas. While you're out treasure hunting, game hunting, or just traversing the plains on your trusty steed, you'll experience randomly generated encounters such as hangings, ambushes, pleas for help, and animal attacks. In some of these instances the decisions you make will impact your over-all morality, so don't be whimsical in your decision-making.
4. The Technology
As I briefly mentioned before, Rockstar has really pushed the envelope technologically speaking with this upcoming Western. RDR utilizes NaturalMotion's Euphoria physics engine in a number of new ways. For instance, a character would never fall down a flight of stairs the same way -- a slight movement to the left or right would dramatically change the fall. On top of pushing the euphoria engine to the limit, the game also uses Rockstar's proprietary RAGE graphics engine, which was used in GTA IV. Check out this video that details the weapons physics, as well as the impact they have on Marston's enemies.
5. The Gang's All Here
In the games "Free Roam" multiplayer mode, you'll be able to form "posses" with your friends of up to 8 players. Much like the single-player game, you all will be free to roam about hunting game, robbing passer-bys, headhunting, or just taking in the beauty with your closest chums. If you and your friends feel like terrorizing a town, by all means do so, just keep in mind that everything you do carries over to your singleplayer game -- translation: face shootings of the innocent will negatively impact your morality. Other than Free Roam, multiplayer will offer Shootout, Gang Shootout, Gold Rush, and Grab the Bag. Shootout is pretty self-explanatory (Deathmatch, JIC), as for Gold Rush there are bags of gold in select locations that the participants try to grab and bring to a safe zone. Grab the Bag is similar to Gold Rush, but there is only one bag that all participants will be fighting over. Check the video below for a more detailed look.
I sincerely hope that you haven't used all your sick days yet this year, because come May 18th I foresee you coming down with something.
