Experiencing Red Dead Redemption

I hate Westerns. Always have.

Until now.

What an experience this game was! Red Dead Redemption puts you in a world so lively, gritty and beautiful, it sometimes feels more like an MMO than a sandbox RPG. Rockstar has raised the bar again with this haunting take on the old west. I didn't want this game to end, but when it did, what a great end it was.

The main elements of this game were all there. Pitch-perfect storytelling, fun and intuitive game play, interesting and quirky characters, and beautiful vistas. Besides a few graphical bugs (rocks floating, people getting stuck in scenery), the whole experience was engrossing and entertaining.

I call it an experience rather than a game because you are truly in control of your own journey. You can spend hours simply wandering the countryside, encountering people who put the "strange" in stranger, hunting boar, picking flowers, breaking horses, killing bandits, herding cattle, anything you can think of that is associated with the old and wild west. Hell I spent a good portion of my time just playing poker. Not to say the story isn't excellent, it's just that the rest of the world is so full and exciting, I really wanted to take my time to experience it all.

It's 1910. You, John Marston, are an ex-bandit tasked with killing your former compatriots at the whim of corrupt government men holding your family hostage.

Hilarity ensues.

Ok, it is by no means hilarious. It is often dark, sad, political, intriguing, but with a nice dusting of charm and comedy. Someone said earlier this week that a good game story is made true by its ending, and I think that fits the bill nicely here. I kept trying to guess the plot, and I was happily never correct. Just when I thought it was over, there was so much left to do. Even now that I've completed it, I will be going back to finish some of the many challenges Red Dead offers up. Like I said, I didn't want it to end and I still don't.

That was the cursory story, the one Rockstar wrote for you, but where the real experience was, the things people talk about, were the personal and unique adventures each had. I've heard tell of flying villagers on mountain tops. Galloping across a Mexican plain into the sunset while stirring guitar played the soundtrack. Climbing the highest peak to find a majestic bald-eagle perched atop, and swiftly blowing its head off with a shotgun. Watching along a roadside as a Chinese man cries over his dead brother. Saving a woman being strung up by bandits by shooting the noose from her neck.

And the horses.

You know, if these were cars, I wouldn't care the slightest when they finally gave out. In Red Dead, your horse is an extension of yourself. My first horse was one I had seen in the distance against a stormy sky, lassoed, broke and rode him through hell and high water. While searching for cannibals in the hills above Armadillo, out of no where, a mountain lion eviscerates my steeds belly, nearly killing me in the process. As I'm mourning the loss, a pack of boars rush me from either side and I once again barely escape with my life.

Hey nature, give me a second you jerk!

I had similar stories with the following horses, and each left me staring at the body of my fallen friend, trying to process what just happened. My final horse died in a very similar way to my first, cougar attack. I had had it with cougars at this point, and Moby-Dick'd their asses into extinction.

Hmm I see why that is not a popular phrase.

Red Dead Redemption not only gives you a wonderful story, but a deep and engrossing world full of individual stories, ones that vary widely from person to person. Its world is so full of character and wonder, I could spend hours living within it. What other medium can do this? Roger Ebert, have anything to say?