Red Dead Redemption, I love you. Why do you want to hurt me?
No, seriously. I'd just finished a mission, and a man on horseback came up to me and asked me to save his friend from being hanged. But I was on foot; I had to whistle and wait for my horse to arrive, and by the time I reached the scene I was too late.
And the man who'd asked me to help sank to his knees over the body of his friend and just cried.
It's not the first time a videogame has absolutely punched me in the soul, but it's definitely one of the hardest.
Less soulpunchingly, I found a nice spot to watch the sunrise with my horse, by the edge of an east-facing cliff, and then just as the sky began to turn pink wolves poured up over the ridge and ruined everything. But that's all right, because Marston stroked his horse while he was waiting. Adorable!
(My brother's game glitched bizarrely during the first Landon Ricketts mission, and Ricketts shot the crap out of his and Marston's hitched horses during a casual conversation. I would have been so distressed. YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY HORSE.)
The world of Red Dead Redemption is still absolutely beautiful. Even though that world is harsh and dangerous and from a time when women were treated like nothing, even though most of the people are seriously odd (I'm beginning to suspect that a Stranger mission is so called not because it's assigned to you by a stranger but because the people you help are stranger than one would like), even though I'd probably be killed within five minutes of being dropped into New Austin, there's still a part of my soul that sort of yearns for it. I've fallen completely in love with this setting.
Let's all talk about our favourite fictional settings! And, you know, how well or badly we'd actually cope if we happened to find ourselves there. (Maybe I'd try to find Marston, who, given his inclination to help even the strangest of strangers, would probably be willing to offer me protection. Oh, hang on, that's only if it's Marston-as-played-by-someone-like-me. I probably shouldn't take the risk of encountering Marston-as-played-by-someone-who-knifes-everyone. Besides, Marston gets himself shot at an awful lot, so if I stayed with him for protection I'd probably be in more danger than I would be on my own.)
No, seriously. I'd just finished a mission, and a man on horseback came up to me and asked me to save his friend from being hanged. But I was on foot; I had to whistle and wait for my horse to arrive, and by the time I reached the scene I was too late.
And the man who'd asked me to help sank to his knees over the body of his friend and just cried.
It's not the first time a videogame has absolutely punched me in the soul, but it's definitely one of the hardest.
Less soulpunchingly, I found a nice spot to watch the sunrise with my horse, by the edge of an east-facing cliff, and then just as the sky began to turn pink wolves poured up over the ridge and ruined everything. But that's all right, because Marston stroked his horse while he was waiting. Adorable!
(My brother's game glitched bizarrely during the first Landon Ricketts mission, and Ricketts shot the crap out of his and Marston's hitched horses during a casual conversation. I would have been so distressed. YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY HORSE.)
The world of Red Dead Redemption is still absolutely beautiful. Even though that world is harsh and dangerous and from a time when women were treated like nothing, even though most of the people are seriously odd (I'm beginning to suspect that a Stranger mission is so called not because it's assigned to you by a stranger but because the people you help are stranger than one would like), even though I'd probably be killed within five minutes of being dropped into New Austin, there's still a part of my soul that sort of yearns for it. I've fallen completely in love with this setting.
Let's all talk about our favourite fictional settings! And, you know, how well or badly we'd actually cope if we happened to find ourselves there. (Maybe I'd try to find Marston, who, given his inclination to help even the strangest of strangers, would probably be willing to offer me protection. Oh, hang on, that's only if it's Marston-as-played-by-someone-like-me. I probably shouldn't take the risk of encountering Marston-as-played-by-someone-who-knifes-everyone. Besides, Marston gets himself shot at an awful lot, so if I stayed with him for protection I'd probably be in more danger than I would be on my own.)
