Red Dead Online: A fond farewell to Rockstar’s multiplayer Western

Red Dead OnlineThis game has come to an end. It is both a fantastic experience that I’ve explored for hundreds of hours, and a game that will never meet its full potential, forever in the shadow of its bigger (and vastly more profitable) sibling, Grand Theft AutoOrder Online. Now that Rockstar has said it will no longer be focusing significant attention on the Western, it’s worth revisiting the frontier to judge the game on what it achieved since its 2018 launch.

Red Dead OnlineIt begins by your character being betrayed. They are framed for the crimes they didn’t do and you will be sentenced to death as outlaws. You escape, thanks to the efforts of high-class lady Jessica LeClerk, who has her own revenge mission in mind since she was newly widowed by scavengers trying to get her husband’s fortune. The player becomes LeClerk’s instrument of justice, and once unleashed on the frontier, it’s time to get right to work fulfilling bounties, killing robbers, and obtaining a stable of beautiful horses to brush.

You will be required to take part in a brief campaign if you choose the LeClerk mission. Are you going to return a daughter who is not following the LeClerk missions or do you let her wander off to find her love? Do you tie some ne’er-do-wells to the tracks and let the train enact justice, or are you more merciful?

Image: Rockstar Games

The game tracks your actions with an honor system, and at first, you might think you’re in for some real deep role-playing. This notion falls off, though, after LeClerk’s missions and never really returns; the honor system remains, but tends to automatically fill up over time when you do things like brush and feed your horse. It’s usually pretty clear what leads to an honor drop or recovery. When you clear a gang’s hideout, you can spare the leader or execute him, and self-defense is fine, but executing witnesses is a no-no.

There are no real benefits beyond cosmetic ones. It matters. It feels like there were great plans that got dropped at some point, and characters like Old Man Jones — who feels like the angelic answer to the devilish Stranger in the Red Dead franchise — is just… there. Jones spends much of the campaign hovering in cutscenes, imploring people to be honorable and dignified with their fellow men. It feels like it’s leading up to something, but Jones kind of disappears after dropping all of his foreshadowing.

So it’s up to you cowpokes to make your own fun once you’re done with the campaign missions, and there is plenty to help you do so. There are many options for you to hunt, fish, cook delicious stew, find high-priced criminal bounties and start your own moonshine shop. Logging on allows me to easily slip into a routine of activities. Start at camp and make some stew and coffee. Then I manually take my breakfast, hitting the trigger every bite. Next, I get on Hayseed my large horse and set out to explore the unspoiled wilderness.

Rockstar Games via Polygon

The core of these activities is always basically the same: You’re either riding your horse, swinging a lasso, or shooting a gun. While there’s not a ton of variety to the actions on paper, Red Dead Redemption 2’s great grappling, fighting, and physics systems add spice. There is usually a compelling background to the game, which can be either melancholic or exciting, as with many open-world games. My friends and I have spent hours upon hours just wrasslin’ in a muddy yard.

Even though the world feels more organic than the one-player experience, it’s still very real. When I’m on the road, I might find someone trapped under a rock, only to find it’s a dastardly trap set by bandits. Or, I might find someone who actually needs help getting back home after a wolf attack, and when I take them home I’ll find a mission available at their ranch, which naturally leads me to Valentine, where I pick a bounty up off the board.

Red Dead Online can be both serene and zen — just the experience of enjoying a horse’s hooves against packed dirt and the open skies of the American frontier. My friends and I also enjoy an old-fashioned game of Stab battles in our debonair home. It’s a great social sandbox, but one that can never really match up to its sibling in GTA Online. The action remains grounded and consistent with the periods, and rarely does it escalate beyond a shootout at the center of a city or chaotic horse changes.

Image: Rockstar Games

Rockstar’s enormous open world is still gorgeous to explore and full of little details to uncover. There’s a lot of joy to be found in individual moments, but there’s no overarching vision that guided Red Dead Online to a tangible and concrete destination — and now there probably will never be one, as Rockstar is moving on to focus on GTA 6He continues to dedicate time and resources for the mammoth. GTA Online.

There’s something tragic about that, because while Red Dead Online can’t host flying cars and Elon Musk parodies, it does offer gravitas. When we were out at the frontier with our friends, I was always half of my character. You are In GTA OnlineWhile listening to Backstreet Boys, we whizz through the streets at 160 MPH. You can find out more at In Red Dead Online, we’d contemplatively stare into the fire and drink coffee out of a tin cup before taking off at a canter on our horses. The joy was in the journey, and for all the missed potential of the game, I still loved these serene moments punctuated by rootin’-tootin’ cowboy action.

It’s a disappointing end for the fans who stuck it out through new character roles and the occasional event waiting for some grander recognition or vindication from Rockstar. The game was plagued with content draughts and periods of inactivity — except for battle passes — in life, and now it sits in purgatory. The game’s community will only be able to decide if they stay or seek a better future.