My Thoughts on "Red Dead Redemption", pt2

(Continued from Part 1...)

The Dubious Honor of Good Samaritan

            This is also a part of the game that I notice a real flaw in the "player is part of the story".  The game has a moral choice element, when you kill people without reason you earn a reputation of being an asshole, when you help those in need you are seen as the Lone Ranger.  To keep with this there are little adventures you can have, occasionally you will see a guy trying to kidnap/rape/murder a woman, and you can chose to stop them, I frequently do.  There are also things called "Strangers", tiny stories that take you on a short story in the wild west.  I saw the start of a Stranger mission, a guy beating up a woman behind a brothel, so I shot him and instantly failed the mission.  At this point I have shot dozens of men beating up women and have gotten nothing but honor so this was surprising, so I reloaded the mission.

            When I reloaded I walked up and found out she was a prostitute/slave of the guy beating her up.  The pimp/slave-owner offered to sell me her.  I shot him... Cause seriously: fuck that guy.  Instant fail for the mission.  So I reloaded the mission again.

            This time I bought the girl and freed her from slavery so that she could go to a convent and take better care of herself.  I went to check up on her and it turns out she had been kidnapped and then murdered by her former pimp/owner.  I then shot him in a duel, winning the mission.  WHAT?  So, the point of the mission was to fail at saving a girl because you chose to negotiate with a slaver?  That is stupid, I shot him even before I knew what was going on because I judged the situation totally right... but instead of instantly winning the mission I was told, "WRONG" .  I shot him when I knew what was going on, and was reprimanded again.  I shoot him after the girl is dead and somehow VICTORY.  No.  Fail.

You're no player, you're an audience.

Endangered Species

            That was one of the stories in Mexico, but there are other issues, like the hunting mini-games.  You can kill mountain lions or deer in certain parts of the map, or gather plant life, and then sell all that junk to buy bullets (there is a certain area that if you stand around every mountain lion in North America will find you over the course of an hour and each one will nearly kill you).

            At one point I find a Stranger who needs some plants to make a glue and some skins to make a glider wing, I have collected and sold somewhere around 10,000 pelts while playing the game so I go to the general store to buy some pelts to help the glider Stranger out.  NO PELTS FOR SALE.  Why?  I want to buy some pelts, I can't be the only guy selling, so why can't I buy some?  No reason.  The game seems to have wanted a survival mechanism to it, the ability to buy cheap and sell for a profit, the ability to find rare things and make use of them in creative ways, instead it is just a straight up "junk for cash" system.  That isn't all that fun.

10,000 ninjas living in about 4 square miles.

Continued in part 3...