Tag Archives: Red Dead Redemption

How You Got Videogames Wrong #2: The Vanity Glitch

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Pissing you off in installments, the monthly series “How You Got Videogames Wrong” delves beyond appearances into the slimy interior of The God’s Truth (about videogames).  This month we’ll be looking at videogame culture’s heavy, though not altogether unhealthy, reliance on sin: in this case, vanity.

 

After two dozen hours of killing, cussing, and Old West-mythesizing, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption risks it all on a last-act twist:

Family life.

Oh it’s riveting stuff. You’ll scare off crows…You’ll herd cattle alongside your whiskey-addled “uncle”…You’ll even deliver empty sacks. But as the game’s final missions pile on–and boy will they pile on–you’ll come to realize the following about the player/character relationship between yourself and protagonist John Marston: how you feel about things doesn’t matter anymore. John Marston the object is gone. He’s his own John Marston now.

And if you don’t like it, well, friend, you can get the hell on…

…This is a common dilemma in storytelling, not just in videogames, but in all mediums whose narrative potency is predicated upon interaction (oh let’s not get into that again): how to make things happen that readers, players, and listeners intuitively don’t want to happen. Games, it seems to me, feel the brunt of this …

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Rockstar Tidbits on LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3

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As we’ve mentioned before, the Max Payne series is defined by its noir-inspired comic book aesthetic, so the move to Sao Paulo raised a few eyebrows. Max Payne without permanent rain? Well, I never. Nevertheless, in an FAQ on their official website the publisher talks Max Payne’s story and setting, Red Dead Redemption on the PC, LA Noire and the upcoming tenth anniversary of GTA III.

One question asked why Max Payne moved away from New York city, seeing as how the setting was almost as important a character as Max. After all, Max Payne 2 ends on a fairly closed note (albeit somewhat different if you play on the hardest difficulty); the series was hardly begging for a sequel. Rockstar answers:

“To us, and especially after such a long absence since Max Payne 2, to simply continue Max’s story in New York City was nowhere near as interesting a challenge as taking that same character and pushing him to his absolute breaking point in a very dangerous and exotic locale many, many miles from home. There was simply nowhere for Max to go in New York after Max Payne 2.”

Despite the change of location, the game’s key techniques remain – like LA Noire, …

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Writing Stories with Lightning

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“It is like writing history with Lightning” said President Woodrow Wilson, allegedly after seeing the first screening of a movie in the White House.

Women that gaze directly into his eyes, might find themselves suddenly pregnant

As exceptional as President Wilson’s ability to conjure awesome metaphors was, his remark carried little hyperbole. By then movies were finally breaking the “movie barrier.” After decades of being little more than silent amusements to be shown in “moving picture shows,” one movie finally cracked the code necessary to deliver narratives.

The movie, the very same screened at Wilson’s abode, was D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Birth, despite being morally reprehensible now – it portrayed the KKK as heroes in a time where segregation was considered almost too progressive – was the film that invented film language as we know it.

It invented things we now take for granted, like the idea of telling a scene by cutting between wide and medium shots, as well as inserting close-ups and close shots of details. Griffith’s biggest innovation, however, was cross-cutting: the mechanism of a movie following parallel lines of action taking place at different locations. First, you show one group of characters, then another, then …

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“Red Dead Redemption” and its redemption.

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I loved Red Dead Redemption. Let’s just get that out-of-the-way. I did everything; tamed every horse, did every side-quest possible and upon entering Mexico and that beautiful song played – Jose Gonzalez’s Far Away – I threw my controller across the room to not interrupt the love being made to my ears.

From start to finish I was engrossed, but where the game truly shined was the ending. The whole game culminated in this final scene that left me staring at the credits in contemplation, and not like Assassin’s Creed where I’m just staring because I have no idea what just happened.

Not everybody agrees with me about the ending of RDR, so this piece will serve as a bit of a rebuttal to this article, offering a different interpretation of the ending. This will also, if you haven’t already realized, be spoiler heavy. So… play the game first, because you’ll kick yourself to have it spoiled.

Redemption, it’s in the title. This game has one of the most poignant and accurate representations of redemption that I’ve experienced in any medium. Though RDR stands in comparison to Western films who address the same topic, the interactivity that it bestows makes the experience stronger than …

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Whoever wrote the ending to Red Dead Redemption is one dumb cowpoke

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In which Rockstar chooses to whistle Dixie.

I finished Red Dead Redemption and it was a fairly fun game. Despite excessive horse riding, I enjoyed myself. Then I got to the end and I never wanted anything to do with the game again. This is why.

Below are spoilers, so if you intend to play through Red Dead yourself do so and come back.

Rockstar has a tendency to write reluctant protagonists. Manhunt dealt with a main character forced into action by a threat to his family. San Andreas’s CJ Johnson falls into working with an antagonist to help his own family. Niko Bellic, from GTA4, wouldn’t stop whining about how he wanted to live the American dream in peace, even while he was shooting people. Red Dead is no exception. The main character, John Marston, is so eager to be done with his mission he practically gets killed in the first 30 minutes of the game.

Unlike previous Rockstar protagonists, Marston is justifiably reluctant to go on an armed rampage. Our player character is an ex-outlaw and the FBI is holding his family hostage to get him to kill off his old running buddies. He tried to get out and …

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LA Noire First Impressions

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Despite being only about an hour and a half into LA Noire, boy has the game got me thinkin’ about a million things already. So here’s my gift to you guys: a bunch of disjointed, but hopefully interesting, thoughts!

I am impressed at the difficulty of interrogation and clue finding.

I was initially worried that lines of inquiry would be too obvious–whether by interrogation or by finding clues–but this hasn’t been the case at all. Things aren’t always what they appear. In fact, I’m messing up interrogations or missing clues more often than I anticipated. That’s not a fault; I actually appreciate being able to be wrong and to mess up and having to deal with the consequences of thinking through the case shoddily.

I am not, however, impressed with the facial animations.

It has nothing to do with their quality (though having such intricacy and depth attached to expressions seems misplaced relative to the quality of the rest of the model), but rather how forced it all is. People overact, are way too obvious; even the worst liars I’ve ever met are not as terrible as some of the people in this game. I’m not sure if that’s because this quality …

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RED DEAD REDEMPTION – Review

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RED DEAD REDEMPTION is a videogame developed by Rockstar San Diego and Rockstar North, published by Rockstar Games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version was played for the purpose of this review. It was directed by JOSH BASS, DAREN BADER and TED CARSTON.

Before I begin, there are 3 things you should know.

The first one is that I find the GTA games to be a painful experience, consisting of controlling characters I don’t care about, doing stuff I don’t want for people I hate. The second thing is that I’m a big fan of Westerns, which must have been very annoying for my roommates as I discoursed about every single tiny movie influence I could spot in Red Dead Redemption, from John Marston’s duster outfit, straight out of Once Upon a Time in the West, to the plot itself, lifted from The Proposition. The third one is that I really like how most Rockstar games come with an actual map enclosed with the game box. Not only is it a testament for the amount of polish Rockstar adds to its games, but also helps the game be more immersive: as …

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Nico and the Magic Phone

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drp9o4E7G7U&w=640&h=390]

Let me tell you a story.

If you’ve played Grand Theft Auto IV before, it’s probably a story with a lot of parts you remember. Unwashed immigrant, off the boat, kills a lot of people for redemption only to figure out that there is no redemption in murder, only more murder. It’s a truly touching story broken up by random drive bys.

I like my version better, though: Unwashed immigrant, off the boat, finds a magic cell phone. He uses this phone to get through his missions in the most hilarious of ways possible, usually a rocket launcher, killing a lot of people for redemption in over the top vengeful ways, only to realize there is no redemption in murder, only more death. It’s the same touching story broken up by over the top violence.

My friends, there is no other way to play Grand Theft Auto IV other than to cheat.

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My Game of (last) Year: Dragon Age Origins

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[I realize this came out last year, but this is the game that dominated my gaming experience in 2010]

Awarding something ‘Game of the Year’ can be done under a number of different criteria, but one that works for me is this: “what game really drew me in, and had me spending hour after hour with it?” That game, despite some very real flaws, was BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins.

For me, what really sold the game was the character Morrighan. From an artistic perspective, BioWare did a good job of developing a character with some sex appeal that wasn’t overtly sexy. Courting her meant being judicious about helping that defenseless villager, but she is not a character I would describe as evil–let alone a ‘bad’ girl.

In fact, despite all her idiosyncrasies, her behavior is actually quite logical based on her upbringing. Learning the truth about her ‘mother’ Flemeth, exacting revenge, and earning her final amorous approval is something I enjoyed quite a bit. I’m not sure how I would have reacted to the ‘God baby’ endgame without having courted her first, but that’s a twist I certainly didn’t see coming.

Add this defining character into a world that feels lived in. Sure, Orlais …

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Are We Ready For Catherine and Real Life?

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“Oh, you’re looking at that again.”

It’s said with such disdain, you’d think I was looking at dead orphans or something, but no, it’s my friend, and I’m looking at Catherine trailers. Commonly known as “The Sex Game That Patricia Wants,” Catherine has become rather…infamous amongst my friends. Incidentally Persona games are often seen as “dating simulators,” instead of the high school simulators with dungeon crawling RPGs they are–fact is, the second that a game showcases a semblance of sexuality, it’s like being back in kindergarten and discovering cooties. But can we see past that?

I do not mean to belittle Atlus’ choice to focus on the sexual aspects of Catherine: a big part of Vincent’s problems deal with sexuality. Sex is a healthy and normal part of our everyday lives, and it is paramount that they adress the subject to show an accurate portrayal of an everyday life. Moreover it’s refreshing to see a game that wants to address sexuality in a meaningful way.

Still, most people will look at a trailer of Catherine and come to the same conclusion: it’s “the sex game.” And, sure, it …

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