It’s been a week since I “finished” Red Dead Redemption, and I’m starting to realize that the game is one of the most important steps forward in videogame storytelling since the one-two punch of Portal and Bioshock back in 2007.
It has the usual cynical, world-weary characters, long reveals, and extreme nihilistic violence that were the hallmark of the Grand Theft Auto games. And maybe it’s just something about the historical fairy-tale world of the old west that makes good drama work better. But by the end of the game, the story has gone to a level beyond any of the previous Rockstar epics.
There’s a confidence in the way it plays with the relationship between interaction and narrative I’ve never seen in a videogame before, and it’s something I’m going to be thinking about for a while to come.
Have you played it? What do you think?
