Red Dead Redemption's PC debut is several years too late
After 14 years and at an asking price of Rs 3,799, a lot more was expected of the latest Rockstar Games port
This edition of The Qun is brought to you by veteran technology journalist, card-carrying member of the PC Master Race, educationist and one-time Nintendo Switch gamer Anirudh Regidi. And when Rockstar Games dropped Red Dead Redemption on the platform of his choice, it didn’t take him long to sink his teeth into it. The following are his thoughts on the game’s PC port that launched last month.
Review: Red Dead Redemption (PC)
Developed and published by Rockstar Games
Rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
There’s a lot you can learn from a study of an artist’s first works. That effort earns you a glimpse into their mindset when they first started, a better understanding of their struggles and learnings as they evolved. You get to experience the journey that led to the creation of their first masterpiece(s).
Games are art, and a study of a studio’s first works reveals a similar story of its evolution. You can always trust id software to push the boundaries of technology with cutting-edge game engines, the never-to-be-released Star Citizen bears the hallmarks and scars of Chris Roberts’ struggles with Wing Commander and Starlancer, and it’ll be a surprising twist indeed if Bethesda ever launches a game that isn’t a bug-infested gem.
The thing is, though, that older games when revisited — just like early artworks — aren’t necessarily as fun or as compelling as we expect them to be. While they make for an interesting study, they often don’t age well. As captivating and fun as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was when I first played it, a younger generation of gamer is unlikely to see the appeal of it.
Sadly, it’s into this category that Red Dead Redemption’s PC port falls. Without the veil of nostalgia blurring out RDR’s many rough edges, the game feels old and clunky, even by 2010 standards. Animations outside of cutscenes are stilted and gunplay only qualifies as tolerable. Sound effects are primitive and repetitive, graphics are flat and dated, and the world feels empty. If you think I’m being too harsh, don’t forget that RDR came out two years after GTA IV — one of the most technologically-demanding games of its time — and in the same year as such graphically impressive titles as Alan Wake and Mafia II.
As a gamer experiencing RDR for the first time, I was bored long before I’d wrapped up the first act.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the 30+ hours I spent in Rockstar’s romanticised interpretation of 1900s America, or the chance the game offered to observe Rockstar’s stellar dev team in action as they laid the foundation for RDR’s impressive sequel. There is a lot to like, but only if approached in the spirit of a historian or archivist.
What works
Red Dead Redemption tells a straightforward but memorable tale — one that’s enacted beautifully by a stellar cast and captured by what I assume was state-of-the-art motion capture at the time. Unlike the GTA games that came before it (and since), RDR is refreshingly and surprisingly mature in its presentation and approach. In fact, the story is easily RDR’s best feature.
There are zany characters to be found — Rockstar just can’t help themselves, I suppose — but a handful seemed too implausible given the setting. John Marston is a believable and charismatic protagonist, and while the first act is slow, it does a great job of setting the stakes and easing you into the world of RDR.
Act 2, which leads Marston to Mexico and back, is more action-packed but I feel it also loses the plot a bit by toeing the line too far towards irreverence and cliché. Large and often repetitive set-pieces disrupt pacing, and dialogue stretches so much that I took to playing crosswords on the side while cutscenes played out. Things are back on track by Act 3, with the game tying things up with a satisfying little bow by the time the credits roll.
Undead Nightmare, a DLC where Marston must end a zombie apocalypse by burning coffins, befriending shotgun-wielding nuns, and revisiting fallen foes while taming the four horses of the apocalypse is exactly as much fun as it sounds. It’s a short, fun distraction that doesn’t take itself too seriously or overstay its welcome, making it by far my favourite segment in the game.
What doesn’t work
I think my main issue with Red Dead Redemption is that there’s nothing to show for the 14 years we, PC gamers, have had to wait for this game. This is not a remaster or a remake, it’s a 1:1 port of a PS3 game with minor visual tweaks. The multiplayer mode has been cut, and no attempt has been made to address the dated mechanics, animations, or graphics. After waiting 14 years and at an asking price of Rs 3,799 (that’s Rs 800 more than a Steam license for the stellar Dragon Age: The Veilguard, by the way), I expect more.
Following RDR’s PC release, it took modders a week to add ray-traced lighting and shadows, better colour filters, depth of field, and updated ragdoll physics. They added support for ultra-wide cut-scenes, modded in a newgame+ mode, added quality-of-life updates like instant-loot, a photo mode, hand-drawn icons for the map, and so much more.
A week.
Rockstar could have, and should have, done a lot more with 14 years.
A note on PC performance
Judging by Red Dead Redemption’s Steam page, the game should run just fine on PCs that are six-years-old or older. I did not expect to face any issues on my AMD Ryzen 9 7950X- and Radeon 7900 XT-powered system, but I did, and rather egregious ones at that. Playing at 4K with everything dialled up to 11, the game only averaged a stuttery 90 FPS. Part of the reason it took me three weeks to finish this game is that I couldn’t play for more than an hour at a time without getting a headache from the microstutter. Dropping resolution, enabling v-sync and toggling settings and upscaling options made no difference.
I later swapped out my 7900 XT for a much older and slower RTX 3080 from Nvidia and not only did the stutter disappear, but the game also ended up running at a locked 144 FPS at 4K. On top of that, RDR looked leagues better thanks to dynamic lighting — I didn’t realise that muzzle flashes lit up rooms or that in-game fires glowed — and more vibrant colours. I replayed a large portion of the game just to experience the game as it was meant to be played.
I’m assuming this is a bug with either AMD’s drivers or with my system because I see no reason for the 7900 XT to perform so badly on a 14-year old game. Whatever the case, if you’re experiencing performance issues, you might want to consider reinstalling drivers and/or the game.
Game reviewed on PC. Review code provided by publisher
 | A guest post by
|