Red Dead Redemptionset a fire in the gaming world in 2010. Games had stories before then, but RDR told something so personal and so well that it just hitdifferent.The Last Of Usis sometimes called The Citizen Kane of games today, but Red Dead Redemption held that title first. Not long after theprequel, I remember all the fans (especially on Reddit) saying the only thing they wanted was a remake of the original game in the style of Red Dead Redemption 2.
These fans were effectively crushed by the recent news that the original game is getting a port toPS4andSwitch, after months of believing rumors that a remake, or at least a remaster, was finally happening. Now, I get why for $50 folks might’ve at least expected higher frame-rates, improved resolution, and some spruced-up textures (none of which it looks like we’re getting with this port), but as a Switch owner I’m happy to get to play this classic portably even in its raw original form; it’s not like I’ll be looking at those textures through a magnifying glass on the 6.2” screen, and the Switch runs at the original game’s 720p resolution anyway.
And personally? As a fan of both games, I’ll take the port, because I always felt that a remake was a terrible idea. Let me explain…
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Both Red Dead Redemption games are, obviously, directly connected by story, but they are different beasts in what they convey. Red Dead Redemption is, essentially, the ultimate Western movie.The more kooky one-dimensional side characters feel like something from cheap pulp novels, while the Mexico chapter feels directly inspired by Sergio Leone’s forgotten dramedy Duck, You Sucker.
Redemption 2, simply put, isnota Western. It’s a period drama.
Redemption 2 is a pretty well-observed account of life in the American Wild West, whereas the Western genre has little to nothing to do with how life went for people at the time. Outside the railroad being used as a metaphor for the times changing, not so much real-world history is involved in your basic Western movie. Instead, these stories were romanticised and stylised tales about a town or a gruff cowboy looking for revenge.
The original game was just that:, the story of a lone cowboy coming into town with a mission and little care of what else was going on. Redemption 2 instead surrounds itself with politics and in-jokes for history buffs; its dive into how the turn of the century brought change to the way of life is far deeper than the train metaphor. Red Dead Redemption pulls genre references as deep as a zombie-themed DLC inspired by Weird West comics from the 70s, while Redemption 2 pulls history references as deep as Angelo Bronte starting an organized crime ring at the same time in history that the American Mafia first planted its roots.
Remember when RDR 2 was new and plenty of returning players complained that hunting was overly realistic, or how the bandanna didn’t prevent wanted levels anymore? Then a few years later, people went back to RDR 1 with new complaints that the opening hours are full of poorly-written characters. Heck, in my first replay after RDR 2’s release, I immediately noticed RDR 1 has a massively big potty mouth that was unrealistic for the period.
Eventually, I realized these complaints don’t matter. Red Dead Redemption is allowed to be juvenile when it wants because its tone allows it to have fun this way, and Redemption 2 is so grounded in reality that animal corpses decay over time andeverything just feels so honestly and arduouslyslow. . Neither is necessarily better, but these are elements perfected by one game that would flounder in the other.
So you can see how a remake in the style of RDR 2 might not be the way to go. I do not see, for example, how the horses of RDR would be better off behaving the way they do in RDR 2. The original game’s map was designed to have you run right through the barren deserts, it’s okay to ignore the road as all it does is make your horse slightly slower. There’s no stamina meter on foot at all, while the one on horseback is as simple as “don’t go whole hog the entire time,” and youcannotreplace that with the stamina core RDR 2 uses.
RDR 2’s cores gave it a touch of survival crafting games, mimicking real-life needs like hunger. In this way, RDR 2 is more a simulator of the Old West, while the predecessor is based on the western fantasy as depicted in movies. To that end, RDR 1 has no problem letting John carry 100lbs of guns in his pockets or letting his horse magically appear, while in RDR 2 the whistle is limited by distance and your horse can even die off-screen in the wild.
Shooting guns out of the enemy’s hand works completely differently between the games. Healing works different between the games. Gambling, bounty hunting, random encounters, and minigames all work differently between these games. To remake RDR in this way would gut the game of its personality.
Gameplay changes are one thing, but when it comes to a graphics style that borrows from the prequel, we have that old sticky issue of “art is in the eye of the beholder.” This picture is a side-by-side of the exact same area in New Austin; a cactus on the road to Armadillo. Prequel on the left, original on the right. The left side is graphically more impressive, but you know what?
All I see is the color green.
The original game looks so dusted and dried out, true for many 360/PS3 games, but Redemption wore it with honor. Beautiful, and yet desolate, like the sun cooked nearly everything yet the character of the landscape endured. Deserts feel vast yet empty and woodlands look yellowed. Even the marshland of Thieves’ Landing is nothing more than a permanent evening sky and a few extra puddles of stagnant water, it still feels dry when you see the road and cliff sides.
So when I go to New Austin in the epilogue of RDR 2 and see how beautiful, green, lush and varied they made that map, something feels lost to me. While capturing these pictures, a sandstorm happened in 2, and itstillfelt less sandy than the original game. The saturation is great on paper, but if this was the framework for a remake, it lost my vote. Turn that grass yellow and those cacti pale green: you brought too much life into this game about the death of the gunslingers.
I won’t argue with people who wished for a lower price, or better frames, or a long-overdue PC port. Those are valid. But in terms of what it is, the sensibilities of Redemption 2’s period-accurate realism would do nothing but clash with the strengths of the Wild Western styling of Redemption, and I really do think a port is the right call over a remake.
