Red Dead Redemption II: Gunfire, horses and outlaws abound in massive tale of the West
ONE OF the most anticipated games of the past five years has finally ridden into town — but has it scored a bullseye, or shot itself in the foot?
FOR a genre that’s been a staple of the movie industry literally since filmmaking began, there
haven’t been a huge number of games set in the Wild West.
The most significant of that wild bunch has been 2010s Red Dead Redemption, released by
Rockstar and notable as their only major title which has never received a PC release.
The game, telling the story of outlaw John Marston, was a huge success and there have been
calls for a sequel ever since — and those calls have finally been answered with the release of Red Dead Redemption II on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Set in 1899, you are cast as Arthur Morgan, unrepentant outlaw and member of the Van Der
Linde gang, which draws inspiration from the real-life Butch Cassidy’s ‘Wild Bunch’ gang.
Led by the charismatic Dutch Van Der Linde, who talks of a grand vision about moving west away from the encroachment of civilisation and living as free men and women, the vision of the gang basically focuses on committing a lot of crime and shooting a lot of people.
One of the key themes throughout the game is the end of the Old West Outlaw gang era and the question about whether you really can run from civilisation, and what it means to be
civilised.
Rockstar have drawn inspiration from pretty much every Western you can imagine, from old Zane Grey dime-store novels through to classic John Wayne movies, Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, and even the Deadwood and Westworld TV shows.
The game looks incredible, the setting is amazing, the character designs are excellent, and it’s just a gorgeous, immersive place to find yourself in — especially on a large-screen 4K HDR capable OLED or ULED TV.
Red Dead Redemption II has been polished brighter than the sun at High Noon, and
features an attention to detail bordering on obsessive.
Horses swat flies away with their tails.
Snow settles on your jacket.
Your remaining ammunition is reflected by how many rounds are visible in your bandolier.
In one case, I had stolen a horse-drawn oil tanker and the owners fired at me as I rode off. One of their bullets penetrated the tank and for the rest of the mission it was leaking oil, leaving a black sticky trail on the ground, even pooling when stationary.
Beyond the lengthy main story, the world is full of random encounters too.
These can range from ladies needing a ride into town after their horses died on them, to lost explorers who have been bitten by snakes and require first aid or a bullet to the head to put them out of their misery (depending how you want to play your character).
Arthur Morgan is not an especially good person, no matter how you play the character, however.
At best, you can play him as honourable, at least in the sense outlaws understand it — particularly not hurting civilians or other people at the low end of the socio-economic scale unnecessarily (Arthur comments at one point “We rob the people who rob people”).
Yes, you can give money to beggars and medicine to the sick, but Arthur is still avowedly an outlaw and more than capable of being particularly unpleasant to people too.
On the face of it, Red Dead Redemption II is a lot more serious than Rockstar’s previous
juggernaut, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V. Indeed, it would be easy to describe this as Grand Theft Equine and laugh drolly as you do so, but that would be doing a spectacular disservice to both games, with are both brilliant in their own right.
While the story is played more or less straight, there’s still plenty of Rockstar’s trademark
humour in the game if you look for it — particularly in the storekeeper’s catalogues and
advertisements, which are very funny and also perfectly evoke the advertising style of the era — as well as some of the more lighthearted missions.
Your home base is the gang’s encampment, which shifts during the game, and you need to
contribute to it to help it grow — for example, hunting animals and bringing them back to camp will help keep everyone fed, while donating items to the community chest will increase funds available for upgrades and resupply of essentials.
How honourable Arthur is has impacts across the game — not only in terms of goods prices, but how people react to him and even how certain events play out.
This is a huge game, bigger than the proverbial open range where the buffalo roam, and
assuming you have a job or family or other grown-up responsibilities, it is going to take you
literally weeks to finish it — Rockstar have said there are more than 1000 things to do in the game, and I can absolutely believe it.
The map sprawls across several fictional states, encompassing biomes ranging from Snowy Mountains to cattle country to swamps to an industrial city with trams trundling through the streets.
Fast travel doesn’t become available until about a quarter to a third of the way through the game — and even then, it was one-way only as far as I could tell — although prior to (and after) that you can use trains and stagecoaches to get to major towns or stations at a cost.
For the most part, if you want to get around, you’re doing it on horseback.
Speaking of horses, as your primary means of conveyance, the developers encourage you to bond with your horse — you can name it, pet it, feed it, brush it, change its saddle and stirrups, and the more time you spend doing these things, the better it responds to you, the more it can do, and the farther away you can summon it from.
It’s not often I can declare a game to be a masterpiece, but that’s what Red Dead Redemption II is.
A sprawling homage to pretty much every Western ever, it’s one of those games you can
disappear into, and I can see myself playing for quite some time to come yet.
Practice your quick-draw with your wallet, make sure you have a fistful of dollars, and get ready to fill your hands with a controller, because this is one game you do not want to watch riding off into the sunset.
Royce Wilson is a freelance games writer for news.com.au. Follow him on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU
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