Fed Dead Redemption

[dime_novel_hero]

I received a PS3 for my birthday and the first game I have been playing is Red Dead Redemption. It is, in basic format, Grand Theft Auto in the wild west. Now, I don’t mind the piddling little missions so much (the herding cattle, bucking broncos and other things that seem more "Little House on the Prairie" than "Wild Bunch"), and I’ve even gotten used to the way-the-hell-gone riding all over the empty game map (I know it can be bypassed but it’s a lot like my morning bicycle commute, a cleansing experience) but what has begun to annoy me, even just a few hours into gameplay, is the anti-government whining of just about everyone.

In every cut-scene someone is bitching about how the government is meddling in peoples' business. The marshal, who complains that the railroads that pay his salary require him to turn a blind eye to their burning down settlements, says the government has brought nothing but trouble and taxes. The thieves and bandits say the government is a bunch of crooks, and I suppose they should know. The rancher calls the government a worse menace than the “plague” of outlaws terrorizing the whole county by murdering whole ranches of people and hanging their de-fleshed corpses from the barn rafters.

The government is worse than that? Really?

And when they are distrustful of the protagonist, it’s not because his face looks like road pizza and he’s a convicted murderer and bank robber who used to run with the monster who is terrorizing the whole county by murdering whole ranches of people and hanging their de-fleshed corpses from the barn rafters. No. They don’t trust him because the government sent him.

You’ve got cattle rustlers. Stagecoach robbers. Murders. Thieves. Arsonists. Terrorists. Bandit lairs in every box canyon in the state. You’ve got cannibals in the hills, for crying out loud! Is this your self-reliant libertarian utopia? It looks to me like you have been own for a while now, have completely failed to bring anything even remotely resembling civilization and you have screwed up so badly that the government has little recourse but to send a killer in to clean up your mess.

At least, that’s how I’d like to play it.

Unfortunately, this is not my story but theirs. I’ve read enough apocalyptic patriot militia screeds to know where this is going. The protagonist will kill the bandit and earn his reward. Then, inevitably, the government that blackmailed him into doing their job for them will betray him and he will go down in a hale of Waco-like gunfire.


 

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[dergeis.livejournal.com]

So, I have finished with the first “book” of Red Dead Redemption and moved on to Mexico. I cross the border and in the first town I enter I am accosted by three locals who immediately begin provoking me. One asks if I speak Spanish and I reply in Spanish that I speak only a little. I ask if they speak English.

“Sí, gringo, Hablo mucho inglés. Hablo "filthy fucking bean eater." Hablo "slippery little Mexican." Hablo "little piece of shit." ¿Comprende amigo? ¿Comprende?.”

They don’t know me for anything but being across the border and already they are assuming that I am a racist bastard. I didn’t say any of those things and, of course, it is absolutely clear where this is going. It is, however, played out as a cut scene and I don’t actually have to touch the game controller to shoot all three of them.

At which point, a guy steps off of a nearby porch to berate me.

“Oh, very good. Very good indeed, sir. What a great way to improve border relations. An illiterate farmer crossing the river, coming into this civilization and butchering the local peasants. Thank you very much, sir.”

This is Landon Rickets, a retired gunfighter. He looks like Sam Elliot and sounds like Lee Van Cleef, which should be awesome, but instead he’s just being a condescending jerk. Didn’t he just see that I walked into town, minding my own business, when these three locals started harassing me simply because I wasn’t from around here? They were obviously itching for a fight and were not going to back down or let me walk away. (Again, this is all cut scene so I, as a game player, had no choice in the outcome.) And “illiterate farmer?” Gunbelt. Rifle. Bandoleer with ammo enough for a small army. Heavily scarred face. Clint Eastwood squinty eyes. Farmer? Really?

Rickets: “You kill peasants, you become a peasant.”

Marston: “I never aspired to be anything more.”

Rickets: “Ah, a socialist, huh? No wonder you left America.”

Landon Rickets needs to look up in a dictionary or something as to the definition of “socialist.” Or rather, the game developers are forwarding their own limited and wildly inaccurate view of what socialism is and who socialists are to advance their anti-government agenda firmly established in the first chapter of the game.

Rickets then goes on to belittle my gunfighting skill

Rickets: “An angry man, a long way from home. A man who handles his gun as sloppy as you.”

Marston: “I can handle a gun okay, partner.”

Rickets: “Yeah, as long as you're killing quail or peasants. But if you have to face another man, you don't stand a chance.”

Wait. Didn’t you just see me face three armed men? I drew and fired, from just over arms length, dropping all three of them before any of their guns cleared leather. Even took my hat back from the head of one of them before he hit the ground, and you tell me about “not standing a chance?” At this point in the game I think my body count was something on the 600, a dozen in one-on-one duels but most of them killed in attacking groups of 5 or more.

Six hundred! That’s probably more than all the outlaws in all the West over the past half century. I’m a goram one-man-army.

Really, Landon. Don’t stand a chance? But fine. Have me shoot at three bottles so you can teach me a shooting lesson. Well, it is a mechanism for teaching how to use a new game control feature but do you have to make Rickets such a dick about it?

Rickets: “Well, you won't make it in the circus, but you can shoot. Keep on practicing.”

Six hundred. That’s well beyond practice in the goddamn circus.