Have you ever played a game where the first 60% feels like a glorified Uber Eats simulator, the controls handle like a broken shopping cart, but by the end, you’re sitting there in existential dread muttering "Absolute cinema"? A recent Reddit thread just dug up exactly that feeling with a look back at Red Dead Redemption 1 (RDR1).
14 Years Late: From Cow-Herding Simulator to Emotional Damage
A Reddit user recently finished RDR1 and dropped a massive, meandering review—fitting perfectly with the game's own slow-burn pacing. Here are the juiciest takeaways:
- The pacing is a slow burn: The game takes forever to get going. You spend hours herding cattle and playing errand boy for random psychopaths and conmen on vague promises.
- Ludonarrative Dissonance: John Marston openly talks trash to almost every quest giver but still acts as their obedient lapdog. It creates some friction, though the narrative kinda forces his hand.
- The Dignity of Mashing X: Holding X to jog is bad enough, but mashing X to sprint? Absolute humiliation. Rockstar loves to flex their muscles making animations look realistic, but they completely dropped the ball on making them feel good. Turning around feels like piloting a tank in a clunky Mario 64 knock-off.
- Better Humor than GTA: A lot of GTA’s satire borders on being overly edgy and cynically toxic. RDR is more restrained. The dark joke where John threatens to feed a coke-addicted professor to the wolves ("Just kidding") hits perfectly.
- The Death of an Era: The overarching theme is brilliant. Reaching Blackwater and seeing an automobile for the first time gives you a sense of impending doom. The Wild West is dying. Hell, they even try to replace your signature cowboy revolver with a modern semi-auto pistol.
- Dutch van der Linde: The ultimate boss. An amoral anarchist who rebels against forces he can’t control. Meeting him makes everything click—he’s a relic of a dead world, foreshadowing John’s own inevitable fate.
Reddit Reacts: Is RDR1 actually better than RDR2?
The comments section turned into a classic gamer debate club:
- The RDR1 Purists: Many argue RDR1 is fundamentally a better, tighter game. RDR2 is visually stunning and acts better, but it suffers from feature bloat and pacing issues.
- The Copium Mechanics: Some players defended the awful sprint mechanics, claiming it’s a deliberate design choice to stop players from bunny-hopping or gliding across the map like hoverboards. It adds "weight." But even they admitted: "I'd be lying if I said I didn't wind up mashing X anyway."
- The Chronological Regret: One poor soul played RDR2 first because of the timeline. Big mistake. Going from the god-tier engine of RDR2 back to RDR1's clunky mechanics is a massive system shock.
- Shoutout to the Undead Nightmare DLC, heavily praised as the ultimate palate cleanser. After the heavy, depressive ending of the main game, blowing off zombie heads is pure therapy.
C4F's Take: When Bad UX is Actually... A Feature?
From a game dev perspective, Rockstar’s movement mechanics are a wild gamble. In an era where studios use everything to polish UI/UX, sacrificing fluid controls for realistic animation weight is a huge risk.
Does it tilt players? Yes. Do you want to rage quit when John refuses to turn around in a doorway? Absolutely. But it also forces you to slow down. It stops you from speedrunning and forces you to absorb the desolate vibe of the dying frontier.
RDR1 proves that if your narrative pacing, atmosphere, and storytelling are top-tier, players will forgive your archaic controller mapping. Making a prequel where everyone already knows the tragic ending—and still making it hit like a truck—is a masterclass in writing. GG, Rockstar.
If you haven't played it, go grab a port or fire up an emulator. It's worth the grind.
Source: Miscellaneous thoughts on Red Dead Redemption
