But in an open-world game, a developer doesn't have that sort of luxury. At any given time, a player can step off the rails provided by the plot and spend hours just walking around if they wanted. And what may have seemed like a bustling city-scape when a player was herded past it under a time limit will often fall apart under close scrutiny. Those bustling NPCs? Actually, the walk back and forth between the same few spots. That expansive background? Just wallpaper, you can't actually touch it. I felt Mass Effect 2 suffered for this, actually, though the ME universe is dense enough to please even the most jaded sci-fi enthusiast, the actual worlds we journeyed to rarely lived up to their lovingly crafted codex descriptions. An open-world game has give the player the impression that, should they just decide to stop playing, the world would keep going on without them.
And Red Dead Redemption has this in spades. Rockstar clearly learned from their last gaming foray in GTA4. Though Liberty City felt appropriately huge and bustling, it had a feeling of a world of cardboard. NPCs simply wandered aimlessly, populating the city but never actually doing anything in it like blood-filled mannequins in a particularly violent department store. The citizens of New Austin, Nuevo Paradiso, and West Elizabeth on the other hand feel like they have a purpose beyond "walk down street, occasionally get hit by protagonists vehicle of choice." Drunks wander in and out of the saloon, tripping over their feet and pissing on the side of buildings while lazy railroad workers nap in the shade. The various shopkeepers can be seen playing cards after hours, and even in the middle of nowhere you can simply sit back and watch a herd of horses run across the countryside, or a pack of wolves stalk deer. No matter what you are doing, the world continues around you, and you feel much more like a man who is interacting with the world, rather than dictating its future (though you do plenty of that over the course of the game).
The story is what you'd come to expect from Rockstar. Its 1911, and the Wild West is dying. John Marston was once a part of the most notorious gang in the West, but after a job goes bad and his gang leaves him for dead, he gets out with his wife and son. But of course, the past catches up with him and he is soon blackmailed by the government into killing the very men he once called family. The story swings from the self-aware, timely humor and social satire so common in Rockstar games (you'll find newspaper articles singing the praises of tobacco and cocaine, and watch early cartoons condemning things like medical science, feminism, etc.) to a (red) dead serious tone of loss, betrayal, and redemption that drives the game's rather lengthy plot. I don't want to spoil the game, but the story has its own share of twists and turns (many of them references to famous westerns), and the story hits a note of melancholy in some places that will leave you pensive at least. Giving yourself adequate time to dick around, you'll probably finish in around 20-30 hours, more to much more depending on your feelings about sunsets and slaughtering wildlife.
And trust me, you'll want to stay and enjoy those sunsets.
You thought I was kidding?
To be frank, the game is beautiful, easily Rockstar's best effort to date and one of the best looking games on the Xbox 360. Scenery is nearly photo-realistic, and all the character models look great (though the game, predictably, tends to reuse character models, though not nearly as badly as GTA4). The Euphoria engine has had most of the kinks knocked out of it, and the game uses it liberally, particularly in the many gunbattles you'll get into. Enemies react realistically to being shot, grabbing at arms or tripping over a blasted knee, to stumbling around before collapsing in a heap after taking one to the face. None of it is scripted, and no two kills look the same, making the otherwise somewhat repetitive gunplay feel fresh each time. The controls are tight, though its got the same issue as GTA4 in that in can be difficult to do small movements and adjustments, and your character tends to get caught up on seeming small things. Jumping, as in GTA4 and Alan Wake, is stupidly imprecise and nearly never useful, though fortunately the game never MAKES you use it, as far as I know.
The game brings back the various activities and jobs outside of the story missions like in the GTA games, but unlike GTA4 these games feel like they have much more value as the money stakes can be much higher, and they are generally more fun than the boring games of pool or darts.
Overall, Red Dead Redemption is simply a great game. If you like sandbox games, cowboy games, Rockstar games, or all 3, you can't go wrong with it.
