Preview: Red Dead Redemption

Xbox 360, PS3

By Gerard Campbell / Tuesday, October 27 2009

Red Dead Redemption is a game we haven’t heard a lot about from Rockstar, but if you imagined Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven ported to a video game you’d be thinking along the right lines.

An open-world game where the six-shooters do the talking, Redemption swaps the urban metropolis of GTA IV for the wide open plains of the Wild West, but is, according to Rockstar, “more ambitious than GTA IV’’. The game takes place in three areas: The Frontier, The North and Mexico.

Wild West shooters are few and far between – and for good reason. There’s one major stumbling block for a game based in an environment where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play: the wide open spaces that stretch for miles and miles and miles. How can you have an action game when the nearest town is miles away and the only other inhabitants in the sprawling desert wilderness are wildlife, cactus bushes and buzzards flying overhead?

You create random events, that’s how. But more on that later.

Our preview session began with a Rockstar employee guiding the character Marston into the sleepy hamlet of Tumbleweed where he has to save a family friend, Bonnie, who is about to be lynched. Marston is a partially reformed outlaw but is forced to work for The Bureau (what will eventually become the FBI) and finds it’s just as ruthless as the felons he has to chase.

As you’d expect, it all turns pear-shaped and Marston has to dispatch the kidnappers and save Bonnie. As Marston is steered through Tumbleweed, the Rockstar employee activates the game’s Dead Eye mode, a targeting system that slows down time, giving you the ability to “paint” up to six targets at once, then hit them with a flurry of super-fast shots once you flick back into real-time. It’s impressive on foot but even more so when it’s done on horseback.

Once Marston cuts the noose from around Bonnie’s neck, it’s time for Rockstar to show us another important feature of the game: the horses. Think of horses as like the vehicles in GTA IV, except they can bolt, leaving their owner stranded, or they can be horse-napped by someone else.

Rockstar says great pains have been taken to make the horses react realistically to what happens around them.

Showing off the scale of the game world, my Rockstar handler guides Marston towards the town of Armadillo and it’s here that I see the random events that Rockstar were talking about earlier.

As Marston trots through the desolate desert, a cougar suddenly appears out of nowhere, nipping at the hindquarters of our horse, causing it to rear up. The Rockstar employee manning the Xbox 360 controller appears genuinely surprisedby this turn of events. You’ll also come across campsites, bears, rabbits and snakes.

Further along, I see a lone figure running through the scrub, being pursued by two gun-wielding men. Shots are fired and the man collapses to the ground. It turns out that the pursuers are sheriffs trying to apprehend a wayward fugitive.

Along the road, a scantily-clad woman stands beside a broken-down cart, waving her arms frantically, and calling out for help.

As Marston rides past I see five men hiding behind the cart’s wheel and brandishing pistols, waiting in ambush. Rockstar says consequence and notoriety play a big part in the game, affected by whether you get involved in any of the events you pass.

Once in Armadillo I see one of the mini-games that will spice up the game play: Five Finger Fillet, a game involving quick reflexes and a sharp knife, reminds me of that scene early in the movie Aliens where Bishop does the speedy knife trick with Hudson’s hand.

While I only saw a small portion of Red Dead Redemption, it was a most impressive visit to the Frontier that, excuse the pun, blew me away. Come early next year, I’ll be keen as mustard to saddle up, load the six-shooter and take on them varmints.