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.


 

Comments

[dergeis.livejournal.com]

Recall when I predicted the villain dying in "a cinematic cut scene where you'll watch him fall to his death Disney-style?" Nailed it. Recall when I predicted that the main character would go down with a hale of "Waco-like gunfire"? Called that one, too. But what I didn't predict was that it wouldn't be the end.

So, after the villain dies (the only surprise that he didn't spread his arms Christ-like when he fell backwards off the cliff), you ride back to the farm to find your wife and child. You then have a few "mission" of chasing off crows and rounding up cattle and going hunting for elk with the kid. Anticlimactic is an understatement. And after all this time trying to make Marston a sympathetic character, he comes home and is a complete dick to his uncle (or his wife's uncle or just some old guy who works the farm that everyone calls uncle) and is a bit of a sucky father, too. You piddle around for a while and then the army shows up. Waco-like gunfire. Marston walks out of the barn like a complete moron and takes a chest full of gunfire from a dozen federal agents, also standing in a line like morons.

The wife cries over the bloody corpse. The son comforts her. Cut to the grave. Fade to black

But wait! There's more! After one anticlimax, they have another one. Fade back in and the son has grown up a few years and has buried his mother next to his father. He dons his father's bounty killer clothing and rides of to exact his revenge on the federal agent who killed his father. A couple of interactions along the lines of "No, he's not here" and you finally tracking him down. Duel. He goes down. Fade to black.

Now it's done, right? No! Not yet. You still haven't picked up all the awards and trophies. You can piddle around in the world some more trying to clear out bandit camps that refill the next day or hunt some legendary bear in the mountains or other such nonsense.

In conclusion, Rockstar Games doesn't understand what an epilogue is, doesn't understand the narrative climax, doesn't understand the difference between redemption and revenge, doesn't understand and most certainly doesn't understand the American western genre.

I'll be playing "Undead Nightmare" next. Perhaps it will be less ham-handed libertarian propaganda, but I doubt it. The dead are rising from the graves to feast on the living? It's the government's fault. Those filthy Mexicans brought this trouble north. It's a Jewish plot.