Red Dead Redemption's Missed Opportunity

Red Dead Redemption is pretty slow to start, but once it gets going, it is fun as hell. That's why I've had the game for months, but am just now starting to get into it.

So now I'm going to quasi-complain about it. It doesn't really count as criticism because I can't hold against the developers things they haven't done that I would really like.

Red Dead Redemption (herein referred to as RDD) plays into just about everything I already thought about the old west. This is stuff I learned from movies and TV, so its accuracy is dubious at best. In terms of its portrayal of history, RDD has yet to subvert any of my expectations. Rather, it seems to cater to pretty much all of them. Now, I do understand the purpose of it. By doing so, it makes for one hell of an exciting game. What with all the gun fighting, robberies, prostitution and so on.

But if gaming is exploration and play, then we're missing out on a really cool opportunity to show a side of the Old West that we didn't really know or expect. Imagine playing an open world game about what it was REALLY like, rather than what you just hope it was like. Gaming is more exciting when it defies your expectations, rather than just playing into them.

Like I said, I understand why they designed the game the way they did. I also understand how difficult it would be to make it super fun if you removed a lot of the action. But I loved the missions where I was helping out with the ranch, wrangling cattle, or breaking horses. I don't think it would be too difficult if you just made the characters and story interesting enough.

It just makes me a little sad that I feel this way about an otherwise fantastic experience. It isn't really fair to be sad about what could have been, especially when it relates to my own hangups about gaming in general.


One last thing while we are on the subject of Old West stereotyping: They seriously have a drunken, skeevy Irishman? They didn't even draw attention to this obvious and somewhat offensive stereotype. They could have at least been winking at the player about it. Sheesh.