# PAX East 10: Red Dead Redemption Progress Report



## Ares (Nov 23, 2009)

*PAX East 10: Red Dead Redemption Progress Report
**Cue the tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes!
*by Greg Miller 



*March 26, 2010* - I've done all I can to avoid playing or seeing Red Dead Redemption. I don't watch the trailers on IGN, I don't read *Erik Brudvig's detailed previews*, and I avoid going to the Rockstar booth at industry shows. I haven't been doing this because I don't like Red Dead; I was doing this because I was pretty sure I was totally going to dig Red Dead and didn't want a moment spoiled for me. Still, I knew that eventually a situation was going to come up where I'd have to play the game early. 

Today, as one of the handful of IGNers at PAX East, the Red Dead Redemption coverage was assigned to me. I picked up the controller and played the game I've been dreaming about for the first time. 

It was glorious. 

In *his latest preview* (I read it after popping my Red Dead cherry), Brudvig said he gets a little more excited for the game every time he sees it. Although my demo of this third-person, open world western was only 15 minutes or so, it's easy to see why. 


Meet the gentlemen and vagabonds of Red Dead.

I started on my horse and had the seemingly simple task riding to the "S" on the map to start the next mission, but I'll be moo if I couldn't get it together and get over there. At first I was marveling at the way the horse's leg muscles moved under its skin, then I began fooling with all my weapons (which are visually represented on John Marston's body), and then I started see what would happen if I tapped the button an obscene amount of times to make the horse run (the answer: you get bucked off and the horse gets angry). 

Even once I was done twiddling with the little things, the game itself started distracting me. I was trying to be a good cowboy and ride to the mission, but on the horizon I spotted a party gathered around a fire. I rode on over, opened fire from my mounted position, and massacred the party while the game notified me that my "Honor Level" had dropped. Honor is the morality system of Red Dead. The kind of side missions you have available to you depend on this system. If you're being a good guy, you'll get missions like saving a kidnapped person; if you're bad, you'll be looking at heist jobs and such. 

Once the notification that I was a jerk drifted off the screen, I noticed an eye icon on the screen speeding away from the scene of my crime. This was a witness. If I let him go, my wanted level and bounty amount would go up. As that level increases, so does the chance of gangs coming after me to collect the ever-growing reward on my head. I, of course, couldn't let that happen, so I chased down the stage coach-drivin' witness. 

Now, you can just pull out your gun and shoot from the over the shoulder perspective, but I found it a bit difficult to draw an accurate bead on my enemy this way. Instead – if your meter is full – you can click into Dead Eye mode, which slows everything down and allows you to paint targets on your prey. Once you've laid the markers, Marston opens fire and takes down whatever was standing in his way. 

The witness dead, I started back toward the mission, but stopped to shoot and then skin a rattlesnake (you can sell your skins and pelts so that you can afford upgrades), save a woman being dragged through the dirt by some evil cowboys, and tame a horse (after lassoing the animal, you have to walk up to it and stay on its bucking back by balancing Marston on top of it with the left stick). Just when I thought I had sowed my wild oats and was ready to settle down on the task at hand, a man came tearing over a cactus-covered hill hollering that I needed to help him – two mountain lions were chasing and attacking him. I Dead Eyed both of the beasts and got an Honor boost as well as a shot to my Fame Level. The Fame Level tacks how well known you are in the area; as it gets higher, more people start showing up to challenge you to duels and such. 

Bang. You're dead... and now I'm going to skin you.

Eventually, I did make it to the mission – although I won't spoil it on a shot-for-shot description. I met a creepy dude named Seth at a graveyard, and we marched into a ghost town looking for some treasure, which turned out to be an ambush. Red Dead uses a weapon wheel to select your gun/knife/rope of choice, and during this march to the house holding my fortune, I found myself hopping around the wheel quite a bit. Each gun has a pleasant pop to it and a weight that makes the shots satisfying even though you're not spraying out the lead like you would in a game using today's guns. Even cooler, when you get up close with an enemy and pull the trigger, the game drops in these special kills. When Seth and I were slowly working our way up through this abandoned house with large sections of wall missing, I'd have guys running at me in close quarters and I'd pull the trigger. Marston would take his rifle, put it underneath the bad guy's chin, and fire. 

Red Dead Redemption has always had my attention, but today it earned my $60. I only got the briefest of tastes of this world, but there's so much cool stuff going on. I can honestly see myself playing this until 1:30 a.m. on a nightly basis – just riding across the plains and gathering pelts for trade. Yeah, I'm that big of a nerd, but when you get your hands on this game, I'm betting you will be as well.

Source: IGN


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