Like any self-respecting nerd many of my Elementary school lunch hours were spent playing videogames in the computer lab. There was Scorched Earth Archon and Quest for Glory . There was a multiplayer space-dogfighter I can’t recall the name of. But mostly—when we could reasonably guarantee we wouldn’t be intruded upon by a teacher—there was GTA .
The first two GTA games were my first experience with open world gaming and even then I was playing the awful backseat designer. They were fun sure but they were basically still just asteroids with a series of elaborate “off” switches. You wanted the enemies to come? You started shooting. Flick. You wanted them to stop? You got your car spraypainted. Flick. You could upgrade your weapons and you could get faster vehicles but it was still very much an old old game couched in a beautifully designed interactive menu screen.
“This is great but if they changed this it would be even better…”
Designers (of the GTA series and all the many games it inspired) have gradually gotten better at making the ‘menu screen’ aspects of open world games invisible. For one the genre switched from top-down Asteroids-esque thing to a third person shooter—a choice that’s arguably more immersive simply by virtue of the reduced distance between the avatar and the player (the distance of the camera but also of our McLuhan-like medium-is-the- bleh association with a digital actor rather than a small cluster of pixels). But more importantly we were given something to do. We could still steal cars and go find better guns and run missions (that told us to steal cars and go find better guns) but the little snips of incidental dialogue from the passers by the minigames we could engage in the burger shops we could frequent and—of course—the hookers we could solicit all conspired to make these games feel more like places rather than menu screens.
Even still:
“This is great but if they changed this it would be even better…”
When GTA IV rolled around last year (or rather screeched to a halt in front of your mom’s house then opened up on the creepy doll collection she insists of keeping in the front room with a TEC-9) players commonly observed that the city felt so real they were reluctant to engage in the casually sociopathic activities typically associated with the series. This was only contributed to I think by the game’s strong writing which created such a believable sympathetic criminal in protagonist Nico Bellic that we were all reluctant to have him do anything out-of-character. GTA IV has had a number of fair criticisms leveled against it but in terms of crafting a setting you wanted to inhabit rather than spend hours fucking up it was completely without peer. That is it was until last Tuesday when Rockstar went and outdid themselves with Red Dead Redemption .
I’m going to talk more about Red Dead’ s aesthetic influences in next month’s magazine but for now suffice to say it creates a world even more vibrant and believable than GTA IV ’s despite the sparser NPC population made necessary by the wild-west setting. The mechanics work into this in an interesting way too with two separate status trackers (one for “fame” and one for “honour”) which let you know in general terms how the world is reacting to you. It also has a neat twist on GTA ’s crime system too with your “bounty” going up by dollar amounts that correspond with the severity of any given crime. There’s a surfeit of incidental activity going on between settlements snappy dialogue and an environment so beautiful it could make Just Cause 2 politely excuse itself then go throw up its dinner in a dingy public restroom.
John Marston Red Dead ’s stiff-lipped scar-cheeked protagonist fits right in with the world—every inch the spaghetti western cliché. He’s tough but kind. Ruthless but loyal. And he’s executed well enough in the script that like Nico Bellic it’s hard not to play into the role. At least it is until you max out your honour meter which causes all the honest townsfolk to look the other way for any indiscretion less than cold-blooded murder. Combine that with an infinite number of lassos and—heck—who among you could say you wouldn’t spend an hour and a half hogtieing all the inhabitants of Thieves Landing?
The approach to open world gaming taken by every company but Rockstar can be summarized I think by “hey here’s a cartoon simulation of reality and a stuff you can use to mess with it. Have fun.” It’s the approach that led to Just Cause 2 Saints Row 2 and Red Faction: Guerilla so I’m not really trying to complain about it either. But it’s worth observing that Rockstar are the only ones with a real interest in creating universes with any sense of consequence despite GTA ‘s regular crucifixion by the conservative news media. With Red Dead I thought they had found a nice balance between the restrictions required to maintain verisimilitude and freedom required for the game to be any fun but—c’mon Rockstar—telling me I can do anything less than murder is like telling a six year old he can have any toy that costs less than $10. You know that little fucker is going straight for the $9.99 Val Kilmer Batman.
So I stood in the middle of the muddy street lassoing and hogtieing anyone who wandered nearby. Some of them I pulled off of horses awesomely. Others I tied released then tied once again. Eventually people started keeping their distance from the lunatic with the magically infinite length of rope so I ran them down and lassoed them too. Incidentally I still have my Val Kilmer Batman.
While Rockstar’s is an approach to open world gaming I appreciate and respect in an academic way the problem with it will always be the player. They were on the right track with communicating the gentle restrictions on our in-game behavior to us with the only language we really understand: slowly filling progress bars. But when the reward for maxing out one of the bars is basically just getting to ignore it the intention gets a little cloudy. The game should represent John Marsden’s unflagging commitment to the honourable path systemically rather than discarding the system that encouraged us to act "honourably" in the first place. If anything as a paragon of the community shouldn’t people take more notice of John’s questionable choices?
Not to worry though. In lieu of a reasonable in-game explanation I have compiled a list of possible explanations for John Marsden’s actions which were determined using science. After all there’s no reason why an entire town of hogtied people needs to shatter the impeccable illusion Rockstar have crafted elsewhere.
Click here to read Pt. II of Why Did John Marston Lasso An Entire Town ? It is in list form just the way you like it you Internet Person you.
