Fed Dead Redemption
20 July 2013 08:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroI 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.
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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Date: 2013-08-25 10:19 pm (UTC)The revolutionary leader is not much better. In fact, he's even worse because, in addition to his being a womanizer and generally uncaring user of human beings, he is a poet and . . . *gasp* . . . an intellectual. The only good thing the rebel leader does is actual deliver on his promise to deliver Williamson up to you.
But wait, there's more. With Williamson dead, the evil American government has tacked on a new requirement that you go after your former boss, van der Linde. He is continually presented (by your own cut scene dialogue) as a Robin Hood character who went insane. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. The ultimate libertarian patriot fighting the good fight to bring about the best America. It's all hogwash that's supposed to give you some sort of sympathy for the character who will, I predict, have one last chance to spout libertarian and freedom rhetoric before dying a noble death. No, you won't be given the chance to put a bullet into his brain pan during combat. In a cinematic cut scene you'll watch him fall to his death Disney-style or hold his bleeding body in your arms and he burbles his last breath after being gunned down by federal agents.
I'm glad I purchased this game second hand so that Rockstar didn't get a dime from me.