Red Dead Redemption: A Genre-Defining Classic

they say there's a man who completes it all a legend who's been replaying old games that he's already completed even when the games are so massive and detailed that any sane gamer would settle for just the achievements list that man's the completionist and he's got his sights set on a little western called red dead redemption in days long gone that is in the original episode from 2012 the completionist took a back seat but now it's a whole nother tale one that shows red dead redemption pays faithful homage to the spirit of classic westerns by both engaging in tropes and stereotypes and subverting but that faithfulness also makes red dead a bittersweet experience to complete but i'll let the man himself tell you howdy everyone and welcome back to another episode of the completionist new game plus the show where i'm re-completing the first 120 episodes i ever did here for the show as the voice of the west just said i never actually completely read their redemption in the original episode of the show that's changing right now so saddle up grab your stick shooters and let's ride because today we're going to re-complete or rather complete red dead redemption let's begin [Music] from new york city to miami to los angeles to private school rockstar has been everywhere over the years they've developed a reputation for making the most stylish and cinematic open world games around the worlds that rockstar creates are legendary because of how alive they feel everything from radio stations to mini games fledges out their worlds and makes them easy places to get lost they're satirical modern sandboxes but red dead redemption is special in this game for the first time rockstar applied their signature cinematic open world approach to non-modern gameplay it took hundreds of people and years of development but the end result is iconic applying that signature flair to a totally different genre and time period had a profound impact on the gaming landscape red dead redemption broke the mold of immersion to become a true playable period piece players diving into red dead redemption are instantly transported back in time bounty hunter john marsden rides into armadillo on a big black train hoping to find a better life for himself after years of being on the wrong side of the law he knows he can't escape his past but maybe he can make a better future behold into the law he's tasked with taking out members of his old gang but there's a whole world to explore in the meantime red dead redemption's gameplay is often simplified as a western grand theft auto and honestly that's not a bad way to think about it it's a third person adventure game full of side quests to fulfill guns to purchase challenges to complete and a grand story that takes players all over a gigantic map but in the end it's all about the setting only instead of stealing cars and shooting gangsters john marston rides horses and does the classic high noon drawdown on those who cross him now there have been many western themed video games in the past in fact red dead redemption is kind of a spiritual successor to red dead revolver a rock star published western game from 2004 but the two games are wildly different in everything but the cowboy boots rockstar went above and beyond to create a period piece the development team spent time and effort visiting locations throughout the us to build a sense of fidelity dan hauser the lead writer of the game and former head of creative for rockstar wanted the game to be bigger than any the company had created up until that point during development the team watched classic westerns to find inspiration and even spent time at the national photographic archives in washington dc to get a strong sense of what life looked like a century ago but beyond visuals and authenticity there is always always something to do in this game it's so much more than just a playable movie so again to reiterate this video actually marks my first time completing this game for the show this was a mediocrist episode meaning i essentially just provided color commentary on someone else's experience and we've only ever made three of those types of episodes and frankly it's kind of weird that a game this popular never got a full completionist treatment alex and i remedied that with the beardbros playthrough where he plays the entire game together we even blasted through the undead nightmare dlc which had a whole new single player campaign with another list of achievements to conquer and over the last several months almost for the last year i've been playing online multiplayer with community members for hours every week to work my way up the online ranks now even though this game is gigantic it's a rockstar game so duh the act of playing through it has been a breeze i have been able to seamlessly play the game on the entire xbox family of consoles the same games they file across three generations 360 xbox one and now the series x it's been extremely cool being able to play my original 360 disc on a totally new system with zero hiccups has been a godsend and even the online multiplayer has gone incredibly smooth thanks to a bunch of extremely helpful and dedicated fans red dead redemption and the undead nightmares achievement lists aren't terrible in and of themselves but there is another factor at play here rockstar's signature in-game checklists known as challenges these range from things like shooting half of people's heads to finding and killing a chupacabra all of these challenges contribute to 100 in game completion but the thing i'm dreading most is reaching every rank in the online multiplayer from previous experience prestiging games like this i know it will take a long ass time it might not be incredibly difficult but it might boil down to being boring which is my least favorite thing now this game leaves it all out on the field going for broke in the biggest way possible and the end result is undeniable the recent sequel that's actually a prequel red dead redemption 2 has sold something like 30 million copies but that's because of the foundation that the first game laid way back in 2010 that foundation was incredibly strong even though doing repetitive challenges and grinding for hours in the online multiplayer took away a little of the grand mystique that red dead redemption is shrouded with i was still impressed at any given moment of playtime the challenges and achievements may break immersion a little but the spirit of what rockstar is trying to evoke is incredibly powerful [Music] [Applause] well now we've got a little context for this here hoot nanny red dead redemption takes players back in time for the most faithful depiction of the west this side of the rockies it's the most high fidelity western game experience the average player could ask for but for the completionists and those lack them those western troops are utterly subverted into something else red dead redemption sticks to its guns if its guns are anything that you think of when you hear western from iconic images to landscapes to full-on playable situations this game is full of content that will make players go yup that's a western all right but if you think of a western trope right the redemption's got it a swing indoor saloon with the jangly piano got it wanted posters slapped on the walls of the sheriff's office you know it calling people out to have a shootout in the middle of a dusty road literally one of the first things that happens in the game you want to form a posse and go after some bandits who've been causing trouble saddle up partner hog tie a bounty and then throw him on the back of your horse so you can dump him at the marshall's feet later on absolutely shoot whiskey in the bar because you can why not there are deadly quick draw shootouts where the player must hover their hand over their pistol until their adversary goes for their gun and then light them up every time this happens there's a tense build up that any spaghetti western fan would get a thrill from but there are other iconic shooting galleries as well you ever wanted to defend a stagecoach from bandits as you're going from one town to the next that's basically red dead redemption and you can even do the thing where a character is strung up by the neck to be hung and you shoot the rope so they go free and it was truly up to me if i wanted to spare the time to help them out i could play the hero or the villain or land somewhere in between it feels like a lot of westerns lean into the morally grey tropes and rhetoric redemption celebrates this there are blacksmiths galore gunsmiths aplenty you can whistle and your horse will gallop right to your side and then you can ride that horse to the closest saloon and tie it up out front as you head in to escape the sun's glare practically everything you've ever seen in western media from railroads to barn burning has a home here you want mexican revolutions and snake oil salesmen or a good-hearted marshal who's constantly under fire what about hard scrabble farmers doing everything they can just to survive in the harsh reality that is day to day living in the wild west it's all right here and you know what i love these tropes well maybe not the murdering of native americans the fact that red dead redemption goes so hard on letting players see and experiencing the defining images and actions of the old west rules it made me feel confident and cool this game is full of references and homages and callbacks to western media from the last 50 or 60 years and it's awesome now for players who are just moseying through the game whether for just a few hours to experience the story they'll appreciate these tropes in fact for those who just want to experience the story they'll probably encounter everything i just mentioned you'll get all of that and have a root and shooting dare i say tooting good time but for completionists i'm not so sure for completionists this adherence to fidelity becomes something else entirely those who choose to complete this game will see it becoming something else something that doesn't feel like a western at all in a typical western tale or at least those that have risen to the top of public consciousness a lone gunman tends to arrive in a town in distress after solving the problem at hand whether that's the bandits that involve the town or corrupt officials they're usually able to saunter out on their own right off into the sunset now that's in the context of most modern westerns red dead redemption's plot on the other hand is epically complex the player character john marston has a complicated past he's a man with a code sure but he's also been a stone-cold killer for dutch vanderlin's gang at the start of the game his past actions have finally caught up with him rather than settle scores with his old gang members on his own marston is basically in the government's pocket from the jump all he wants to do is leave the past behind and settle into a new life for himself with his wife and kid but instead he's manipulated into being a trigger man by greater powers but what a trigger man he is in red dead redemption players get to mess around with one of my favorite gun mechanics from any game ever it's called deadeye and it's amazing aiming with a gun and clicking down on the right stick puts jon in dead eye mode which slows down time and turns everything sepia toned as long as deadeye is active jon can paint targets and then blast them to hell once the timer runs up this mechanic successfully makes jon feel like a legendary gunslinger and upgrading the meter fully made me feel invincible it's unique and it's a great way to subvert the adherence to realism that's everywhere else in reddit redemption but yet still makes john marston feel like a total badass plus it's the matrix we all love the matrix right bullet time is tight instead of john getting roped into one last job before retirement or deciding he wants to settle his scores of his own free will he sort of blackmailed into doing so the story has surprising depth and a real sense of expansiveness as i play through this game and saw the plot unfold i realized red dead redemption was unlike any other western jon's quest spans not just to the frontier but spills over into a revolutionary war in nuevo paraiso and even the wilderness of new elizabeth this game's parallel to canada rather than get in solve the immediate problems facing him and get out jon is further and further pulled in to the struggles of those around him by this game's very design side quests keep getting jon tangled up in ways that would never really happen in a normal western tale the npcs that jon deals with aren't stock stereotypes with one note stories they're complicated individuals and i couldn't help getting involved in bonnie mcfarlane's life or the struggles of con man nigel west dickens i love how complicated and dark the story gets the longer it goes on i love that john marston is so well drawn he gets more and more enmeshed in the unfolding chaos of the world instead of being able to chase his dream the way that he wants the story is at times heartbreaking and at times hilarious as i kept getting distracted by side quests or other short missions this is a man who wants to disappear from the world and have a quiet life and instead keeps being forced into doing the government's dirty work i found it depressing yet incredibly compelling the whole story is much too long enriched to feel like any western i've experienced before it keeps going on and on completely blowing up any kind of three-act structure you might expect from a film there is nuance to jon's character which makes what he goes through even more heartbreaking rather than becoming a legendary gunman or fighter like billy the kid or wyatt earp his journey ends unceremoniously i never expected the game to take such big risks with the story and as a player i was completely along for the ride i love this character's arc and by the end i was convinced that he's earned his redemption but of course he doesn't get that happy ending it's bleak yet bold but with all dlcs about zombies there's even more deviation from the tradition in the undead nightmare dlc in this zombie apocalypse story john marston has to deal with the end of the world old west style rockstar went all out to make this zombie story really feel like the perfect dlc it's got the same basic gameplay but enough is completely different with the setting and aesthetic to provide a totally new and fun experience and just look at this blood red river freaky stuff it's rare for westerns to play around with other genres unless it's like jonah hex cowboys versus aliens but undead nightmare actually does this all well keeping up the rockstar level quality but back to westerns in general there's a cadence to well written western stories story pacing usually darts from action to suspense to drama to catharsis but in reddit redemption pacing slows from a crawl to a dead stop at times for the sake of completion the momentum lols from performing mundane tasks to frivolous distractions to hilariously low stakes that seem at odds with the high drama at hand for the rest of the story the random challenges that fatten up the bulk of red dead redemption's playtime are barely strongly related there are four main types of challenges sharpshooter survivalist master hunter and treasure hunter each challenge type has 10 ranks to reach and each rank is tougher to reach than the last the breadth and the variety within each challenge is great even if completing them stretches the credulity of what would happen in a standard western and honestly things get crazy slow and even boring in trying to complete all these challenges take the survivalist challenges never did i ever expect john marston a badass with gigantic scars across his face to spend hours roaming the landscape picking up tiny little flowers and herbs and i didn't just have to find three of each some ranks required me to find 8 10 12 to even 15 of specific flowers in the final rank find 10 violet snow drops only found in the tall tree areas and then two more of every other herb legendary bounty hunter john marston is also a botanist it's completely unexpected and has nothing to do with any western trope that i'm aware of similarly the master hunter challenges have me spending an incredible amount of time looking for specific critters killing them and taking their skins and pelts what's more because red dead redemption has this incredible commitment to fidelity it takes a little extra time to skin each critter so not only did i spend time tracking hunting and killing every damn coyote elk armadillo and bighorn sheep i saw i had to sit down and slice them up and the higher ranks of this challenge had me looking for legendary variants of these animals sort of like in far cry 3. and then there's the non-related challenge stuff that still took forever i actually like that you have to break wild horses in before you're able to ride them around but it always takes longer than you think to do this you have to lasso them usually from horseback then hop on its back and then make sure you don't get bugged off until it's calm enough to be subdued cattle hurting even appears having to round up scattered cows seems like it would be beneath jon's pay grade yet here i was making big loops so i wouldn't lose any bovine off of a cliff it's slow and it feels kind of random red dead redemption once again digs into the detail so herding cattle is never like find one lost cow it's more in the vein of bring back this entire herd to our barn hunting for treasure is a staple of a certain type of western and red the redemption really leaned into this idea jon can find treasure maps but rather than a simple x marks the spot to be waypointed to a mini map the maps are more cryptic the map might depict a gnarled old tree near an overhanging cliffside or specific rock formation near a horizon there's a real sense of mystery here but it still completely halted the action whenever i decided to hunt for treasure i had mixed feelings about how the action was broken up in these myriad ways sometimes it was kind of soothing to just scour the landscape for one specific type of flower and we know jon has a sensitive side despite his gruff exterior so maybe it does make a certain amount of sense for jon to take a break now and then pick up some plants what wore me down was doing it so many times for so many different types of plants and i even had to do this to satisfy a bonus challenge during hideout completion sometimes at least with the hunting the pelts were extremely valuable to sell i appreciate that money and red dead redemption largely feels like it means something at least for a good part of the game skinning critters was a consistent way to get cash and usually more efficient than looting dead bandits for whatever they had in their pockets but even with the monetary value of the skins i eventually started to question just why i had to do this so many times maybe i want to leave these legendary animals alone the game even applies rockstar's twisted sense of humor to hunting there's an achievement that pops off for hunting all the frontier buffalos to extinction manifest destiny that's right everyone i am the one who made buffalo extinct just for completion's sake and i never saw one again i actually felt pat when i earned this achievement i generally didn't mind taking short breaks from the dramatic plot the ebb and flow of pacing is important in any story but the wild swings in depth of involvement in some side quests and challenges truthfully doesn't always feel very western pauses in the action are necessary but a lot of this starts to feel like padding for completionists again a totally different medium but most western movies last around two or three hours even something like deadwood the hbo western with the best dialogue of all time only ran for three seasons and it had a made for tv movie but in red dead redemption completionists will spend dozens upon dozens of hours achieving minimal gains we're talking entire series of gun-smoked lengths of time and that series ran over 600 episodes now look i'm not trying to compare video games to movies but in a movie even when things are at their slowest parts you know it won't last for very long a good western makes use of narrative tools like pacing to heighten the tension that's why a good shootout takes so long to build up and why those close-ups on clint eastwood's eyes are so iconic stakes are built on tension throughout the game the narrative stakes are incredibly high but diminishes as completionists reckon with side quests and challenges but there's yet another entire other incredible time sync the online multiplayer now i know i know another incredible single player experience with what seems like a tack online component i felt like a lot of the online stuff was pretty samey you know you've got a goal you got to shoot some people they shoot you back but they must have done something right if there are still so many people playing to this day now the community isn't what it was at this game's height especially now that red did online is a thing but until i started to really drill down into completion i was having a pretty okay time instead of simply taking red dead redemption and making it a battle royale rockstar basically copy pasted a ton of challenges from the single player mode into the multiplayer there are a handful of unique challenges too broken up into several different categories we've got gambling challenges horse racing stronghold missions even some crossover with the undead nightmare dlc with zombie overrun but that's not all there are stat challenges as well things like having 5-2-1 kill ratio or running over a hundred people on my horse i even had to travel a hundred miles on foot these stat challenges ask a lot of time from the player and between the stat challenges the pvp challenges and cooperative aspects there's enough to keep players on the hook for dozens of hours but that's not all because of all those things i just mentioned from the easiest to the most difficult earns my character experience points earn enough points and you'll level up reach level 50 and you rank up and have the option to pass into legend which takes you back to level one and there are five ranks to earn so that means prestiging this entire process five times 250 levels worth of experience points and between all of the ranks every single challenge resets yes that's right and now you have a sense of the road stretching in front of me most westerns evoke a sense of the vastness of the frontier right after earning just a few levels in online mode i felt like i was being asked to cross the great plains totally on foot it's an insane amount of things to do fortunately i had a little help online a great group of fans and friends helped me out via the twitch discord and so many discords i've started since i've done this show shout outs to all of you on screen right now for joining me in the insanity and helped me achieve the impossible in a slightly sooner time frame to give you guys an idea to complete all of the online multiplayer we met every sunday for the last six months to get this done even with all of that help which was exceptionally useful when trying to get a 5 000 bounty there is still so much that's just a gigantic time suck online why in the ever loving do i have to pick up all the plants again in online mode with the same requirements to rank up i already did it in the single player do i really need to do it again online as much as i praise this game's meticulousness to attention to detail the gambling challenges take that attention and use it to punish completionists at the top of your guys's head do you know what the odds are to win with royal flush in a standard game of poker go ahead throw out your best guess let me tell you it's roughly 649 thousand seven hundred thirty nine to one so out of over 600 000 hands i might win one with that specific set of cards for that specific challenge i literally had to wait for the luck of the draw to do this specific challenge there's even a challenge for playing 10 hours total of liar's dice now don't get me wrong i love liar's dice especially from pipes the caribbean it's a super fun game but 10 total combined hours is a long goddamn time padding for the sake of padding the online started off as a fun diversion whenever i wanted to take a break from single player but as it became clear this would be where i would be spending the bulk of my time i started to present it and even beyond the impending doom of knowing this will take more time than is even remotely reasonable this game stops feeling even a little like a cool western it starts to feel like work and not good honest work i mean more like cowboy sisyphus in cowboy hell online multiplayer literally became a part-time job that i had for the last several months every sunday and frankly more often than that i would clock in and grind for experience so i could rank up and prestige even further it's repetitive it's annoying and even though it has its fun intense moments the thrill is long gone by the time i reached the final rank and became a legend of the west to bring it back to films i wanted this movie to end ages ago but instead i'm stuck in the theater and the floor is sticky and my popcorn is empty and the movie just started over for the 50th time in a row and that's what earning ranks in this game started to feel like but even though i grew to despise the length of time it took to complete the online multiplayer there is still so much to love in red dead redemption players looking for a genuine western vibe will get it but there is so much more if you're all in like me there is far far more to complete than i ever imagined the rewards are too big but are they justified completing red dead redemption is a journey like marsden's trek to create a better life for himself the completionist went through ups and downs satisfaction and heartbreak sometimes he felt like things would never break his way and just like the conclusion to marston's journey the rewards for completing red dead are ultimately bittersweet there's the good awesome outfits and perks rockstar has always been meticulous with aesthetics and completing sets of challenges and missions on my way to completion unlocks different outfits and most outfits have helpful perks associated with them earning 100 in-game completion by finishing all the challenges finding all rare weapons earning every other outfit completing jobs obtaining safe houses clearing gang hideouts completing bounties and finishing the main story earned me a badass completion bonus the bureau outfit marston has a lot of awesome outfits to wear in red dead redemption but the bureau outfit might be one of the most useful it's black it's got a sweet hat and it's downright sleek best of all the perk associated with this outfit literally places marston above the law the law will no longer come after me whenever i would do something that would normally be considered a crime basically it gave me carte blanche to do whatever i pleased and i wouldn't have to worry about getting chased or punished in that process going after the 100 in-game completion in both the main game and the dlc just feels right i was constantly compelled to explore and mostly felt like the game wanted me to do so as well of course there's the bad most perks are locked to specific outfits so cool gameplay perks such as the very useful expert hunter perk that let me collect double skins for animals i had to wear the associated outfit for this isn't something out of left field but i think i've gotten a little spoiled from stuff like the most recent open world spider-man games which let me mix and match perks with outfits and the ugly the online multiplayer reaching the level 5 legend status in online took me something like 40 hours and grinding i want to reiterate 40 hours in grinding just grinding and that's only focused on leveling up to get those prestige ranks and there's not a lot of reason to do so i mean at the very least i unlocked the super fast zebra mount you know for the online mode that i'm completely sick of playing at least it looks really cool but mostly it's for online bragging rights for a decade old game just never really a great feeling i appreciated the badges and the new characters and the dozens and dozens of online multiplayer titles it was almost as if i was being rewarded the entire time which is why i chose to complete the online portion so thoroughly but overall it was utterly exhausting to do everything in the online multiplayer when i completed red dead redemption there were 94 out of 94 achievements earned is this the most achievements i've ever earned in a single game maybe i think so 24 outfits unlocked most i was able to earn by completing challenges and missions but there were a few that i earned just by having the right version of the game thanks game of the year edition one mythical unicorn with eternal rainbows and butterflies broken to my undead will 250 levels earned in online multiplayer reaching rank 5 and resetting to 1 5 times after a while this was torture no joke 20 buffalo exterminated from the frontier which net me the manifest destiny achievement and that wasn't even the darkest secret achievement in the game 153 hours played 21 of which were spent in deadeye mode and one location the chaotic and beautiful western frontier that has never been revisited in any games in the same way this really is a once in a generation game that is until you play red dead redemption 2 because that also is a goddamn masterpiece there has never been another game that captured imagination like red dead redemption 1 in my eyes the sequel obviously hits some insane technical feats that are impossible in the first game but there's a reason that story is a prequel it didn't want to challenge what the first one did so well the experience of red day redemption is a perfect blend of what makes western special i constantly like i was being taken care of throughout my entire progress with a single player and honestly undead nightmare is the perfect example of a dlc that changes the base gameplay without messing up the game at all with that said the multiplayer experience is a perfect example of what it's like to take the the meticulousness and the perfectness of what it's like to make a single-player game and extrapolate it with a bunch of extra things so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it finish it [Music] you

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 260,999

Keywords: red dead redemption, red dead redemption 2, red dead redemption review, red dead redemption gameplay, red dead, completionist, new game plus, jirard khalil, GTA, red dead online, red dead redemption online, red dead revolver, wild west, gaming, playstation, ps4, ps5, xbox, xbox series x, game reviews, review, gameplay, rockstar games, rockstar, xbox one, best wild west game, red dead 2, gta 5, gta 6, grand theft auto, gta online, ricepirate, oneyplays, mick lauer, arthur morgan

Id: VpANPWo1H3E

Length: 29min 52sec (1792 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RickyZBiGBiRD]

Hell yeah. It's finally out.

[u/myuusmeow]

🔫 don't