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Red Dead Redemption Lassos Us In

Those of you who played pretend cowboy as a kid should start strapping on their imaginary holsters.

April 29, 2010
Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption Credit: Rockstar

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Rockstar is a company that likes to be in control, and with every demo of Red Dead Redemption that's come along so far, they've kept a pretty tight reign on what I've been able to see. There was the mission and combat demo, the multiplayer demo, and even the open-world-aspects demo. But as a sandbox game, it's hard to get a real feel for what's in store when you don't have the freedom to go and do whatever you want. Well, with a few weeks left before the game's release, Rockstar finally lets me play the game for a few hours from the very beginning.

The only problem is, you already know about most of what I play. Through the other impressions and videos already out, we've covered a lot of the game, so for this final piece of preview coverage, I'm picking out five key events in the game's opening hours.

To summarize everything you go through in the first half-hour: You meet up with Bill Williamson (Marston's former partner who's now wanted by the government), at an abandoned fort out in the desert. But Marston goes alone, and Bill doesn't exactly want to come back willingly. You end up getting shot and left for dead. Fortunately, a nearby rancher by the name of Bonnie McFarlane finds your half-dead body, and decides to take you back to her homestead to help you recover.

Click the image above to check out all Red Dead Redemption screens.

And that's when the tutorial begins. Like a good Rockstar game, Redemption's opening is sweeping, cinematic, and does most of the talking while you journey between checkpoints. You're slowly introduced to concepts such as shooting, riding a horse, and Dead Eye. While I don't have all the time I want, I still take my time. I can whip out an instant campsite when I'm out in the open and warp to any of the major places areas I've already visited once I've started journeying, but it's just more fun to ride across the open range. Not just because the plains and sky are pretty to look at, but because of the animals and incidental quests that happen along the way.

No. 2 -- Learning Right from Wrong

While exploring the plains in previous events, I learn about all the incidental activities you can engage in. I do my fair share of hunting rabbits, coyotes, and hawks (then scavenging their bodies for fur, feathers, and meat), and I run into non-scripted people-in-distress. I come across bandits accosting one man -- I actually want to steal his treasure map for myself. After taking out both the bandits, the map bearer gets killed anyway; looting his body gets me the map anyways, so no loss there. But when I open it, I'm in for a bit of a surprise. The game's treasure hunting sidequests will be the thing of FAQs; opening up one of the yellowing pieces of parchment, I find a drawing of a couple rocks and a cactus. Now, when I'm running around the wide-open world, there's enough diversity that I don't feel like I'm looking at a flat plain of nothing, but there are a lot of rocks and cacti. The thought of narrowing that down to this one, particular arrangement is daunting to say the least.

But taking out these bandits, and completing missions for the characters you meet also affects your Notoriety and Honor meters. The more you do, the more well known you become, while the more good deeds you do, the more popular you grow with the various townsfolk. I tend to play as a good guy, so I keep getting reminders, as my Honor meter climbed, that I'd earn a discount in certain shops. But I also get warnings that killing too many innocents, and just generally taking the bad guys' side in a fight would shutter some store doors to me. But with only a few hours to play, I never learn the overarching consequences of my good deeds.

No. 3 -- Kicking Around Armadillo

I have other things with which to occupy my time anyway; the town of Armadillo and Bonnie's ranch provide plenty of extra sidequests and minigames to while away the time and earn some extra cash. I waste about an hour just playing poker in the saloon: things start out well, and I completely bust four of the other players. Then the last guy goes all in and takes me for everything with a straight flush. It's $25 a game, and early on, that seems like a healthy chunk of change, but with the inflated price of weapons and property, it feels like I'll easily be able to earn a lot more as I the game goes along.

Armadillo also provides a small movie theatre; for a mere $2 you can sit down to a silent film while a piano player in the corner provides musical accompaniment. I only sit through one movie, an animated short about a snake oil salesman, but despite the mostly authentic feel to the game's world, this part feels more GTA-like... unless they commonly showed movies where a guy drinks some elixir and ends up sexually molesting a tree. I get a little bit of the GTA-vibe from the local newspapers as well. While they're mostly filled with period stories about what's happening in the greater world, and occasionally with your own antics, they contain a few of tongue-in-cheek ads you expect from Rockstar.

Click the image above to check out all Red Dead Redemption screens.

Nope, when you ride your horse off a cliff, you both hit the ground and die.

There're other mysteries to explore, but now they'll have to wait until I can actually play the retail game. It's reassuring to find so many of the bugs I'd seen in earlier builds finally been cleared up (you always wonder if they'll be able to fix things like flying horses), but it looks like Rockstar's on the way to delivering a solid Western that borrows, refines, and builds a lot on their previous games.

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