Red Dead Redemption

It can be difficult to walk the line between homage and rip-off - a title’s success at not coming across as a rip-off can be an entirely subjective thing. Red Dead Redemption unashamedly draws wholesale from two sources - a history of outstanding Western films, and Rockstar’s own Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

It’s ultimately up to the player to decide which spectrum they feel the game favours in drawing upon its influences, but the benefit overall is that the two sources it’s drawing on are fantastic. I feel it never crosses the line - it’s a homage, and a fitting one at that.

The major plot elements bear significant similarities to those in GTA:SA - CJ and John Marston are both men forced to do things they don’t want to do by corrupt government officials - the punishment for failure being harm befalling their family. Neither character wants to live the life of a criminal any more, and both men have friends who play a key part in the story - friends who are a living biography of the sorts of lives they’d lived.

The Western genre of film also plays a huge part in the game’s plot - particularly the Spaghetti Westerns made famous by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Hard close-ups during cut-scenes are naturally contrasted with the wide camera angle during when you take Marston’s reins once again.

John Marston is a bounty hunter, forced by two government men into chasing down members of his old gang. The G-men are holding his family hostage - John’s sense of morality is one of the driving forces behind his motivations.

You quickly find out that John loves his wife very dearly - he resists the advances of the woman who saved him after the unfortunate opening of the game - and that he has a very strong sense of right and wrong. His own personal code of honor pushes him away from lying with wh­res, pushes him into burning barns to save horses and encourages him to question men who cheat on their lovers.

During the first act there’s very little to stop John from doing things exactly as he wants - yes, he needs help from people to successfully assault his bounty’s fortress, but more often than not he does things his way - and nobody has the testicular fortitude to argue with him. The first act exists in the area of New Austin - a Wild West area full of roaming gangs and unscrupulous types - and draws some what on the plot of A Few Dollars More.

By the second act though - set in Nuevo Paraiso - when the story takes something of a “Fistful of Dollars” turn as John plays two factions of a budding Mexican Civil War against one another - John’s sense of morality is called into question as it becomes difficult to tell why a man who is basically a turn of the century terminator doesn’t just start shooting people who don’t meet his expectations.

John doesn’t successfully play the revolutionary army against the existing government - instead, they play him for a fool in what is almost a staple of the Grand Theft Auto series. John’s mission is constantly drawn out as he completes tasks for these two groups - both led by men John could end in an instant.

By the end, I couldn’t be happier to be out of Mexico.

And it wasn’t just that I was happy to finally be free of the two warring factions - both displaying ultimately despicable characters. The third and final act was set in easily the greatest area in the game - the great plains and foreboding forests of West Elizabeth.

It also marked the first real demonstration of the death of the West rampant during the game’s timeframe - paved roads, automobiles and electric lighting runs throughout the town of Blackwater, marking a stark change to the dust roads and wagons you experience through the rest of the game. The story also concludes here, with Marston having to find and attempt to kill the leader of his old gang, Dutch. Embedded with the local native tribe, the character of Dutch is heavily influenced by the character Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Other characters inhabiting West Elizabeth are your two G-men, the cocaine injecting and disturbingly racist racist anthropologist Professor Macdougal and the extremely stereotypical representation of your Native American informant.

You also finally meet your wife and son - as well as an Uncle named uncle - and while it’s difficult to connect with your wife this late in the game, your son Jack Marston is infinitely relatable and endlessly likeable.

The end of the game - and the outstanding epilogue - punctuates one of the most complete video game stories in a long time. The story will stay with the player for a long time afterwards - long after they get their hands on whatever the next ‘it’ game happens to be.

Page Two - On to the gameplay