1911. Twelve years have passed since the Van der Linde Gang broke up in an explosion of violence and betrayal. Former gang member John Marston and his wife, Abigail, have tried to go straight since then, building up a farmstead at Beecher's Hope, West Elizabeth, over the past four years and raising their son Jack. The Bureau of Investigation finally catches up with the family, detaining Abigail and Jack in return for John's cooperation in tracking down the remaining gang members still at large: Bill Williamson, Javier Escuella and Van der Linde himself. John's mission will take him over two US states and into war-torn Mexico, so he can exorcise the demons of his past and win back his family.
How to review Red Dead Redemption 1, a fifteen-year-old game, in 2025? Normally I'd argue that a game, even an older one, should be reviewed on its own terms and merits without reference to anything else. But with this game that is, maybe uniquely, difficult. It now stands in the shadow of its more illustrious successor. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a much vaster, more epic, more visually impressive game which is, across the board, a more stunning experience. RDR2 is one of the greatest video games ever made, and it's also the prequel to Red Dead Redemption 1, with a story and narrative that's specifically designed to work as a first port of call in the series. But playing RDR2 first and then going back to RDR1 can be a jarring experience, with a significant downgrade in visuals, scope, theme, dialogue and length.
But another way of looking at it is to say that RDR1 is The Hobbit to RDR2's The Lord of the Rings. Yes, it's shorter, simpler, more straightforward, not as narratively or thematically rich, and not as interested in worldbuilding. But being shorter, more sharply-defined and more focused is no bad thing, and RDR2 being deliberately a different kind of experience to RDR1 leaves the latter as still having a lot of merit to it. If you want a vast, expansive Western, a Lonesome Dove and its sequels to revel in for weeks, go play RDR2. But if you want a short, brutal shock to the system, a Spaghetti Western or a Blood Meridian, then RDR1 can be just what you need.
Torturous, mixed metaphor openings aside, what actually is Red Dead Redemption? It's an open-world Western video game where the player takes on the role of John Marston. John used to be a member of the Van der Linde Gang, an outlaw crew led by Dutch, a charismatic leader who fancied himself a modern Robin Hood. His gang, which had no care for gender or race, was a found family of the rejected, helpless and hopeless, bound by tight bonds of respect and love...until Dutch lost his grip, becoming more maniacal, ruthless and violent. The gang self-destructed in an eruption of blood and betrayal, John left for dead. He managed to escape with his wife Abigail and son Jack, and after eight years of wandering they finally managed to scrape together enough money to build a modest farm at Beecher's Hope, West Elizabeth. After four years of peaceful living, they were apprehended by the Bureau of Investigation, and John given an ultimatum: never see his wife or son again, or help them bring down the remaining members of the Van der Linde Gang.
This quest sees John track down the remaining gang members, who are now running their own crews in New Austin and across the border in Mexico. One has holed up in a formidable fortress, so John has to do jobs in the area to build up a network of allies in law enforcement, the homestead community and amongst some of the more amenable local criminals. Once he has amassed enough friends and frenemies, he can assault the fortress. The story then leads him to Mexico, which is in the grip of full-scale civil war, with John playing both sides against the middle as he tries to get information about where other gangmembers may have gone to ground. Finally, he gets to go home to West Elizabeth...only for a new problem to emerge.
The structure is pretty much identical to that used in all Rockstar open-world games to date. You have main story missions to do (with some variation in the order), along with side-quests of varying complexity and length, and then optional experiences, such as taming horses, bounty-hunting, eliminating bandit camps, robbing people or engaging in horse and cart racing. The array of side-activities is reasonable but not huge: to get the most out of the game you have to follow the main story.
Red Dead Redemption came out two years after Grand Theft Auto IV and three before Grand Theft Auto V, so it's a surprise that RDR1 is so economical and tight in its design. A thorough-but-not-exacting playthrough, so the main quest, all story and stranger side-quests, camp assaults, but not 100% every repetitive task, comes out at around 22 hours, or more or less half the time of its near-contemporary crime capers (though to get to that for GTA4, you have to include its two expansions as well). RDR1 is actually Rockstar's shortest open-world game since GTA3 way back in 2001, which is surprising but not necessarily a bad thing.
First up, RDR1 does include its significantly-sized horror expansion, Undead Nightmare, as well, which beefs up its time-versus-cost ratio quite nicely. Secondly, open world games can tend towards bloat and makework. Rockstar is better at this than most companies, but its other games (even the mighty RDR2) still suffer from it a bit. RDR1 dispenses with most of that. There's only a couple of such missions (finding varieties of flowers from distant corners of the map), most of the rest is pretty achievable, interesting and thematic. As I said before, RDR1 is a Spaghetti Western based on the theme of revenge and redemption, it doesn't need to be a hundred hours long with three hundred named characters and realistically-modelled yak nostrils. Sometimes less is more.
Like RDR2, this game starts in media res, this time with John's family already in custody and him begin frogmarched off a boat in Blackwater (where from is unclear; John's home is about a thirty-second ride west of Blackwater by land) and onto a train to start his mission. In fact, it takes until a good few missions into the game for John to tell anyone - including the player - what the hell is going on, which is an interesting choice. It also doesn't help that the first few missions largely revolve around John learning to herd cattle and help a dog on his security sweep, which feels redundant (John has been a rancher for four years already at this point) and lacking in dynamism. Fortunately, the game picks up quickly and before long John is hogtying bandits and duelling bad guys on the streets of Armadillo.
Graphically, this is a fifteen-year-old game, so as you'd expect it definitely looks past its best. This is an "updated" version of the game with some new, higher-resolution textures and some much-improved lighting, which does look intermittently impressive, but clearly the game can't hold a candle to Red Dead 2, especially since the two games' maps overlap a lot. You can literally stand in the same spot in Red Dead 1 and 2, and 2 will look considerably more than just eight years newer and shinier in comparison. The desolate plains of New Austin don't actually fare too badly, and Mexico (an area largely inaccessible in RDR2) can look very impressive, but the deep woodlands of Tall Trees in West Elizabeth look pretty rough in comparison. But, it generally all looks good enough to enjoy the game, which is the important thing, and the game will also not tax modern hardware really at all, which can be a relief after some recent heavy-duty releases. The game's music is minimalist but effective, with several fantastic moments scored beautifully.
Combat is simple but solid, helped out by the slow-mo "dead eye" mechanic which allows you fire effectively from horseback during chaotic engagements (though it perhaps can make things too easy). Weapon selection is solid. The game suffers from the perennial Rockstar problem of the game being an open-world, choose-what-to-do-next affair, but the second you get into a mission, you have to do the mission the way the game intends. The game and the story tells you what mission is a stealth operation and which is a full-on assault, that choice is never left to you. This still feels limiting, but this has been Rockstar's thing since 2001 and people should know that going in, so criticising the game for it feels redundant.
Red Dead Redemption (****) has certainly aged, but it has aged well. Its length, tight story construction, less-detailed mechanics and minimalist score may be a surprise after Red Dead 2's epic scope and endless levels of detail, but that focus also makes for a very sharp game, building to an impressive climax. Recommended.
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