Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360

Rockstar Wrangles The Best Video Game Western Of All Time

2010-05-17T17:00:00Z

With high noon duels, lawless frontiers, and gruff leading men, the Western genre seemingly has all the essential pieces to make a smooth transition into video games. But as past six-shooters like Dead Man’s Hand, Call of Juarez, Gun, and Red Dead Revolver found out, dressing your scruffy hero in a duster and giving him a revolver isn’t enough to captivate audiences accustomed to firing rocket-propelled grenades and light machine guns. For Rockstar’s first full-fledged effort in the genre (the company purchased Red Dead Revolver from Capcom), it decided to do what it does best – explore the topic at hand with an immersive open world.

Red Dead Redemption is set during the birth of the 20th century, where the expansion-minded federal government is moving swiftly to domesticate the untamed frontier. With railroads and telegram lines connecting previously isolated communities, the new cowboys are exploitative businessmen and aggressive legislators aiming to expand their power bases. To keep this development moving along unabated, the feds have created the Agency, a new branch of law enforcement determined to rid the outer territories of the violent gangs running rampant.

John Marston used to be one of those outlaws; he’s got the scars and practiced trigger finger to prove it. But after his gang left him for dead during a robbery gone awry, Marston embraced the quiet life, settling on a ranch, taking a wife, and having his first child. Like his spiritual predecessor, Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic, Marston eventually discovers that running from his past doesn’t mean he can escape it. Using evidence of his past transgressions against him, the Agency makes a persuasive proposition: Hunt down the last living members his former gang, or kiss family life goodbye. Marston begrudgingly grabs his six-shooter and heads out in search of his long-lost brothers in arms.

While Red Dead Redemption’s setup reads like a Clint Eastwood script, the gameplay construct is pulled straight from Grand Theft Auto. In order to track down and confront his wayward outlaw friends, Marston has to consort with an unsavory cast of snake oil salesmen, drunks, grave robbers, washed up gunslingers, dissidents, and corrupt politicians. Assistance doesn’t come easy, as Marston must complete fetch quests and rack up kill counts to earn their trust before they divulge any useful information. Those who tired of the errand boy mission structure of Grand Theft Auto IV won’t find any solace in Red Dead – to get what he needs, Marston helps peddle cure-all tonics, aids in finding a lost treasure, puts in time herding cattle on the ranch, and rescues kidnapped citizens. The game is at its best when it embraces gunpowder-centric missions that only a Western era game can deliver; my favorites include assaulting a gang stronghold with a posse of regulators, protecting a supply train on horseback, and fighting up a treacherous mountainside to locate an enemy camp.

Given the limitations of the era’s weaponry, Red Dead’s gunplay is surprisingly exciting. Each weapon – from six-shooters and repeaters to sniper rifles and Gatling guns – has a distinct feel, and the hit detection system couples with Natural Motion’s Euphoria animation technology to create visceral shootouts. Shotgun blasts blow enemies violently backward, sniper shots to the shoulder spin bandits around, and if you nail a fleeing enemy in the leg, he’ll feebly crawl toward the nearest cover. When large groups of bandits descend on your position, you can activate the slow-motion Dead Eye ability to paint a large swath of enemies and watch in awe as Marston effortlessly puts them all in an early grave. Less practiced gunslingers can stick with the friendly snap-to auto-aim mechanic borrowed from GTA IV, but if you want to up the challenge, I suggest turning it off.

What You Should Know About Red Dead Redemption

2010-05-06T21:30:00Z

We’ve spent enough time robbing trains, clearing bandit camps, and surviving high noon duels to confirm that Red Dead Redemption is an ambitious and impressive interpretation of the Wild West that should appeal to Grand Theft Auto and Western fans alike. To tide you over before our review appears on May 17, we present this list that break down the game’s Hollywood influences and demonstrates the breadth of gameplay Rockstar has injected into the frontier setting.

“First getting shot, then getting married – bad habits.” –Cole Younger, The Long Riders
Protagonist John Marston used to run with the most violent gang in the Wild West. After a robbery goes awry and he gets shot during the heist, his brothers leave him for dead while fleeing. Marston escapes, but decides it’s time to put down the six shooters and find a new life. He buys a parcel of land, gets married, has a son, and plans to live out the rest of his days as a rancher.

Charlie Burns: "You want me to kill me brother."
Captain Stanley: "I want you to kill your brother." – The Proposition
Marston’s range life doesn’t last long. With technology and business interests spreading into the untamed west at an exponential rate, the federal government decides to hasten the process by creating an agency to eliminate the outlaw gangs impeding the process. Well aware of Marston’s former life as an outlaw, the feds offer him a brutal form of forgiveness – hunt down your former brothers in arms, or never see your family again.

“Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy.” – Josey Wales, The Outlaw Josey Wales
The frontier isn’t all rolling hills of grain and gorgeous vistas. Spend too much time gawking at the remarkable scenery and you may find yourself the victim of a cougar attack or a bandit raid. The prairies, deserts, and mountain rangers are home to 40 animal types, many of which would love to eat John Marston for dinner. Several renegades roam the countryside looking for victims to rob, so be vigilant when you see men approaching on horseback or calling for help on the side of the road. They may be waiting to spring an ambush, and the worst way to return to town is in a coffin.

“I get dressed, I kill him and be right back.” –Tuco, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Like Grand Theft Auto IV protagonist Niko Bellic, John Marston isn’t stuck wearing the same clothes throughout the game. Red Dead Redemption features a wardrobe with several different outfits ranging from distinguished suits to weather-worn ponchos. Some are awarded to Marston for completing missions, some must be purchased at the tailor, and others feature mixed objectives that require you to find specific pieces of cloth hidden around the world and compete certain tasks.

Red Dead Redemption: The First Few Hours

2010-04-28T22:12:00Z

As we near its May 18 release date, the buzz behind Red Dead Redemption is growing. Could this be the gunslinger that finally establishes the Western as a viable video game genre? Rockstar hopes so, and it’s enlisted the help of its most talented designers, including Grand Theft Auto IV architect and Rockstar North producer Leslie Benzies, to make sure the game gallops out of the gate. After playing the first few hours of the game on Xbox 360, I can see why fans are waiting so eagerly in anticipation of the game and retailers are planning midnight game launches.

Red Dead Redemption kicks off with protagonist John Marston being escorted off a boat by two law enforcement agents. He’s not wearing bracelets, so he isn’t under arrest. However, the way they push him around and the stark contrast between their wardrobes indicates he’s not exactly viewed as a colleague. The agents are dressed in the finest garments from the east, but Marston’s scruffy beard and worn clothes point to a much different background. As the group moves away, workers are busy lifting a prototype automobile off the boat and onto the cobblestone streets of the city.

Without saying a word, the agents guide Marston to a nearby steam train and watch him board alone. As the train leaves the station, we get our first glimpse of the world of Red Dead Redemption. Rolling hills and forested areas give way to large expanses of grassy pastures and wind-swept prairies. As Marston sits silently on the train, a pair of old ladies gossip about the happenings of the day. A preacher shares his closed-minded worldview with the naïve young lady sitting next to him, flippantly denying the viability of the technological marvels she brings up, like airplanes. The facial animation technology looks vastly improved from Grand Theft Auto IV, and the constantly shifting camera angles indicate that, as BioWare did with Mass Effect 2, Rockstar is taking a cinematic approach to cutscenes.

The train pulls into Armadillo station, a dusty Texas-like border town that would look right at home in a Clint Eastwood movie. One main thoroughfare runs through the isolated village, which is home to a saloon, general store, doctor, silent movie theater, and sheriff’s office. Marston is here to find a guide in the saloon who can help him find Bill Williamson, one of the outlaws he used to run with. If Marston wants to see his family again, he must convince Old Bill to turn himself in and take responsibility for all their past bank heists and murders.

We find the bearded hillbilly guide entertaining the advances of one of the saloon’s scantily clad female employees. When Marston makes his presence known, the guide throws the lady off his lap; this isn’t his first visit to the whorehouse, and it won’t be his last. After exchanging pleasantries, they mount the two horses hitched in front of the saloon and set out.

Around dusk, we approach Fort Mercer, a former army base the bandits now call home. As we trot up to the structure, the guide sheepishly tells us he won’t go any farther. From here on out, it’s up to Marston to seal the deal. He calmly walks up to the door of the well-fortified base and calls out for Williamson. As expected, Bill’s not too keen on turning himself in. To drive home his point, Williamson leaves Marston a parting gift – a gunshot to the belly. As night sets in, the gang leaves Marston to bleed out alongside the dirt road outside the fort.

As buzzards circle overhead waiting for the life to drain from Marston, a pair of ranchers passing on a horse-drawn carriage notice him lying on the ground. The good Samaritans load him onto the carriage and ride away into the darkness.

Hands-On With Rockstar’s Gritty Western

2010-01-28T22:03:00Z

As a huge fan of Westerns and Grand Theft Auto, it’s an understatement to say that Red Dead Redemption is in my wheelhouse. Each time Rockstar swings by the office to give us a glimpse my enthusiasm increases, so it was with great anticipation that I took hold of the revolver for our first hands-on session.

For those of you late to the party, Red Dead Redemption is Rockstar’s first fully realized foray into the Wild West. While the company best known for Grand Theft Auto picked up the publishing rights from Capcom for Red Dead Revolver and fine-tuned it for release, Redemption has been built from the ground up with an open-world experience in mind.

The story follows John Marston, an outlaw who has a change of heart when he gets severely injured during a heist and his fellow outlaws leave him for dead. After living three years on the straight and narrow, a shady government law enforcement group that plays by its own rules gives Marston an ultimatum – hunt down his old posse or sacrifice his wife and son instead.

Wild, Riled West
Red Dead’s Open Expanses Are Anything But Empty

Riding the vast prairies in between townships sounds boring, but you’ll rarely be left alone on the plains. Marston comes across ambient activities that offer the chance to earn extra money, find treasures, collect animal skins, or shoot some men behaving badly at nearly every bend in the dusty road. In our short time riding through the wilderness, we helped a farmer save his kidnapped daughter from a gang of rapey bandits, hunted a pack of wolves for their pelts, engaged in a sharpshooting challenge by shooting vultures, and helped recover a man’s stolen stagecoach. The towns also offer a host of random activities. Locals will bet you money on a friendly competition of five-finger fillet or Texas Hold ‘Em, and you may have to stop a druken saloon patron from roughing up a lady of the night. The NPCs also react naturally to the random chaos you can cause in the world. After we roughed up a man who looked at us funny in the Armadillo saloon, he returned later with a gun and opened fire on us right in the bar.

Before the Rockstar team lets us dive into the game, they show off a new scenario that finds Marston working in tandem with the Mexican army. In previous missions we’ve seen him enlist the help of the rebels, so it’s clear Marston isn’t above playing opposing sides against each other to further his cause. In this case, the goal is to infiltrate the rebel stronghold atop a nearby red rock cliff.

As the small band of Mexican soldiers takes cover behind a few wooden crates, rebel snipers stationed on the ridge above open fire. As Marston picks off enemies with his rifle one by one, we watch them tumble to their deaths off the side of the cliff. Once the snipers are neutralized, Marston and a squad of about a dozen soldiers shoot their way up the side of the cliff. Marston uses all of the weapons at his disposal, emptying his six-shooter into enemies with the slow-motion Dead Eye painting mechanic, throwing Molotov cocktails (which Rockstar dubs Fire Bottles) at large groups of rebels, and pulling off brutal gut shot executions when the fighting gets up close and personal.

As the sun sets, a smoky haze falls over the battlefield and I take a moment to appreciate the amazing vista where this fight is taking place. The impressive desert setting looks like it’s ripped straight out of an Albert Bierstadt painting. Gorgeous landscapes like this aren’t uncommon in Red Dead – every location I’ve seen thus far is equally awe-inspiring.

Shifting back to the fight, the Mexican army finally overruns the encampment. Marston reconvenes with the head of the operation, and in the background we witness the army executing the remaining rebels by shooting them off the cliff. No Geneva Convention? No problem.

Rockstar Is Shooting For A Better Sequel

2009-10-01T01:49:00Z

In the five years since Red Dead Revolver, Rockstar always planned to return to the franchise. A sentimental favorite in the office, the team wanted to revisit the Western genre and give it the proper treatment with an ambitious scale that rivals their flagship game, Grand Theft Auto. Judging by our first look at Redemption, Rockstar is clearly on to something.

While its predecessor took place in the heyday of the Wild West, Red Dead Redemption’s tale begins during the declining years of frontier life, the first decade of the 20th century. Riding the coattails of industrialization, a burgeoning federal government is clamping down on the unruly frontier, annexing reluctant territories and ridding the backcountry of lawlessness. To aid the process, the Feds form The Bureau — a seedy precursor to the F.B.I. composed of ruthless arbiters willing to go beyond the bounds of the law to protect it.

To adapt to the rapidly changing landscape, John Marston does the right thing, giving up the life of a ne’er-do-well and settling peacefully into family life. Only the weathered scars on his face tell of his roughshod past that involved running with a notorious band of outlaws. But when the Bureau offers an unsettling proposition to Marston in relation to his newfound happiness, he reluctantly takes up the six-shooter once again.

If our first excursions with Marston are any indication, he’s in for a rough ride. The first mission Rockstar shared has him shooting his way to save a friend from hanging after a hostage trade goes awry in a ghost town. The next time we run into him, he’s stuck defending a shady snake oil salesman from a cantankerous crowd of rifle-wielding rabble in a dust-kicking horse chase. Our experience culminates with Marston riding alongside a posse, struggling to protect a mail train from waves of bandits through a barren, rocky frontier region.

Despite the drastically different settings, similarities between Red Dead and GTA IV are evident throughout the game. Red Dead uses the same RAGE game engine, Euphoria physics technology, targeting mechanic, and cover system as last year’s game of the year. Rockstar still has many elements of Red Dead Redemption under wraps, and we can’t wait to learn more about this ambitious Western in the coming months leading to the fall release.

The Open Trail

Red Dead features a huge playable world divided into three sections: the Frontier, Mexico, and the North. Train tracks and telegraph posts that litter the landscape signal the creeping modernity, but traveling between towns is still a dangerous undertaking. The world of Red Dead Redemption features a day/night cycle, weather variations, and an ecosystem of threatening animals on the prowl. While Marston rides through the frontier, we witness a man on the side of the road fall victim to a mountain lion jumping down from its perch atop some rocks and mauling the poor chap. We also see a stagecoach robbery and a posse of horse-riding outlaws dragging a man behind their horses with a lasso. The world is filled with these dynamic events; it’s up to the player to take sides or stay out of the fray.

The Aughts

Red Dead trades in the common mid-1800s setting of most Western games in favor of the turn of the 20th century, a pivotal time in the nation’s history. Though the tale of protagonist John Marston is fictitious, Rockstar says some side missions incorporate real historical events. These notable events take place in the same time period as Marston’s life unravels:

Theodore Roosevelt presides as the 26th President of the United States
Henry Ford forms Ford Motor Company and begins mass production of cars
The Wright Brothers take flight at Kitty Hawk
Albert Einstein publishes the Annus Mirabilis papers, establishing the Theory of Relativity
Joseph Conrad publishes Heart of Darkness
The Boston Americans defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series

Stark Raving Mad Skills

Red Dead Redemption is a markedly different game than its predecessor, but one feature preserved from the title is the Dead Eye shooting mechanic. Rockstar has altered the skill so players can use it in two distinct ways. The first ability allows Marston to activate slow motion to get a bead on his aggressors with any weapon in the game. The second ability, which is relegated to pistols, gives Marston the option of painting targets and subsequently unleashing a chain of deadly accurate shots.