(2016 Discussion) Red Dead Redemption

[llsaidknockyouout]

I hold this game to lower esteem than most. The voice acting is great. The visuals and atmosphere are lavishly produced. But beyond that, I never found the gameplay or narrative satisfying.

The story is straightforward with a predictable third act for anyone familiar with Rockstar's plots. I can't empathize with the character of John Marston. He redeems himself by killing scores of people, and unlike Niko Bellic from GTA IV, Marston rarely if ever his actions or feels compunction. Marston is not that much different in character than the military buzzcut gun-toting protagonist we've seen in hundreds of games. The morality system operates on a binary, making it effectively pointless.

The gameplay is really predictable. You go to town, watch a cutscene, ride to a canyon, kill 10 people, ride back and get another cutscene. You do this 100 times and that's the meat of the adventure. RPG's at least give you rewards/skills/loot for completing tasks but RDR gives you little for it. As Errant Signal says, it's a content-muncher game in which the story is something that is fed as a reward to the player for completing gameplay chunks rather than the gameplay and story being interwoven together.

One could consider a game like Half-Life 2 a content-muncher too, but with games like HL2, each level is tailor fitted for the player to experience it in a unique way. RDR is just a series of repetitive uniform tasks.

 

[Zhukov]

I agree with the "content-muncher" description. I would have liked it twice as much if it was half as long.

By the time I got to the final area I was well and truly ready for it to end. But then it kept going. And going. And going.

The gameplay was alright if unremarkable, but not meaty enough to sustain a game that long. Plus it felt a bit unfocused and bloated with minigames.

I'm undecided on the character of John Marston. Sure, he's basically just The Rockstar Character in a cowboy hat but I remember him having his moments. Admittedly I can't really remember what any of those moments were though. (Hey, it's been six years and I only played it the one time.) I did start to like him a lot more towards the end when we see him interacting with his family.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

I feel like Red Dead Redemption is the perfect example as to how a game can be perfect by industry standards but formulaic and not very fun to play.

Graphics. Check. Sound. Check. Voice Acting. Check. Animation. Check. Mini-Games. Check. Over World. Check. Refined Shooting Mechanics. Check. A Level of Grandiosity. Check.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm undecided on the character of John Marston. Sure, he's basically just The Rockstar Character in a cowboy hat but I remember him having his moments. Admittedly I can't really remember what any of those moments were though. (Hey, it's been six years and I only played it the one time.) I did start to like him a lot more towards the end when we see him interacting with his family.

All I remember of John Marston is him making idle threats, but then just going along with whatever his contacts wanted him to do. That and basically showing no intent of just finding his family on his own. I mean, he seemed to be a good enough tracker, you'd think he'd stop being everyone's doormat and show a little proaction.

 

[Zhukov]

It felt cheap, like the writers didn't expect the player to accept a tragedy and had to give them a vengeful, optimistic conclusion.

I think that's a remarkably off-target reading of the ending. It wasn't an optimistic conclusion.

Marston does everything he does for his family. He wants his wife to be happy and safe and he wants his son grow up honest, to have a better life than he did.

Then he dies to protect his family.

Then his wife ends up dying young just a few years later.

Then, despite everything he did, his son becomes a killer and an outlaw in order to avenge him.

Vengeful conclusion? Sure. Optimistic? Hardly.

I'm undecided on the character of John Marston. Sure, he's basically just The Rockstar Character in a cowboy hat but I remember him having his moments. Admittedly I can't really remember what any of those moments were though. (Hey, it's been six years and I only played it the one time.) I did start to like him a lot more towards the end when we see him interacting with his family.

All I remember of John Marston is him making idle threats, but then just going along with whatever his contacts wanted him to do. That and basically showing no intent of just finding his family on his own. I mean, he seemed to be a good enough tracker, you'd think he'd stop being everyone's doormat and show a little proaction.

Well yes, but then the game would have to find a new excuse for him to do all the cowboy things on the way to finding his family.

Plus if he'd shown up at wherever they were being kept there's a good chance they'd be killed.

It's a problem inherent to having a nigh invincible protagonist who can kill his way out of any situation. (He'd probably be able to survive the ending if the game didn't arbitrarily reduce his slo-mo juice.) Eventually you start wondering why they don't just kill everything causing them problems.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

I think the fundamental flaw of the game is that it follows the GTA formula so closely. With L.A. Noire (which I loved), Rockstar knew which elements to keep and which to jettison. With RDR, it's just a different story and atmosphere. In GTA, the story and gameplay all happens in the city. In RDR, the game is constantly divided between gameplay (the field) and story/characters (towns). For some reason, it just didn't flow seamlessly for me. From GTA, I can mess around and then do a mission if I decide to.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Always wished I could play it. Then I learned that the gunplay is the usual Rockstar lock on boring-ness. I don't feel so bad anymore.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

Despite all the accolades, Marston is one of the most generic main characters in a Rockstar game. Macho, stoic, violent, blank-slate, gun-toting with no introspection. I guess the word for that is "badass".

Cole Phelps, Trevor Phillips, Michael DeSanta and even Danny Lamb are more interesting, unique and even relateable than Marston was.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I liked the game a lot (story, voice acting, just the feel & presentation in general) but have to admit it got a little too long 3/4s in.

 

[Casual Shinji]

All I remember of John Marston is him making idle threats, but then just going along with whatever his contacts wanted him to do. That and basically showing no intent of just finding his family on his own. I mean, he seemed to be a good enough tracker, you'd think he'd stop being everyone's doormat and show a little proaction.

Well yes, but then the game would have to find a new excuse for him to do all the cowboy things on the way to finding his family.

Plus if he'd shown up at wherever they were being kept there's a good chance they'd be killed.

It's a problem inherent to having a nigh invincible protagonist who can kill his way out of any situation. (He'd probably be able to survive the ending if the game didn't arbitrarily reduce his slo-mo juice.) Eventually you start wondering why they don't just kill everything causing them problems.

It just didn't mesh well with him being an outlaw in the Wild West. The dude never planned ahead or took matters into his own hands even once. Every mission was 'Go to this creepy shithead and do whatever he tells you'. What if there weren't any weirdos out there with information on Bill Willing-whatever? Marston'd be fucked.

Still, he's a better character than the entire cast of GTA5 combined.

 

[Saelune]

I loved Red Dead Redemption. My only real criticism of it is that the online mode quickly became unfair and unfun. I really liked how detailed the game was. Minor things like how rain affected you and the world and things of that nature. I hope they finish making it work on Xbox One so I can play it again...and hopefully are working on a sequel.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I never finished the game and honestly never understood what was so great about it. I agree with some that the fact that your character never really gets any sort of stat increases/levels up etc. hurt the game, because it killed a lot of my incentive to keep going if my only reward is new guns and some chewing tobacco.

The voice acting and characters seemed great, but the plot never seemed to be going anywhere. I was just continuously doing random odd jobs for people, which would have been fine (again) if I was gaining experience or something along those lines.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

So this thread's just 'I want to randomly slag off a game'? Okay, I guess... And what's the '2016 Discussion' distinction? As opposed to a 2015, 2014, or 2013 Discussion? Are they different? Anyhoo...

To bluntly counter all the dismissal and dislike I'll say it's one of my favourite games of last gen and I think it's something akin to a masterpiece. Of core game design? Not particularly (though I found the core combat immensely satisfying - they perfectly nail the 'feel' of an oldskool shootout, and it was further elevated by some of the best ever use of ragdoll physics/AI), but of narrative and thematic scope. Emotionally and intellectually it left its mark, and only something like The Walking Dead S1 has really had a greater impact on me after the credits finally rolled.

Provided it gets released BC on XB1 I look forward to replaying it. Will it have aged well? Perhaps not in some aspects. I think I'd be far less forgiving of Rockstar's typical 'make the PC behave like an idiot/psychopath because reasons' missions, and I found an undercurrent of misogyny deeply unappealing even when I first played it (a certain young, hopeful female character is discarded crassly, which felt unnecessarily nihilistic or hopeless in an already grim gameworld/story).

However, it felt like a genuine epic, marrying the evocatively gorgeous visuals of classical Western/Spaghetti Western landscapes with a genuinely mature, intelligent narrative throughline regarding societal progress (what is lost for what is gained), and the notion of self-determination/nature vs nurture.

Plus, the world detail was exceptional, and the use of music - be it original or licensed - was often peerless. John Marston remains one of my favourite lead characters in gaming, too.

One minor criticism I always had was that the reward for 100%'ing it was kinda pathetic; a nifty coat/outfit. But once you've got 100% there's really no content left... Why Rockstar don't do some kind of NG+ mode I have no idea.

Always wished I could play it. Then I learned that the gunplay is the usual Rockstar lock on boring-ness. I don't feel so bad anymore.

As someone else remarked; disable that horrid cheat-oh-aim mode, and the combat's superb.

For action on horseback, though, you either needed a lot of spare ammo or you needed to toggle cheat-oh-aim back on. Well, I suppose option 3 was always just shoot the horses... but even in a violent, grim Western that always feels iffy. The scumbags firing at you deserve to be filled with lead, sure, but their mounts don't.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I think RDR was massively overated. It was the gameplay that did it for me.

Much like GTA 5's, the lock on aiming system just takes so much out of the game. For all the things you could do, it just didn't feel as if you were really doing anything in combat.

Also, the way these Rockstar characters move & walk just feels horrible and sluggish to me too.

And what's the '2016 Discussion' distinction? As opposed to a 2015, 2014, or 2013 Discussion? Are they different? Anyhoo...

I took it to mean "a look back several years later"?

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I took it to mean "a look back several years later"?

Sure, but by the fact the post/thread would be made in 2016 kinda negates the need to point out that this "discussion" (which it really wasn't, it was just an opinion piece) is circa 2016...