Red Dead Redemption Review: Does the Rockstar Game Still Hold?

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Spoilers to come for 2010 Red Dead Redemption.

I remembered 2010 Red Dead Redemption as one of my favorite games of this decade, maybe all the time. It was an easy thing to remember because I was getting more and more agitated from year to year and without any official news of a sequel. "If the waiting between Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V was only five years old, why should I wait longer for Red Dead Redemption 2? "I asked with total unconsciousness about the realities of video game development. But with the result finally arriving this Friday, I decided to launch the original Red Dead Redemption and see if it was as good as I remembered. The results were surprising.

To save time, I did not try to finish 100% as I did during the first game in 2010, and that definitely changed the course of the game to only make history missions with the game of chance casual "Stranger". You see how all the small tasks and secondary missions are essential to the game, because without them, the main story can be quite repetitive. Once you've completed the tutorial missions early, most missions involve planning to do one thing, the thing being disturbed by the enemies, you have to kill the enemies, then you finish the thing. The way you kill enemies can vary – kill them on horseback! Kill them with a Gatling gun! – but the song remains largely the same, so you'd better find the story compelling.

And that's where the Rockstar formula begins to crumble because you can see that they do not really reinvent the West, they just play hard and then overlap in their patent brand of nihilism and antipathy comic. This becomes clearly uncomfortable in the second act of the story where the protagonist John Marston travels to Mexico to find the men he is supposed to kill. The story continues, because it is clear that the corrupt government and the idealistic rebels can not rush to help John. So it's mission after mission where John is more and more annoyed and where the values ​​of both sides are made grotesque. The player does not have much choice in the matter – all missions must be completed to advance the story – then you will sometimes help the disgusting colonel Agustín Allende who rapes peasant women or help rebel leader Abraham Reyes , too selfish to understand the responsibilities of the government. Everything is terrible, everyone is a jester, go to the next mission.

The offender nature of equal chances of Rockstar Games is not new. It's part of their brand at this point, and for some, they like the studio's attitude. But eight years later, he is now feeling strangely secure. By offending everyone, they never have to worry about taking a position that might upset people. They just want to show that they can say anything, but they have nothing real to say. If you think that autocratic colonels and rebel leaders who are lenient are two sides of the same coin, that's fine, but it's a weak position that does not really have a realistic meaning. It is simply to preach at best, and at worst, nihilism. Be that as it may, Marston's course seems thinner, populated by parodies of stock rather than actual place.

And Red Dead wants something real in the end. He wants you to feel real emotions for Marston and his trip. That's why the end is designed as a kind of gambling den. He wants to show the closure of the border by killing an original outlaw like Marston, and that death is supposed to carry weight. You can not say, "LOL, nothing matters except for our story, take our history seriously." In reality, it is simply a defining attribute of the Western genre: the modern world crushes and crushes the pre-modern world.

But I still love Red Dead Redemptionor at least what Red Dead represent. The game mechanics are still pretty solid (although trying to ride and shoot enemies is always a bit of a pain, and the cover mechanisms might be a bit more robust), and let's face it: 39, another does integrated AAA games the old west. Even Hollywood is not really a western anymore. If you want to play in this sandbox, then Red Dead Redemption is somehow your best option, and I'll admit that it scratches. It's also a game in which you get what you put in it. I would probably find the game more rewarding if I tried to unlock all the outfits, defeat all the fortresses, hunt all the animals, and so on.

My recent playthrough on Red Dead Redemption I've shown that even though the game may not be as pure as in my memory, I still love the central idea of ​​the western open world in the GTA mold. Yes, there are history and rhythm problems that will probably reappear in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar is one of the most successful video game studios in the world – they will not tear it all down), but at least my expectations have been tempered. The sequel is not at war with nostalgia. I now have a good measure on Red Dead Redemption and I'm more than ready to go back to the old west.