Spartan Rex
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Red Dead Redemption: The Outlaw
Being evil isn't cheap, but it sure is fun.
by Erik Brudvig
May 7, 2010 - Whenever given the option in a videogame, I invariably bend toward the darkness. If I'm going to do good deeds I may as well save them for real life where it counts. When it comes to those digital denizens of the videogame world, with their strict and artificial rules, I like to have a little fun. When I got done with a recent six hour play session of Red Dead Redemption, the virtual world didn't know what hit it.
The way I see it, there are two types of behaviors in Red Dead Redemption – Rockstar's upcoming open-world Western -- that I would consider key to being a true outlaw. The first are the kind that will actually affect your morality rating in the game. Do good deeds, be the hero and save the day in general and you'll be seen as a hero. Kill innocents, break the law, and help out the villains and you'll be seen otherwise.
The second set of actions I'll get to in a little bit. These are the ones that go above and beyond Red Dead Redemption's laws -- the types of things that any person with bleak thoughts can dream up and perform in a sandbox like this.
Watch the latest gameplay trailer for a true revolution.
Performing actions of the first type and driving down your morality rating is actually pretty easy and it won't take long before you're ready to paint the town red. The game opens with a train ride into a small town named Armadillo and one of the first things you're greeted with is a woman of loose morals peddling her wares. Right off the bat, you can tell that this is the type of place where a person who knows how to use a gun can do as they please. After a brief introduction to set up the motivations of John Marston, you're given free rein to explore much of the world…and that means you're free to start causing a ruckus.
Unfortunately, you won't have many tools of destruction just yet, and you won't have a dollar to your name. Both of these are serious problems for a would-be bandit. You'll want to do a few story missions straight away to earn a few weapons, a lasso and some money. With the basics in tow, I set out to make my mark on the world.
This town will be mine.
I started out small. A few drinks at the saloon and a bar fight later, I stumbled out into the night looking for some easy money. I ran into an old crazy lady begging me to help her find a man named Peter, but that seemed like too much work so I shot her and moved on. And just like that, my honor meter went down by five points. It would take a few dozen more bullets to innocents to gain some real notoriety, but if there is one thing that Red Dead Redemption has it is a lot of innocents to toy with.
Take, for instance, the sorts of things you can do with a lasso. You gain this little tool during a mission that teaches you the ins and outs of breaking a wild horse, but you can aim the rope ring at people, too. I went to the saloon and found a prostitute, hog-tied her and then slung her over my shoulder to take for a ride. She didn't take too kindly to this treatment, screaming out obscenities like, "There are other ways to a girl's heart, you ass!" along the way. I responded by leaving her on a train track.
The most fun comes thanks to the epic animations Red Dead Redemption produces. Shooting or knifing people and animals invariably results in hilarity. During my travels I did everything from uppercutting a cow with a bowie knife to killing so many lawmen as they entered a saloon that they were stumbling over their predecessor's body pile. You don't even have to kill anybody to have some fun. Just drawing your gun on an innocent walking down the road will startle them into a funny reaction. My favorite was a man sitting with his legs up on a table. When I trained my sights on him he fell over backwards into a piano.
When you meet every rancher, farmhand, and cowboy with a shotgun, finding steady work outside of the main missions can be a bit tricky. Sure, I responded to a woman crying for help when bandits were stealing her carriage. I even tracked down the thief, put a bullet in his head and then brought the little chariot back. I didn't give it to her, however, I shot the horse in front of her and then rode away to leave her in the wilderness.
So, as you might imagine, the income isn't too steady when you play as an insane rogue. Looting corpses only provides a dollar or two here and there. To bring in the money, I had to get creative. For a short while, I turned to hunting and my mission became to rid the plains of all cute and cuddly wildlife. Blue songbirds, though rare, are easy pickings for those with a shotgun. Majestic deer bring in a pretty penny.
Every outlaw needs a lasso.
Then I found an easier path to riches -- raiding farms. As it turns out, you can skin a horse, pluck feathers from a chicken, or cut out some cow meat just the same as you can wild animals. Only these ones are all penned up and waiting for you to swing by every now and then and take your spoils. Yes, I became a cattle thief.
Before you go crazy on the poor people of Armadillo or its surrounding ranches, you should know about the consequences. They may be enough to scare you straight. Killing innocents will quite often result in a bounty being placed on your head. If you take up arms against a man of the law, you'll always get one immediately (though you also get double the drop in honor on the morality chart). If you're on a killing spree out in the wilderness, you might be able to get away scot-free, provided you can deal with the witnesses through bribery or more murder. When I saw the witness icon pop up on the mini-map, everything in sight died, be it man or beast. Nobody was going to snitch on my John Marston.
Should a bounty get placed on your head, you might first have to run from the sheriff's men until the heat cools down. Even if you do, the bounty remains. Some people in the world simply won't deal with a wanted man and that can be quite a problem. You can pay down the bounty yourself if you have the money. This might not be an option, though. I once had the bounty up near $1,500 at a time of the game where I rarely carried more than a hundred bucks. When this happens, you'll need a pardon letter. These can be gotten by completing quests for the right people, but they aren't easy to come by.
Hello. I'm going to try to shoot you soon.
The good news is that it seems impossible to completely close off any avenues in Red Dead Redemption just by being a bad guy. Kill or threaten a shop keeper and their store will only shut down for a day or so. Kill an important side-quest character and you'll fail the mission, but that person will respawn eventually and you'll be allowed another chance.
Was all of this too much for you? Are you perhaps a bit more heroic? Check back Monday when IGN's Greg Miller recounts his exploits in Red Dead Redemption as the goody-two-shoes he is.
Being evil isn't cheap, but it sure is fun.
by Erik Brudvig
May 7, 2010 - Whenever given the option in a videogame, I invariably bend toward the darkness. If I'm going to do good deeds I may as well save them for real life where it counts. When it comes to those digital denizens of the videogame world, with their strict and artificial rules, I like to have a little fun. When I got done with a recent six hour play session of Red Dead Redemption, the virtual world didn't know what hit it.
The way I see it, there are two types of behaviors in Red Dead Redemption – Rockstar's upcoming open-world Western -- that I would consider key to being a true outlaw. The first are the kind that will actually affect your morality rating in the game. Do good deeds, be the hero and save the day in general and you'll be seen as a hero. Kill innocents, break the law, and help out the villains and you'll be seen otherwise.
The second set of actions I'll get to in a little bit. These are the ones that go above and beyond Red Dead Redemption's laws -- the types of things that any person with bleak thoughts can dream up and perform in a sandbox like this.
Watch the latest gameplay trailer for a true revolution.
Performing actions of the first type and driving down your morality rating is actually pretty easy and it won't take long before you're ready to paint the town red. The game opens with a train ride into a small town named Armadillo and one of the first things you're greeted with is a woman of loose morals peddling her wares. Right off the bat, you can tell that this is the type of place where a person who knows how to use a gun can do as they please. After a brief introduction to set up the motivations of John Marston, you're given free rein to explore much of the world…and that means you're free to start causing a ruckus.
Unfortunately, you won't have many tools of destruction just yet, and you won't have a dollar to your name. Both of these are serious problems for a would-be bandit. You'll want to do a few story missions straight away to earn a few weapons, a lasso and some money. With the basics in tow, I set out to make my mark on the world.
This town will be mine.
I started out small. A few drinks at the saloon and a bar fight later, I stumbled out into the night looking for some easy money. I ran into an old crazy lady begging me to help her find a man named Peter, but that seemed like too much work so I shot her and moved on. And just like that, my honor meter went down by five points. It would take a few dozen more bullets to innocents to gain some real notoriety, but if there is one thing that Red Dead Redemption has it is a lot of innocents to toy with.
Take, for instance, the sorts of things you can do with a lasso. You gain this little tool during a mission that teaches you the ins and outs of breaking a wild horse, but you can aim the rope ring at people, too. I went to the saloon and found a prostitute, hog-tied her and then slung her over my shoulder to take for a ride. She didn't take too kindly to this treatment, screaming out obscenities like, "There are other ways to a girl's heart, you ass!" along the way. I responded by leaving her on a train track.
The most fun comes thanks to the epic animations Red Dead Redemption produces. Shooting or knifing people and animals invariably results in hilarity. During my travels I did everything from uppercutting a cow with a bowie knife to killing so many lawmen as they entered a saloon that they were stumbling over their predecessor's body pile. You don't even have to kill anybody to have some fun. Just drawing your gun on an innocent walking down the road will startle them into a funny reaction. My favorite was a man sitting with his legs up on a table. When I trained my sights on him he fell over backwards into a piano.
When you meet every rancher, farmhand, and cowboy with a shotgun, finding steady work outside of the main missions can be a bit tricky. Sure, I responded to a woman crying for help when bandits were stealing her carriage. I even tracked down the thief, put a bullet in his head and then brought the little chariot back. I didn't give it to her, however, I shot the horse in front of her and then rode away to leave her in the wilderness.
So, as you might imagine, the income isn't too steady when you play as an insane rogue. Looting corpses only provides a dollar or two here and there. To bring in the money, I had to get creative. For a short while, I turned to hunting and my mission became to rid the plains of all cute and cuddly wildlife. Blue songbirds, though rare, are easy pickings for those with a shotgun. Majestic deer bring in a pretty penny.
Every outlaw needs a lasso.
Then I found an easier path to riches -- raiding farms. As it turns out, you can skin a horse, pluck feathers from a chicken, or cut out some cow meat just the same as you can wild animals. Only these ones are all penned up and waiting for you to swing by every now and then and take your spoils. Yes, I became a cattle thief.
Before you go crazy on the poor people of Armadillo or its surrounding ranches, you should know about the consequences. They may be enough to scare you straight. Killing innocents will quite often result in a bounty being placed on your head. If you take up arms against a man of the law, you'll always get one immediately (though you also get double the drop in honor on the morality chart). If you're on a killing spree out in the wilderness, you might be able to get away scot-free, provided you can deal with the witnesses through bribery or more murder. When I saw the witness icon pop up on the mini-map, everything in sight died, be it man or beast. Nobody was going to snitch on my John Marston.
Should a bounty get placed on your head, you might first have to run from the sheriff's men until the heat cools down. Even if you do, the bounty remains. Some people in the world simply won't deal with a wanted man and that can be quite a problem. You can pay down the bounty yourself if you have the money. This might not be an option, though. I once had the bounty up near $1,500 at a time of the game where I rarely carried more than a hundred bucks. When this happens, you'll need a pardon letter. These can be gotten by completing quests for the right people, but they aren't easy to come by.
Hello. I'm going to try to shoot you soon.
The good news is that it seems impossible to completely close off any avenues in Red Dead Redemption just by being a bad guy. Kill or threaten a shop keeper and their store will only shut down for a day or so. Kill an important side-quest character and you'll fail the mission, but that person will respawn eventually and you'll be allowed another chance.
Was all of this too much for you? Are you perhaps a bit more heroic? Check back Monday when IGN's Greg Miller recounts his exploits in Red Dead Redemption as the goody-two-shoes he is.
