Last year’s “Red Dead Redemption” by Rockstar Games was released to critical acclaim and proved that a great Old West video game could be made.
Western titles in the modern video game era have been solid games at best and poorly designed at worst. “Red Dead Redemption”’s greatness as a Western doesn’t come from its polished gameplay or even its great writing. Instead it comes from a recognition that the most important part of creating a Western is recreating the iconic version of the Old West.
“RDR” presents a vast West to explore complete with beautiful red rock mesas off in the distance and deserts with cacti and tumbleweeds rolling through. Technological limitations were certainly a barrier to creating a vast landscape during the last generation, so game design played a bigger role. With the exception of “Gun,” Western games were linear first (and a few third) person shooters. “RDR” gives you miles of terrain to explore while other games had the ever-present “invisible wall” to keep players from leaving the confines of the level. The grandness of scale and the sense of wonder inherent in depictions of the West are limited when games try to keep players on the tracks and ignore everything outside of the level. By going the sandbox route, “RDR” effectively recreates the epic scope of the Old West.
Getting the scenery and scope of the game world right is only part of the equation.
“RDR”also excelled at creating a vibrant living world. Traditionally, Western first person shooter games have been standard corridor shooters skinned with period clothing and weapons. It is near impossible to make the game world feel alive when the player is always running down a linear path and shooting nameless enemies.
“RDR” dots the landscapes with towns, ranches and vistas, each with their own cast of characters. The missions are given to you by characters who feel real.
Even when traveling through the world, you encounter different people. Some are strangers — non-player characters that have their own optional storylines and quests. Others are people in need of help, bandits ready to rob you or bounty hunters looking to collect.
The final piece to the puzzle is variety. Westerns are more than just cowboys shooting bad guys, and “RDR” offers up several different ways to occupy your time. Just a few of the different tasks available to the player are taming horses, hunting wild animals and horse racing. While you are in town, a group of bandits can ride in and attack the town, leaving the decision up to the player whether to help or not.
Out in the desert, people may need you to find and bring back their runaway horses. The game even features one of the genre’s most common activities: poker. Get too lucky and win a little too much at the table, and one of your opponents might challenge you to a duel in the center of town.
Other Western games have tried to implement these kinds of activities (“Dead Man’s Hand” featured a poker game between levels to win health and ammo), but they always felt tacked on. “RDR” presents all these activities in a way that makes them feel like part of the game rather than needless extras.
While Western films have been acclaimed for years, “RDR” is the first Western game to get a similar level of critical praise. That praise is a direct result of Rockstar’s study of what makes a Western. While future developers don’t need to copy “RDR,” they do need to get the same understanding of the genre.
If not, the result won’t be “Red Dead Redemption.” It will be “Call of Juarez.”