The Ballad of John Marston

If Red Dead Redemption were a Peckinpah movie, I doubt it would be The Ballad of Cable Hogue, but I like that movie, but John Marston is betrayed by his former comrades, and he does have to wait many long years for revenge. Except Marston doesn't want revenge, he'd just as soon live on his ranch with his wife and son. But the government men say he's got to pay for all those crimes he committed in the past, and the best way to do that is commit a whole lot more murders on the government's behalf.

So the player's left guiding John through an early 20th Century West, seeking his former mates, and failing that, seeking people who might be able to find them. Naturally, they all want many, many favors in return before they'll help, which is probably why there's hardly one person you have to work with in the game I didn't want to shoot at least once. The Marshall of Armadillo might be the exception, but he had those two nitwit deputies, who I did want to shoot, so he was irritating by proxy. Other than that, every other person I had to work for drove me up the wall at least once with their hypocrisy, flimflammery, or general moral repugnance.

Not that Marston is any kind of winner, himself. I was relatively restrained in terms of the mayhem I carried out. No riding around, randomly shooting or robbing people, I wound up with the highest levels possible for both good and honor. Even so, I killed a lot of people, and Marston didn't much seem to care. They were in his way. If the option had existed for some of these guys to surrender or step aside, I'd have taken it (usually). But that's not really how it goes. I did shoot De Santa in the head repeatedly, but he betrayed me without a moment's compunction (which was plain as day as the game lead up to it), so my rules are a little different there.

The whole thing about the honor gauge was screwy anyway. At times, as you ride through the countryside, there'll be a blue dot on your mini-map. Usually it's someone in danger. Wagon stolen, pursued by wolves, that sort of thing. You can help or not as you wish. Sometimes it's a set-up. A bunch of armed men leap out and demand money, or someone who claims to be stranded will dash up, throw you off your horse and ride off. If you shoot them as they flee, that counts as dishonorable. It makes no sense to me that killing a man who stole your horse is dishonorable, but killing a man who caught you cheating at cards and challenged you to a duel is kosher.

The whole Mexican Revolution part of the game wasn't much better. Law officers would ask you to capture escaping prisoners. if you did (rather than killing them), he'd shoot them in the head. You were told you did a good deed. If you saw three soldiers about to execute a guy by the side of the road and you opened up on them, that's bad. Even though the game isn't shy about telling you the government in Mexico at that time is massively corrupt, jailing and executing people, burning and pillaging homes. Oh, and don't forget the rapes. Naturally. I don't know if the designers meant that as a commentary - that whether you're a hero or a villain depends on the perspective of others - or if it's just some glitch in the system that didn't think through clearly enough. My guess is the former, since the Bureau agents were a bunch of murdering scumbags as well. I'd have rather shot them and dealt with the consequences in game, but it wasn't allowed. Marston would aim his gun up every time I tried.

The time in Mexico felt interminable. The scenery was beautiful - that's true of much of the game - and the background music had this trumpet fanfare I liked, but the story. It would have helped if I thought Reyes actually believed in the revolution, rather than using it as a means to power (and a way to woo ladies). he could be committed to the idea of revolution, while also being willing to do awful things in pursuit of it. Instead, he's the sort who mostly lets others do the work, while he reaps the glory. No different from the Army fellows I worked for down there. Big surprise, Rockstar made a cynical game, right? Marston at least questions the Army on whether they ought to be handling things as they do, but whatever doubts he has, they don't stop him from continuing to murder for the Army.

Also, the guys at Rockstar have peculiar ideas about the density of large predators. I've had my horse felled by a bear (one downside to the game is you can't enjoy the scenery as much because you have to keep your eyes peeled for things that will kill your horse), popped up, killed the bear, turned to face another magically appearing full-grown bear, killed that, then been killed by yet another magically appearing full-grown bear. I wasn't even at a salmon stream, I was out in the middle of the damn woods.

I have a love-hate situation with horse riding. When I can let the horse trot at a steady speed and watch my surroundings, it's fine. But having to tap A repeatedly to speed up got old, especially if you're on a mission that requires you to speed up and slow down a lot. That's what broke the A button on my primary controller. Compared to using a trigger button to accelerate a vehicle in a GTA game, it's awkward. Also, the horse has a stamina meter which - due to my screen's dimensions or something - I could not always see. I could see the very top of it, and the very bottom. Everything in between was off the edge of the screen. This happened a lot with explanatory text in the upper left corner. Those were not helpful developments, but most of the controls are pretty simple, given a few opportunities to use them. At first, I did not enjoy the enhanced Red Dead mode picked up in Mexico - where you can tap the right bumper and place an X over a specific location, then move to the next place you want to shoot - but once I got used to it, no problems. It's handy to be able to place shots more precisely.

One thing I didn't like at all: Any mission that involved lassoing, especially horses. It seemed like I always let go of the wrong button at the wrong time, or held a button down too long, and it was a pain. If I wanted to herd horses, I'd play Harvest Moon. Also, if you're going to let me lasso things, really let me do it. I tried a few times to lasso wolves or mountain lion (makes it easier to kill them with a hunting knife), but it never seemed to take.

The ending was a bit of a surprise, though I suppose it shouldn't have been. This is very much a '70s Western, and that's not really a compliment. The relentless cynicism, that idealists are always going to die, fools will remain fools, people in power will never learn anything, and keep creating new messes for themselves. At least the game highlighted some of its points early on when Marston told the Marshall he didn't believe the Marshall's method would solve anything. Punishing criminals doesn't address why they became criminals.