In 1899, Arthur Morgan is a senior member of an outlaw gang led by Dutch Van der Linde, a charismatic self-styled Robin Hood figure. After a botched heist and a daring train robbery, the gang finds itself on the run with Pinkerton agents in pursuit. Dutch presses the gang to take bigger and more dangerous risks in hopes of raising enough money to escape the states for a life of freedom abroad, prompting Arthur to reconsider both his ultimate allegiance and the violent life that he’s lived. Meanwhile, Sadie Adler, a widow who falls in with the gang, seeks vengeance on Dutch’s rivals the O’Driscolls, who killed her husband while John Marston, a younger member of the gang, is torn between the outlaw life and his responsibilities as a husband and father.
A prequel to 2010’s Red Dead Redemption, the latest Rockstar Games offering is less a video game than a sweeping counterargument to nearly every negative stereotype (mindless, cartoonish, shallow, misogynistic, etc.) of video games found in the popular imagination. Beautifully rendered with memorable characters, RDR2 is one of the finest examples of a Western not only in gaming but also in fiction and film.
Aesthetically, RDR2 looks and sounds great. The game’s large, open world transports players from snow-covered peaks to lush forests to wide-open plains to a bustling fictionalized New Orleans. From the crack of thunder during a storm to your mount’s whinnying to a bullet whizzing by, the game’s sounds ring true. Woody Jackson’s score is a perfect fit, at times riveting and at times soulful and reflective. The soundtrack has a roots rock/Americana focus but features a diverse group of contributors that includes Willie Nelson, D’Angelo, Nas, Josh Homme, and Rhiannon Giddens.
However, RDR2 is far more than just eye candy. The game is remarkably detailed and deep. As with the previous Red Dead game, RDR2 affords players the opportunity to hunt, forage, gamble, and explore between story chapters. Stranger missions are back too, and these optional side quests range from touching (Arthur can recover a black doctor’s stolen wagon from a gang of racist thieves or help a recently widowed young woman survive on the frontier) to absurd (track down escaped zoo animals for a road show charlatan) to horrific to darkly comedic (more than one mad scientist makes an appearance). The game is also impressively customizable as the player has quite a bit of control over Arthur’s wardrobe and appearance and that of his horse. Speaking of horses, horse bonding is important here: mistreat or neglect your horse, and it is likely to throw you, but feed it and praise it, and it will come quickly when called for. Arthur can’t neglect caring for himself, either. Eating and sleeping regularly are needed to replenish health and stamina cores while Dead Eye – the mechanic that slows down time in a shootout – can be restored through tonics as well as more destructive means (cigarettes and narcotics). Lastly, thanks to the game’s honor/reputation system, a player’s morality (or lack thereof) can make a difference as well. Greet strangers and help those in need, and you will be remembered fondly by merchants; rob and threaten and murder and you’ll find yourself with a large bounty on your head and plenty of ill-will.
Of course, the playing experience wouldn’t be as immersive as it is without a solid story to drive the action, and RDR2 delivers. The plot seems straightforward at first, and the repetitive nature of “just one more big score” will test some players’ patience. However, there are myriad subplots – John’s gradual maturation, Sadie’s quest for revenge, Charles (a half black, half Native man) trying to help the Wapiti tribe amid aggression from the U.S. Army – that complicate the simplicity of the narrative. Anyone who has played the previous Red Dead game knows how some of these stories will eventually play out, but it is a testament to the Rockstar team that the game remains compelling despite that inevitability.
This storytelling is bolstered by well-written and capably voice-acted characters. Whereas Rockstar’s well-known Grand Theft Auto series frequently traffics in broad caricatures, sexist stereotypes, and unlikeable, violent sociopaths, RDR2’s world is filled with more complex and compelling denizens. Arthur may initially seem like a garden-variety brute (albeit a very skilled one), and Roger Clark’s rough voice enables that perception, but his frequent journaling, his lingering affection for former love Mary Linton, and his late-game selflessness all show him to be introspective and deeply conflicted over his place in the world. If Arthur’s arc is redemptive, then Dutch’s is just the opposite. Though a seasoned outlaw at the onset, he presents as a utopian anarchist/communalist, and his adversaries – the corrupt industrialist Cornwall, ruthless Pinkertons, violent O’Driscolls, racist Lost Cause sympathizers – cast him in a favorable light. But as the game progresses, his selfishness and hypocrisy grow and his sanity and rationality begin to wither. Benjamin Byron Davis’s performance effectively captures this unsettling decline. While RDR2 does boast a familiar cheerfully violent psycho in gang member Micah Bell, it thankfully largely (lascivious drunk Karen Jones aside) avoids Rockstar’s lamentable treatment of women. Sadie (voiced by Alex McKenna) is both a fearsome fighter and a tragic endorsement of the view that violence is cyclical. Young gang member Tillie Jackson, on the other hand, escaped a violent and abusive past to become a kind yet savvy thief. Susan Grimshaw, Dutch’s former lover and the gang’s administrator, is stern and matronly yet formidable and deeply committed to those that she cares about. Other notables include Rains Fall (voiced by Graham Greene), the war-weary Wapiti chief, and Hosea Matthews (voiced by Curzon Dobell), the gang’s eldest member and a wily, well-read con artist. Oddly enough, John Marston, his wife Abigail, and his son Jack come across as distracting here. Rob Wietoff does another fine job voicing John, the first Red Dead Redemption’s protagonist, but RDR2 seems to go out of its way to make him important within this game’s story, sometimes at the expense of further developing secondary characters (that and Dutch’s penchant for hijacking in-game conversations are among the very few narrative missteps).
All told, RDR2’s plot isn’t breaking any new ground, and its control scheme may even feel dated, but the attention to detail, quasi-cinematic presentation, meaningful characterization, and thoughtful exploration of frontier morality make it very hard to put down.
No comments:
Post a Comment