Red Dead Revamp

This grand experiment started out of a desire to write about RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 and avoid the banality of survey course reviews by offering depth and small pieces about individual aspects of that flawed masterpiece… but since I’ve already beaten the game, those banality-avoidance-hopefully pieces will have to wait until I begin a replay for slowness and for the aforementioned depth.

In the meantime:

RED DEAD 2 is the first game I’ve played that my wife preferred to watch instead of our usual routine of catching up on any number of bingeable Amazon / Netflix / HBO offerings we’re way behind on (RDR2 is, perhaps, one of the main reasons we’re now so woefully behind and ARROW Season Six really does suck but my god THE AMERICANS is brilliant); once we reached the end of the game, she asked me when I was going to play the first game again so that she could see what happened to John.

Since I avoid online play like the plague, the New Austin portion of the post-narrative RDR2 map remains woefully barren, but is, nevertheless demanding of exploration if for no other reason than to satisfy my nostalgia for the glory of gaming days past, a gunslinging trip down memory lane back into that first experience of RDR1. Two birds, one stone, then: Rockstar could / should / must remaster and re-release RDR not as an individual game but as an update to RDR2, using the RDR2 map and all the glories – and callbacks, perhaps to forgotten characters? – that come with it. (Wouldn’t it be nice?)

I harbor no illusions that a remaster would fix the script issues that plagued the first game – especially in Marston’s passive, fence-jumping, ham-fisted RED HARVEST / YOJIMBO / FISTFUL OF DOLLARS homage-adventure south of the border – but it would still make for a remarkable experience, transforming two modern Western epics into one gargantuan feast.