Red Dead Redemption 2 Review — Boy Howdy
This title was reviewed on PS4, but is also available on Xbox One.
If there’s one thing about the cowboy era that people take for granted, it’s baths. All that writhing around in mud, blood, and horse crud is enough to make anyone smell like a Smash tournament venue. Yet Red Dead Redemption 2, the much anticipated sequel that’s actually a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, presents the dying days of the wild west in every dirty detail, and couldn’t make it seem more appealing.
Players assume the role of Arthur Morgan, a straight talkin’ cowboy and member of the Van der Linde gang led by Dutch van der Linde at the turn of the 19th century (1899 for you city folk), as their wild west lifestyle becomes less and less welcome in the face of western industrialism and federal law. Acting as less of a gang and more of a family, the Van der Linder gang are constantly on the run from federal agents, grasping at the last days of the American Frontier, and by extension, their way of life. As such their campsite and base of operations is constantly shifting location, bringing them to new environments and towns on a regular basis, where Dutch is always promising that the gang’s last big score is just around the corner.
The World of Red Dead Redemption 2 is an utterly awe inspiring expanse of dirt roads, rolling hills, winding rivers, and vast woods, dotted all over with towns, settlements, and farmland just waiting to be discovered. When you get a chance to stare out over the natural vistas of late 19th century rural America, it’s easy to get swept up in the overwhelming sense of natural beauty that constantly emanates from the map in this game. What really brings the whole thing to life though, and makes it more than pretty wallpaper material and cinematic trailer bait for the marketing team, is the amazing attention to detail that adds depth and life to the world around you.
Rockstar have taken the Grand Theft Auto V approach of filling this world with copious amounts of mundane detail, but in this setting it contributes so much more to the organic feel of the game rather than making it feel bloated like it did in GTA. I spent an obscene amount of hours in Red Dead Redemption 2 doing simple activities such as playing poker, hunting, fishing, horse riding, and just generally meandering, seeing what random events and encounters would pull me in — and they never failed to surprise. Whether it’s saving a strangers loved one from bandits, or just hucking sticks of dynamite at klan gatherings, the random occurrences mean there’s always something interesting happening around you, with new things to do and new people to meet.
The characters you do meet all tend to feel like they’ve got their own stories going on, with their own goals and ambitions, and each mission you undertake with them gives you what feels like a small fragment of a bigger story, which is a hallmark of great storytelling. This applies especially to the colourful cast of characters that make up the camp, such as Hosea Matthews, Leopold Strauss, Sadie Adler, Susan Grimshaw, Josiah Trelawny, Lenny Summers and many more — characters so memorable and complex, I actually remembered them by name instead of referring to them as “Gunslinger lady” and “Top hat guy”. Even John Marston, main character of the first game gets some more development, as we’re given an insight into his backstory and family life, including the relationship with his son, Jack. Seeing them all grow and forming attachments to these characters is what makes it all the more gut wrenching when they start getting gunned down and dropping like flies at an NRA meeting, something the writers seem to have understood well and implemented effectively.
When all of this comes together, along with the incredibly fitting soundtrack and clever use of colour palettes and varied environments, what you get is a rich, authentic feeling atmosphere that so few games, if any, have ever pulled off to such a successful degree. It’s a game that uses everything it has to create a certain mood to compliment the events taking place, and it’s easy to find yourself being completely absorbed by this. So much so, that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the only game I have ever played with a fast travel system that I didn’t use once because I didn’t want to miss a single thing this game had to offer — and if you know how impatient I am, that’s a real achievement.
That’s not to say that there was nothing that tested my patience about the game. The first and most obvious being the Rockstar trademark of clunky controls where everything handles like a horses ass, including the literal horses ass. While I’m of the opinion that mastering the way the horses and vehicles handle is all part of the experience that reflects the nature of learning to ride a horse, that leaves no excuse for the on foot controls, and the cover system that likes to take the piss — Uncharted managed to iron this out after a couple of sequels, whereas the Rockstar engine doesn’t seem to be getting any better at it.
There’s also the fact that the game has no sense of balancing income, and as such you tend to be making more money that you can manage to spend once you get a fair amount of story missions under your belt. After a certain bank robbery I found myself with more than enough money to upgrade all of my guns, fully upgrade camp, and buy enough supplies to break my horses back with still enough left to pay off the bounty for robbing the bank 20 times over. This is a bit of a common problem in video games, but in this instance it really undermines the whole story of Dutch waaahing on about how the gang needs just a bit more money to retire from crime for good when I have enough whiskey money to last 3 lifetimes.
So have Rockstar done it again? Not only that, they’ve done it better than anything else they’ve done before, as Red Dead Redemption 2 has easily become my favourite Rockstar game of all time, which is a take so hot I’m willing to fight any Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas fanboys who disagree. Between the jaw dropping detail in the open world, the fascinating characters, and the rousing soundtrack, Red Dead Redemption 2 creates an immersive fantasy world better than any fantasy game on the market could hope. If only the development team were still alive today to see the fruits of their labour, it would bring a tear to their eye, god rest their souls.
Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.
