The Wild West has long been a genre of allure and wonder, and before it was a genre the American West itself was a land of dreams and opportunity. The fantasy of setting out somewhere new, being someone new, and making a name for yourself not only goes hand in hand with classic Wild West stories but gaming as a whole. As a result, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption series lends itself incredibly naturally to the medium, and Red Dead Redemption’s upcoming updated release has reignited fans’ interest in the genre.
Interestingly, however, Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead 2 are starkly different games in a variety of ways. Red Dead Redemption, as the title indicates, is a story of redemption. John Marston’s adventure takes place in the wide open deserts of New Austin and Nuevo Paraiso, capturing the true spirit of the cowboy beautifully. Red Dead 2, however, takes place on a much larger, more diverse map. While Red Dead focuses on the golden age of cowboys, its prequel is dedicated to the idea of the enterprising frontiersman.
Red Dead Redemption Is A Gunslinger’s Tale
Red Dead Redemption is, to many, the definitive vision of what a video game in the Wild West should be. John Marston, the protagonist players take control of, is the classic wild west gunslinger with a dark past. Throughout the story, John Marston hunts down members of his former gang one by one, seeking redemption. Throughout the experience, players find themselves sometimes within the Rocky Mountains, but most often in the wide-open deserts of New Austin and Nuevo Paraiso.
Red Dead Redemption has become an absolute classic for many reasons, but most importantly because it perfectly captured the vision many players wanted to experience in their favorite Western movies. John Marston is about as Clint Eastwood as a cowboy protagonist can get without actually being named Clint Eastwood, and the tales of tracking outlaws and bringing them to justice are perfect examples of the Western milieu. While it’s a lot of fun, Red Dead Redemption, at its core, is one big walking cliché. Granted, that is arguably what many players want out of a Wild West game, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t go much deeper than the average cowboy movie.
Red Dead Redemption 2 Is A Tale Of The American Dream
At this point, Red Dead Redemption 2‘s tale focused on Dutch’s gang is very well known. A gang held together by common values and a perceived sense of belonging and even family, the story of Red Dead 2 follows the outlaws and outcasts as they journey across the American frontier, looking for a place they can call their own. Drifters, they constantly migrate across the map, as was common in the West in the 1890s, when the story takes place.
This was the Wild West as it relates to the American Dream as a whole. When the colonies in the New World were founded, many European families flocked to the new land for a chance at freedom and to forge their own destinies. While the common perception of the Wild West involves gun-slinging cowboys in barren desert towns, the reality is that the Wild West was the first land of opportunity in a world of order and hierarchy. Dutch Van Der Linde certainly believes this, and he acts throughout the story as a reminder of why people explore new worlds. While Dutch is wrong about a lot of things, this doesn’t change his relationship with the myth of the Wild West. The constant struggle between order and freedom is even captured in the game’s home location of Saint-Denis, where the gang reacts badly to the modern city. Just like Butch and Sundance, they see it as the end of disorder, and the end of the Wild West.
Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, doesn’t focus on Dutch but on Arthur Morgan as he becomes the definitive frontiersman, exploring every nook and cranny of the game’s open world, with the Rockies becoming as important in Red Dead 2 as the wide-open deserts of New Austin. This is true to the real-life Wild West, where the Rockies were features and boundaries just like the deserts of the South. A cowboy would just as likely find themselves in a dusty old town as they would on a beautiful, sweeping plain. The game embraces this through the various mechanics added to Red Dead 2, including in-depth hunting and tracking, as well as camping. It’s made to immerse players in its setting and makes them learn to track animals before hunting them down and using their meat in believable recipes.
Lastly, Red Dead Redemption 2 excels as a simulator by giving players the ability to truly interact with the people in the world. The interaction system pioneered by Red Dead 2, with the ability to speak to any random NPC in a variety of ways controllable by the player, was truly revolutionary. In every video game, the player knows that he is a stranger, sticking out like a sore thumb. That is just the nature of things, and the games strive to immerse their players in their worlds and experiences. Red Dead 2’s interaction system is so revolutionary because, for the first time, it gives players the ability to act like every other character in its vast world. They can walk around, start conversations with random NPCs, and just listen to hours of discussion between characters across RDR2. This even has a mechanical part to play within the game since a player’s interactions with any random NPC have the chance to start a whole new adventure through something small like the mention of a nearby location of interest.
To conclude, both Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 created immersive open worlds players can lose themselves in. Through a variety of mechanics, design choices, and story elements, both capture the spirit of the Wild West, but in very different ways. Red Dead Redemption is a tale of gun-slinging cowboys and revenge, straight out of an old-fashioned cowboy movie. Meanwhile, Red Dead Redemption 2 strives to capture the true spirit of the West, or at least its spirit as it’s commonly imagined today. It presents a land of freedom and opportunity that’s constantly encroached on by people hoping to control it. This is a different kind of cowboy movie and a different set of myths, one that ignores the realities of the people who populated the West long before Europeans and enslaved people arrived in it. Still, it’s by far the more complete and nuanced simulation.