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* An analysis of the ending of Red Dead Redemption, strong spoiler warning *

Finally, Rockstar have come up with a game that wants us to be good. Playing as a reformed outlaw in a graphically gorgeous title combining almost every aspect of the Wild West we’ve come to recognise through films, TV shows and folklore, the most surprising quality of Red Dead Redemption – even more impressive than the amazing attention to detail –  is the enforced morality and, in line with the game’s title and its central theme, redeeming qualities of the main character. John Marston, contrary to those previous incarnations of Grand Theft Auto and other Rockstar Games’ antiheroes, is not seeking success and wealth through crime; he is aspiring to be good for the betterment of himself and his family.

As in previous open-world games the players themselves are free to do as they wish, inevitably leading to a sandbox environment of carnage and chaos as the he/she sees fit. In Red Dead, the option to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is presented – do you capture criminals alive to collect bounty rewards and shoot the weapons out of people’s hands instead of killing them, or decide to go renegade by robbing the innocent and, as an homage to the classic Western cliche of moustached villainy, tie a woman up and place her on railroad tracks? Despite your decisions in these situations and regardless of your own personal play-style, the most striking thing about the main story missions is how Marston always, from the start of the game to the finish, chooses the honourable route.

Blackmailed into hunting down his former brothers-in-arms by a pair of lawmen who have his wife and son held captive, Marston is sent out on a quest to essentially rid the land of the last surviving remnants of his own criminal past as the violent era of the American Old West comes to an abrupt end. Marston chooses to deal with hostile situations by speaking with restraint and politeness instead of pulling out his gun, and his actions throughout the story are often heroic, albeit through unavoidably violent means. So outside of the story missions when players may utilise their freedom to go out and commit evil deeds should they wish, it all seems a little inconsistent – hypocritical even – when compared with the predetermined intentions of the character during the game’s cutscenes that drive the plot forward.

* Spoilers from this point on *

By the end when the violent and bloody missions are seemingly over and the police allow Marston to be reunited with his family, the game gets you to play through mundane chores tending to his farm, herding cattle, and spending quality time with the wife, Abigail, and estranged teenage son, Jack, who is more interested in reading than holding a weapon. It is quite the contrast to the majority of the game and, accompanied with a chillingly ominous score that haunts these segments, there is a feeling of impending doom: that this peacefulness is too good to be true.

It is no real surprise then when the lawmen return to betray and murder Marston and his family; on the contrary there is a sense that this is a true calling. A life as a simple rancher is not something John can adapt to, regardless of his intentions, and there is an acknowledgment at this stage of Red Dead that not only can this videogame character never escape his outlaw past, nor can the player escape from the violent dynamics of the game by which they are now well-accustomed to. John is deadly, remarkably efficient in killing those coming for his family – his prior sins have ensured that he is in his element when with a gun in his hand.

Marston manages to send his wife and son away on a horse with tears in his eyes and, having said his goodbyes and surrounded by the army and the police with no chance of survival, realises the price of true redemption – not for himself, but for his family – before taking a deep breath and accepting his fate. But the real tragedy of this finale is that, when his death should have marked the end of the Marston family’s affiliation with its dark past, it is actually through his passing that the once-innocent Jack seeks his own revenge, now controlled by the player 3 years later in the game. Violence begets violence and the son follows in the father’s footsteps; exactly the sort of future John Marston had tried to protect Jack from.

The feeling of surprise and shock when playing as Jack deliberately merges the player’s experience with this new character: Who am I? What do I do now? Not only has the player lost all their invested emotional connection with John, but so has Jack. And it surely says something of the impact and tragedy of the story’s conclusion that, when assuming the role of the son, I immediately travelled across town to hunt down the policeman who ordered the execution – a bonus mission in the game – and going on a random rampage against the law looking for revenge instead of redemption, a pointless, empty lust for blood so commonly found in the genre which conflicted with and was completely contrary to the values John Marston had strived for and realised through his sacrifice. The Wild West was dying, and so too was that young Jack’s apparent incorruptibility.

For all its technical qualities in creating a believable world outside of the player’s influence and overlooking the flaws – namely the many unnecessary, superfluous supporting characters and, especially, the disappointing and drawn out missions towards the end involving Marston’s former gang leader - Red Dead impresses most in its subtle morality tale behind the familiar GTA-template, told through an excellently-realised and ultimately sad journey that lives up to the game’s tagline, ”Outlaws to the end”.

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Red Dead Revolver (PS2/Xbox) review

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With modern eyes we now see them as ugly, primitive-looking things affiliated with old plastic cassette tapes and perhaps somewhat related to those equally-redundant computer floppy discs. How quickly technology has progressed from the days when having variable fast-forward and rewind speeds (fast, double fast, Triple Fast!) on VCRs warranted praise and worship, and how stubborn I was when DVDs first came out, adamantly insisting that I would never (ever) convert, clinging desperately onto my collection of VHS movies with their inconsistently-sized and ripped cardboard covers and maintaining passionately that being able to record from TV was basic a human right. And indeed, by not making recording a standard feature on DVD players haven’t we all turned into JB Hi-Fi bargain pile-raiding uber-consumers, needing to own entire series of shows and collector’s editions of movies when we could have easily taped them for free?

Well anyway, before I allow the nostalgia to forever be replaced by the progress of DVD and Blu-Ray user-friendliness, here are several of my fondest childhood and adolescent memories of VHS.

- Frequently getting the tape – the actual black/brown physical tape – caught inside the VCR and needing to manually wind it back in with a kitchen utensil that would fit (usually the handle end of an egg beater) after pressing that little square button to open up the latch to straighten out the crumples.

- Memorising the times of certain favourite scenes of movies, e.g. 1:10:05, and playing a game where I’d rewind or fast-forward to as close as possible to that exact timepoint, taking into account the slow-down speed of my fast-running VCR and trying to estimate how long before or after that point I would have to press Stop.

- Pressing Pause and seeing the image stretch and struggle on old CRT TVs, hoping the tape wouldn’t burn or melt on the hot metal VCR heads after leaving it for too long.

- Getting fined at the video store for not rewinding movies upon their return and watching the staff at Video Ezy and Civic Video utilise those sports car VHS rewinder machines, objects made specifically for rewinding purposes. Oh, how those rewinder manufacturing companies would have shaken their fists in anger during the DVD takeover.

- VCR head cleaner solution and the awful smell of alcohol, needing to wait an hour for it to dry in order for your video to be watchable. Hiring ‘The Specialist’, starring Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas and Sharon Stone (which constituted an all-star-cast back in the 90s) and having the tape snap inside the player when I was too eager to watch it after cleaning, and then making up a story at the Video Ezy saying that the tape itself had screwed up my player and getting a Free Hire voucher in return. I still feel guilty about that (but hey, free movie), and apologise for the bad taste in films.

- Those useless, generic stickers that came on a strip with every blank tape, with the little letters of the alphabet, the ones displaying the length of the tape, 90, 180, 240, 300 minutes, whether the mode was LP or SP, and various label stickers of different sizes and shapes for placement all over every edge of the tape. These stickers were all so very pointless, but I enjoyed making patterns out of them before realising that some of them peeled off inside the VCR upon pressing Eject, no doubt further contributing to the potential fire hazard of the device.

- SP vs LP recording. Taping football matches, including the football World Cups of 1998 and 2002 in their entirety on LP 300-minute videos (which meant a massive 10+ hours of terrible quality), with a gigantic stack of videos. All labeled and covered garishly with those aforementioned useless stickers.

- Taping over previous recordings and seeing their long-forgotten remnants lingering around either behind the image of the  most current recording – etched into the tape like an image burnt into one’s retinas, my favourite being old Disney cartoons hanging about as the background to a Schwarzenegger movie – or watching them reappear after a short period of static at the very end of the tape, usually consisting of old TV shows and ads with antiquated channel logos and bad hairstyles and fashion.

- Having tapes get stuck in an old, malfunctioning VCR, and needing to ‘trick it’ into allowing the ejection to take place by unplugging the power cable, plugging it back in, turning the VCR on and quickly pushing against the stuck tape to force the annoying thing out. Luckily no electrocutions ever occurred during this process.

- Eventually upgrading to a good quality VCR with a dial that allowed you to watch scenes frame-by-frame, especially useful for bone-crunching football tackle analysis in slow-mo and reviewing in awe the shattering of the T-1000 in Terminator 2. There really was something special about watching those paused, overworked images covered in tape static on the TV screen and hearing the groans of the VCR motors with each and every frame advancement and reversal.

- Before the advent of subtitles in DVDs, incorrectly guessing movie quotes due to bad accents/acting commonly found in Jean Claude Van-Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone movies. Having never had the desire to repurchase Universal Soldier on DVD, I still to this day do not know what JCVD was saying at the end after the fight with Dolph Lundgren – “Ironed?” “I wronged?” “I ronned [sic]?” “Eire rammed?” None of my guesses ever made any sense in the context of that scene, but then again, what was I thinking watching that rubbish in the first place anyway?

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Got any other stories? I’d love to hear about your own personal favourite VHS memories =)

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If it is indeed so good then shouldn’t we be more inclined to it

Rather than sensing the certainty of internal doubt?

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If it was so good then why hasn’t everyone subscribed to it

Why then are there people still hounded and unsure?

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Those who have turned away without a shred of regret

Sure of themselves beyond the measure of the majority

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Those who can stare tempting popularity in the face

And honestly say they’re not impressed

This is the second part of an interview series, “Unmasking the Gamers,” humanising the people who play video games: the real character controlling that fictional character; the person behind that First Person Genre. Previous interviewee(s): Brendan Stapley

Andrew, my friend, co-writer and neighbour, isn’t really a gamer. A web developer by trade with a gamer boyfriend, he has seen gaming from an outside perspective and recently become a fan of Battlefield Bad Company 2, establishing himself as a skilled sniper with a ridiculously good kills/headshots ratio. In this interview, we find out more about Andrew and what his thoughts on the medium are as an “outsider”.

Will Ooi: Andrew, tell us about yourself.

Andrew James: I’m a graphic designer who wants to be a writer. I spent most of my time working on design projects and websites and not enough time on writing, mainly because I’m afraid of what will happen if I open the dormant Pandora’s box in my mind. I love good movies where suspension of disbelief is not a chore. Actors are either brilliant or crap in my opinion and writing is the same. There is no in-between and I’m very black or white when it comes to what is good and what is bad. When I’m not watching movies, designing websites & logos or spending time eating out with friends, I’m trying to find a PS3 demo or game that can help me go blank for long enough to forget who I am.

WO: What/who are your artistic inspirations, from movies, designers, websites, etc.?

AJ: Hmm. Tough one. Anthony Hopkins (even though he’s been choosing bad films lately) is one of my favourites. Emma Thompson, Angelica Houston and Sigourney Weaver are all women who deserve more attention. With designers, I have no nameable inspiration. Same with websites. I see things I like in bits and pieces and I don’t identify with anyone in particular. I’m kinda tickled by the notion that I’m not in the ’scene’ and don’t really know who is who. It helps me be completely original, and if I copy someone it will be a fluke and by accident, because I had never seen their work.

WO: What was your original impression of games, prior to owning a PS3?

AJ: The only experience I’d had with games was trying to get them to run on my old PC out of curiosity. I had terrible luck, and you weren’t able to return PC games if they didn’t work, so I was a bit scared of games. I didn’t have any friends who were gamers and If I wanted advice about games I’d have to ask someone working at EB or the game shop about how to get things to run etc. I was curious, but not convinced they were worth my time or money.

WO: What convinced you in the end to go through with the decision of purchasing it?

AJ: My boyfriend wanted a console and I wanted to buy him something nice for Christmas that I knew he would like. So I got him a PS3 and watched him play Call of Duty 4.

WO: What was that experience like, from a non-gamer perspective?

AJ: I was quite amazed at how far graphics had come since I’d seen people playing a Playstation 2 and I thought that I might like to give it a go, as it seemed like skill was a large factor in finishing the game and I wanted to see if I was skilled.

WO: How did you fare?

AJ: I was better than Kyle. It was also good to come across a game where practice made you a better player. It wasn’t just luck.

WO: Is it that pursuit and mastering of skill that has gotten you so into Battlefield Bad Company 2? You are becoming very good at it indeed.

AJ: I think it’s a combination of becoming more skilled, and being part of a team. I really enjoy the feeling you get when you are surrounded by other players who want to win as much as you, and the ones on your team become your friends even though you don’t know who or where they are. You get sad when you see them die, and you feel proud to revive them, or protect them. And you also get a sense that they might be grateful for your help, and they might say things out loud like “oh thanks dude!” even though you can’t hear them.

WO: What’s the origin of your PSN ID, ’sirakos’?

AJ: “Sokaris” spelt backwards was an Egyptian god and I like to annoy the Greek man in the USA whose last name is Sirakos and is too slow to register it for emails and twitters and usernames

WO: On Xbox Live, Microsoft have recently done a U-turn on their controversial decision to ban players who displayed their sexual orientation in their Gamertags. Someone by the name of “RichardGaywood” was even banned under these old rules.

Given this, do you think such a move will help conquer the stereotypes of gay gamers, even if only in the world of online gaming?

AJ: I didn’t even know about Microsofts ban and subsequent reversal. I guess that shows you how informed the gay community is about these kinds of things. It doesn’t make interesting news on big papers, and it certainly doesn’t help sell them. I think issues like this arise all the time, and go largely unnoticed due to two factors; 1. Lack of interest from general public in what happens in games. 2. Apathy from the GLBT community when it comes to discrimination. I’m glad Microsoft has decided to reverse their ban. I’m shocked it was ever allowed in the first place.

WO: Do you think there is solace to be found in the anonymity and ‘escape’ of gaming, particularly for younger gay kids?

AJ: I bet there are a lot of gay gamers, especially kids around 15 or 16 who aren’t out playing sport and they aren’t at home sewing or knitting. What else is there to do ? Stereotyping here, but they are probably big into the RPGs to escape their personal hells, not being judged, being respected for their skill.

WO: What do you think of the stereotypes of game characters?

AJ: It’s a shame that the first gay character in successful and big game was that camp queen that you had to save in GTA. I’d much rather the gay guy be a capable villain over a pink camp stereotype, for it to be a non-issue like it is in real life when it’s treated with respect. Mind you, we can’t even get black characters in games unless it’s to be the token black character. What’s strange is there is no need.  History and movies and books and art have proven that connecting with people on an emotional level is the best way to capture them. The emotional connection is what keeps you entertained. Games seem to do that very badly for no reason, other than bad writing, and bad voice acting. In a world where people would write games for free, and unknown and talented acting students would work for tuppence, there is no reason.

WO: Do you think that there will eventually be a ‘real’ gay character in games, where sexuality isn’t an issue?

AJ: I don’t think there will be for quite some time. Not unless I become the director at a large game production agency. I think if there are gay characters that aren’t your average stereotype bit-part, it will be in small games that get no press and have limited budgets.

WO: In this respect do you think that the game industry is lagging behind in terms of social acceptance of homosexuality?

AJ: I think the game industry is an accurate litmus test of current attitudes towards sexuality in greater society. People forget too easily that there are gay people all around them, living and working amongst them. Not all gay men are flamers wearing pink hot pants and plucking their eyebrows (not that there is anything wrong with that). The sad irony is that games are targeted largely to teenage boys. The kind of boys who aren’t out being outwardly social and out playing sport with their friends, who might be gay.  I know if I had a PS3 when I was growing up, I’d much prefer to sit at home and play games, especially online games, where I can interact with people who don’t judge me, or hurt me.

WO: Do you think gaming could assist in breaking down this discrimination in some way? For instance, a major character in a game being gay (lets say a Call of Duty character) and for this fact to be addressed tastefully in-game

AJ: I think if it was a ‘non-issue’ but just something that was a matter of fact. Gamers would not be able to be outwardly appalled, because the introduction of a gay character would be somewhat of a non-event. Just like it is in real life, when you find out your friend or colleague is gay.

I think the other thing that gaming has to offer in terms of diversity is team work. I could find myself on a team with people from all over the world, people from cultures that I’d previously had no respect or understanding for. If we were able to tap into that and make people aware of who is around them it might help bridge a cultural or ideological divide, through teamwork. Sadly, such a realisation would also lead to open bigotry and discrimination, which is probably why the gaming companies avoid this kind of open and connected dialogue altogether.

WO: Do you think games can be taken as seriously as other mediums one day, or if they deserve to be?

AJ: I think there is a lot of untapped potential in games. 3D screens will be an industry standard in the next 5 years. I just wish that the gaming companies took the writing more seriously. It’s not hard to get a good script written in advance, and pay some decent actors to do the voice acting. It’s my opinion that there is no valid reason (unless you count cutting corners) that games can’t be just as entertaining or as emotionally encapsulating as movies or TV.

WO: From what you’ve seen in games, what do you think of the standards of acting?

AJ: TERRIBLE, and with no excuse. Game budgets are gigantic, often bigger than those of movies. If the goal of a game is to increase the connection between the player and the coveted suspension of disbelief, then game producers need to learn from the movies, and they need to learn fast. The best voice acting in a game I’ve ever seen was Uncharted 2. It was a largely uninteresting game, apart from the voice acting. And guess what, it got game of the year. If you’re going to do only one thing right in the production of a game, it’s my opinion that voice acting should be the top of the list.

WO: What have been a few games that have stood out for you? What has drawn you to them?

AJ: I really liked Call of Duty 4, for it’s graphics and simplicity. Online COD4 was awesome. It was humbling at first, and then rewarding later. When you watch your name slowly get to the top of the end of game leaderboard, it’s really quite exciting.

I liked Fallout 3. I’ve never had so much fun on my own before. Bethesda created a world that I was not only happy to spend lots of time in, but one that frightened me and gave me a sense of awe.

Dead Space was an amazing out of nowhere game. It didn’t seem to get anywhere near as much hype as other games released at the same time, but it was by far one of the best space horror games I’ve played. Compared to Aliens vs Predator which is out now, Dead Space 1 was far superior, and they managed to do this without falling into the trap of copying Aliens, like so many other space shoot’em games tend to do.

Assasins Creed 2 is quite amazing. And I eagerly anticipate Battlefield Bad Company 2 as the demo seems to be taking up more of my time than most other games I’ve played. [UPDATE: game has since been released and Andrew's stats are here].

WO: Do you see the appeal of an ‘escape’ in videogames? Like, for instance, being a ninja in a game. Do you think games have the ability to empower the ‘user/self’ over other mediums?

AJ: I think we must tread carefully when we talk about how games change our daily lives when we are not playing them. The conservative politicians would love to hear a gamer say “Being a ninja in a game made me want to be a Ninja in real life!” Translation: Killing in games makes me want to kill in real life. I think games offer an escape and a significant suspension of disbelief. Life is boring. We were promised magic and rocket ships as children. PS3 and Xbox are as close as we can get to those dreams in the present day. Is it any wonder games are so popular? We are finally starting to live those dreams, even if it is through a TV screen.

WO: Given that you are, apart from the odd dabbling in certain titles, essentially a non-gamer, how do you feel about Michael Atkinson and the ‘no R18+ rating for games’ issue making headlines at the moment? And, now that he is resigning, how do you think this will impact Australia?

AJ: I was so impressed by the political startup Gamers 4 Croydon. I think Atkinsons’ resignation is long overdue. Anyone who thinks that bikers are less scary than gamers clearly has issues and should not be in the public arena making decisions that affect the daily lives of the population.

To be blunt, Michael Atkinson is a princess, not a solider. I imagine if he did play games, his desire would be to play as the female damsel in distress, waiting for a knight in shining armour to come along and rescue him. At the risk of a possible libel suit, I’d like to go on record and make the suggestion that he was probably a spoilt rotten brat who was given anything he wanted as a child (except a Commodore 64, because games are evil, and so are gamers). He was probably sent to a Christian school and told that he could make the world a better place by spreading his ridiculous ideologies across Australia. Still holding a grudge against the children who DID get an Commodore 64 (or a VIC20), he decided to make it his personal vendetta to make all gamers pay.

He took his goal of spreading his ideologies one step further by making those ideologies public policy. His mistake? Assuming no one would try to stop him.

WO: Thanks very much for your time, Andrew.