T w e n t y S i d e d

I’m the gamer who plays certain titles to death, multiple replays exploring every option. While this makes sure I squeeze every ounce of enjoyment for every dollar I spend, it also means I miss a lot of games. Last month PS ran a sale on old titles (probably to increase digital sales do they can justify banning hardcopies) and I finally got around to buying Red Dead Redemption. I’ve been hearing about it for 16 years, so I figured I should get around to it.

I was unimpressed.

I really tried hard to judge it compared to the games of its era (Fallout 3, New Vegas, GTAIV, ACII). Even against its contemporary peers it seems, well…. kinda boring.

The main story arc, John Marston trying to escape a life he never really chose and become something better, is a classic Hollywood redemption story. It’s well written and includes the top-notch voice acting we all expect from Rockstar. It’s not a particularly unique or a fresh concept, but it is an engaging tragedy. The foundation is solid. That’s not the problem.

The game is deliberately slow. The first few hours are “ride horse, talk to ranchers, herd cattle.” Which is great if forcing future cheeseburgers into a coral is your idea of a fun Thursday night. I’m sure they had their reasons for the slow pacing, it’s a deliberate break from the usual dynamic of starting an RPG; action, drama and grabbing your attention immediately. I kept waiting for the hook and it never came.

It didn’t help that while the tutorials for herding cattle and riding a horse were exhaustive, the explanation for how to win a duel was brief. There’s no feedback, so I lost every duel until I got pissed, went into online help guides to figure out what I was doing wrong.

I thought the hunting would be interesting…. until I got mauled by a grizzly or cougar for the 5^th time. I kept thinking I was doing something wrong, was missing a key detail. Like with the gun duels. Nope, sometimes apex predators just teleport in behind you, murder your horse and kill you before you can get off the ground.

(Side note: the very first animal I shot and skinned was a jackalope. I didn’t realize this was a special thing until later.)

I kept hunting, eventually figuring out the spawn rate and how to handle the magic teleporting murder bears. I collected wolf hearts and boar tusks and cougar claws and deer guts and rabbit teeth and beaver toes and whatever the hell else.  All this stuff has to be useful at some point….. Right?

Actually, no. Just for money.

I wound up with a few hundred feathers. Vultures and hawks and eagles and crows and owls. I was sure at some point there would be a reason.

Actually, no. Just for money.

Don’t even get me started on the flowers. I spent hours roaming the deserts and forests picking these damn things expecting there to be a point where they became useful. I mean, there has to be a reason….RIGHT?!?!

Nope. Just more money.

30 years of playing RPGs taught me all this stuff had to have utility at some point. I don’t know who thought a western RPG would be improved by picking flowers, but this guy needs dealt with. It’s probably just to add game hours collecting… stuff.

Boss: “Alright guys, we’re still only at 60 hours. We need to get to 75 hours to justify the price point. I need ideas.”

Lackey #1: “Whorehouses?”

Boss: “Nah, to GTA.”

Lackey#2: “Gun mods?”

Boss: “Ehhh no, to FPS-ish”

Lackey#3: “Base building?”

Boss: “Meh…to complicated.”

Lackey#4: “umm… Flowers?”

“I LOVE IT!”

Maybe they felt like botanists were an under-represented demographic in AAA game titles. Or maybe they were just desperate for content and couldn’t figure what else they could add to their study of muted brown landscapes. All the side quests were disconnected; each task is it’s own closed loop.

Go hunting, earn money, possibly get mauled by a spontaneously emerging grizzly.

Pick flowers, earn money.

Hunt bounties, earn money.

Gamble, earn money.

What is there to do with that money? As it turns out, not a whole lot.

You could get a new outfit, that’s a slightly different shade of brown than the one you’re already wearing, that grants a slight perk to accomplish one of the meaningless tasks faster. Doing well at gambling gets you an outfit that allows you to cheat at gambling. Picking lots of flowers earns a perk to pick flowers more efficiently. Tragically there is no outfit to prevent a grizzly bear from appearing behind you right after you get done skinning the last one that jumped out from behind a patch of grass.

You can earn a ton of cash and buy a horse. Forget the fact that there’s free horses roaming around all over the damn place, or that you could just shoot the guy riding by, steal his horse, ride to the train station and pay a $20 fine. Nah… spend a few hours collecting 400 flowers, earn $1500 and buy a horse. That’s pretty much the same as any other horse and will get killed 10 minutes later by a grizzly.

The side quests had no purpose, which means they really aren’t quests at all. Why not let players choose what kind of feather is in their hat? Without purpose collecting feathers feels less like collecting and more like ritualistic bird murder.

Why not allow flowers to dye certain elements of outfits? Instead of a red scarf, now its green. Or blue. This is my version of John Marston. My John Marston wears a blue tie. My John Marston’s poncho is orange.  These were basic gameplay concepts that were missing, even by 2010 standards. Give players some kind of agency.

In AC: Brotherhood Ezio collected goofy things like shrunken heads and ambergris, but they helped craft new weapons, rebuild Monteriggioni, unlock unique armor or train more recruits to do more complex missions.

GTA: San Andreas had graffiti tags, horseshoes, stealing special cars, secret jumps and oysters. But these had effect, they mattered. Oysters made dating easier and improved swimming, which was important for some missions. Tags made your gang stronger. Money was important because there were things you had to buy to progress in the main story arc. Clothes, haircuts, tattoos, car modifications and helicopters. Money mattered, collecting mattered. Which made the flowers and feathers in RDR so weird because Rockstar already showed they knew how to weave collecting objects into core gameplay.

It took me 40 hours to realize what was bothering me. RDR doesn’t lack content, it lacks connectivity. The frontier is full of things to do, but no reason to do them. After killing my 78^th bear (Literally. I finished the game with 82 bear assassinations. Which still doesn’t feel like enough) I wasn’t thinking about bears, but why Rockstar built so many systems that never seemed to matter to one another. Other than something for completionists and trophy whores to chase. I’m not so arrogant as to think they forgot how to make a video game. Pretty sure the folks at Rockstar know what they’re doing. So, this had to be a conscious decision to NOT connect these things. Had to be. I just don’t know why.

I’m guessing Rockstar wanted this game to be purely focused on the story? The atmosphere? The backdrop? Which, if they didn’t want the game to just become a treasure hunt, chasing feathers, pelts and boar tusks to make a bedazzled set of saddlebags, then why have them at all? If they don’t add anything to the narrative….. don’t add them.

I just never connected with it. It wasn’t the bears. Or the flowers. It wasn’t the painfully slow pace. It kept presenting me with things to do that seemed narratively ridiculous. Hunt and Gamble, or don’t. Be honorable. Or infamous. Track down every bounty possible, or not at all. None of it changed the world or the narrative in any meaningful way whatsoever. It didn’t make the ending more (or less) satisfying. Which all reminded me of a conversation I had with all the guys who were in the D&D saga that created this entire website:

What is an RPG? Do you want to Play a Role that has been written for you to inhabit? Or do you want to Play a Role that you have some agency over?

Patrick Young I was part of a dare where a friend had to get 'psycho killer' tattooed on his ass. His name is Chris and lives in Alabama. To be clear: He's probably not an actual psycho killer.