Red Dead Redemption: Exploring the Wild West

Find buried treasure, hunt down cannibals, cheat at poker and sock a mountain lion in the kisser. Now that's how the West was really won.

Even a hundred years ago, the West was a wild land, yet to be fully tamed by man. Coyotes ventured into towns at night to steal chickens from their coops, bandits roamed the vast expanse, robbing homesteaders and other hopeful newcomers to the West, while Marshalls did their best to bring order to an area that had existed in chaos for decades. This is the world of Red Dead Redemption. And as fans of Rockstar's GTA series have come to expect, the world is wide open and ripe for exploration.

It doesn't matter if you've decided to be a cold-blooded outlaw or a champion of the people, there is plenty to see and do in the sprawling world of Red Dead Redemption.

While you'll want to complete a few of the early missions to unlock some basic tools of the trade (in particular, your lasso), you won't have to follow the storyline for long before it's safe to wander off into the wild. In fact, I spent six hours avoiding the main missions altogether and I still had plenty to do just by venturing out on my own. It didn't even matter that two of the three territories in Red Dead are locked until you progress to certain parts of the story. The world is so big and so full of distractions that you can easily invest ten hours without thinking much at all about progressing the storyline of main character John Marston.

Red Dead is full of side quests. There are really two different kinds. There are a number of structured quests, things built into the world in very specific places. They play out as mini-stories, usually comprised of a series of short missions. One eerie side quest has Marston set out in search of a lost boy. You find the boy in the hills, at least what's left of him. Just a shoe and a piece of his leg. Only he wasn't eaten by a coyote. Apparently someone mistook him for Soilent Green. Yes, there are cannibals in Red Dead Redemption. They like to nom on little boys.

While there are plenty of these types of bonus missions, the more common set of side quests are random encounters. In town or while out exploring, you'll hear gunshots or cries for help. You can always move on, and ignore whatever's happening, but where's the fun in that? I was flagged down by someone whose friend was being lynched. I rushed to the rescue, killed the bad men, then tried to play it Clint Eastwood cool by shooting the rope that was hanging the poor man. Only, I missed with the first shot. And the dumb sonofabitch died on me. Another time I was asked to help rescue a man's daughter who was being held hostage by some bandits. I thought I'd killed every enemy in town, so when I opened the door to free her, it took me a moment to realize the man standing beside her wasn't one of the gunslingers who'd assisted me. A second's hesitation was all he needed to put a bullet in the back of her head.

Ma'am, I am here for my lasso.

Even in towns, people aren't safe. I heard a woman arguing with a man. It seemed pretty heated. Sure enough, on the porch of a bordello, a surly customer and a whore were screaming at one another. As I tried to remember how to switch to my fists so I could show this jerk some manners, he pulled out a knife and stabbed the woman repeatedly in the stomach. In fact, he followed her to the ground and kept stabbing.

The West is a f***ed up place.

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