IGN: Five Reasons to Love Red Dead Redemption
oh my this just moved up to my most wanted list..... GTA in the Old west. but new and improved :smile:
oh my this just moved up to my most wanted list..... GTA in the Old west. but new and improved :smile:
also first look with impressions hereThe Wide Open West
Though Rockstar gets the credit for spawning the open-world craze, at this point I've seen all the metropolises I can handle. It is, in all honesty, starting to feel a little "been there, done that." But a wide open West is quite a different beast. For the most part, videogame Westerns have been shackled to linear level design that focused on stylish gunplay, but lacked the atmospheric elements of the Wild West. If Rockstar nails the landscape and social aspects of its three Western locales (the frontier, Old Mexico and the Northern territories), then exploration is going to be something very unique and exciting as compared to other open-world games.
In a way, the West was like the world of Fallout. It's a place of isolation. But unlike Bethesda's dystopian world, the West is moving from a savage place towards one of civility (or at least refined savagery). Red Dead's story takes place at the turn of the century, as the West is confronted with the birth of modern industry. The setting is only going to help create the proper sense of desperation that swept across the outlaws of the Old West in its final years. In some ways, the themes may be very similar to those of GTA IV. Hopefully Rockstar can pull it off.
I'd Like a Side of Spaghetti with My Western
I've seen my fair share of Westerns, but no subset of the genre appealed to me more than Spaghetti Westerns. It's a perfect fit for a game, because the exaggerated style of these films allows for hats to be shot off an enemy's head and the gun blown out of their hand. The stories in these movies doesn't suffer. Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" trilogy is a perfect example of three classic Western tales filled with betrayal, surprises, villainy and anti-heroism. I'd be prett shocked to learn that these films (and others like them) didn't have a major influence of the Grand Theft Auto series as a whole, let alone Red Dead Redemption. And yes, with the Deadeye Mode (aka bullet time) you can target just about anything on an enemy.
Natural Motion Horses
Red Dead Redemption may be set in the West, but its technology shares a lot with GTA IV. As with the latest GTA title, Redemption uses Rockstar's RAGE engine and Natural Motion's amazing Euphoria technology. What's that all mean? No pre-canned animations. And the ability for the body to react to bullets and other unexpected collisions. One of my biggest problems with past videogame Westerns were the horses. They never looked quite right and riding them always seemed unnatural. But with Euphoria, the horses will move a react to changes in the terrain and collisions. Riders will be thrown by sudden stops and characters should tumble off horses more organically than the pre-determined animations of the past. Let's just hope legs can get caught in stirrups and wounded enemies will be dragged behind their rides.
Duels
There's not much I can say about one on one gunfights, since Rockstar hasn't shown that off to anybody. So I can't exactly say I love what they are doing (maybe I will, but who the heck knows how a duel will work). Still, I am excited about the very prospect of duels when you consider that the previously mentioned technology and the Spaghetti Western aspects should make for some really cool moments. The real trick will be if Rockstar can nail the high level of tension the precedes just about every duel in movie history.
Notoriety
Red Dead Redemption doesn't feature a traditional morality system like Fallout. To my knowledge, you won't have the option to be the good (Gary Cooper), the bad (Deadwood's Swearengen) or the morally ambiguous (Eastwood's Blondie). The story is going to drive you where you need to go without the kind of branching paths seen in some other games. That's fine by me. What is interesting is how the wanted level works.
You can be evil if you want. Go shoot up a whole damned town if it makes you happy. But the worse you are, the more heavily the law will come down on you. Wanted posters will appear in town, posses will be formed. And unlike GTA IV, where getting free of the search radius resets your wanted level, in Red Dead Redemption, people have longer memories. Shot up a bunch of churchgoers? Head back to that same town soon after and people are going to remember your face. Bad things are going to happen.
While it's going to take a very long play test to see how well the notoriety system works, what I know about it so far sounds very promising. And for the record, everyone wants to be the Man with No Name. So if Red Dead Redemption keeps your character's morality in the grey, more power to Rockstar.
May 7, 2009 - They may share two of three words in their titles and be labeled as Western-themed games, but it doesn't seem like the upcoming Red Dead Redemption is going to be much like its predecessor, Red Dead Revolver. While the first game (which wasn't actually a Rockstar original but rather a project imported from Capcom and completed internally) was more of a stage-based affair with some mild platforming thrown in, it appears Rockstar is going all out with Redemption. The sequel is going to be set in an open world, which Rockstar claims is one of the largest it has created.
Rockstar San Diego is working on the game primarily, but also helping out are parts of Rockstar's GTA team, along with members from Rockstar's Leeds team. Thoughts about how an open world could be meshed with a Western-style game were being exchanged even as Rockstar acquired a few semi-completed levels of Red Dead Revolver, but the company had to wait until the appropriate technology came along to start up production. Redemption is being built on Rockstar San Diego's RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine), the same one used in titles like Grand Theft Auto IV and Table Tennis. For physics, Rockstar is using some of its own tech combined with Natural Motion's Euphoria, which makes for interesting post-impact character and object model reactions. cont'd...
