Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West ed. by John Wills and Esther Wright (review)

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• Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West ed. by John Wills and Esther Wright
• Chad Beharriell

John Wills and Esther Wright, eds., Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2023. 240 pp. Hardcover, $65; paper, $29.95; e-book $24.95.

The Red Dead Redemption video game series, produced by Rockstar Games, is the most influential digital experience of the Western genre to date. This collection of eleven essays, part of The Popular West series published by the University of Oklahoma Press, is a comprehensive examination of those games, particularly their narrative structure and game-play, with a focus on Red Dead Redemption II (2018) and Red Dead Redemption (2010). Whether lauding or finding fault, the contributors acknowledge the cultural reach of this Western series.

Following an excellent introductory section, which includes a history of Western-genre storytelling (from dime novels to video games) and a survey of the study of western history itself, the essays are divided across three chapters; "Mechanics and Genre," "Outsiders and Slow Death," and "Representation and Meaning."

The collection has three prime strengths; contextualization of the Red Dead series within the longer history of Western video games; sustained application of theoretical frameworks to series examples; and detailed analysis of various game portrayals ranging from law enforcement, disease, and ecological change to familial, gender, and racial relationships, including with the Indigenous presence. Several [End Page 93] contributors also coherently map out how the Red Dead game-world and mechanics draw upon the revisionist Western films of the 1960s. The more convincing viewpoints incorporate game dialogue to illustrate critiques, as Ashlee Bird (Western Abenaki) does, noting the moral dissonance between Rockstar's conservation message in one mission of the 2018 game and the subsequent option to take animals as the player-avatar desires.

Among the numerous interesting ideas is Sören Schoppmeir's notion of Red Dead Redemption (I and II) functioning as a "database Western" to let gamers create a self-selected playable Western outside of the main narrative. John Wills (co-editor) claims Red Dead II gives a partly successful period experience by digitally combining sublime western views with the mundane of "grinding" work. Soraya Murray's essay, which concludes the book, contends Red Dead II will become known for a specific political feeling.

Notably, Red Dead Revolver, the 2004 offering seen by Rockstar as distinct from its latter two games, is argued by co-editor Esther Wright as more progressive than the 2010 and 2018 productions for game-play as multiple protagonists (e.g., as female rancher, Annie Stoakes). Wright asks why gamers could not have played as Sadie Adler, female gang member and outlaw, in Red Dead Redemption II's epilogue, rather than following the reductionist single-player mode as white males Arthur Morgan and then John Marston. That interesting question, hinting at lost opportunity, reframes Red Dead II as simply one Western game and not the Western game, despite its commercial success.

Arguments about the limited identity of playable characters are somewhat tempered by the collection's choice not to explore the online multiplayer iterations of the Red Dead series, a gap referred to in the introduction; those online modes allow gamers to play across gender and race. Given the contributors' skills, a follow-up volume to analyze issues in that multiplayer world is merited. Relatedly, there is modest discussion of the main playable character in Revolver, Red Harlow, who is of mixed Indigenous-white background.

Political disposition will likely inform the reader's level of agreement with various critiques of the Red Dead series. For example, if one believes today's global economy is a neo-liberal capitalist structure privileging certain groups, then there will be support for claims [End Page 94] that such a system is reflected in the narrative, game-play, and production of the series. There are echoes of the Frankfurt school of critical theory in these assertions.

There are also sections where descriptive critique of the series leans into prescriptive directive; what the latter two Red Dead games, now past five- and thirteen-years-old, should have been in terms...