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Red Dead Redemption Day#9: Border Trouble

This day is pure pain. I basically try to accomplish two things and both take forever because of save problems. In one, the game does not save at a critical point which means I lose thirty minutes of progress; in the other, a bug causes me to lose my progress in the middle of a long scene. On top of that, I’m constantly dying in incidental scenes. The session ends with a dopey narrative segment in a new chapter of the game. Overall, suck suck suck today. Spoilers within.

At the game start, I get my poker fix and come up ahead. I decide to try the funny man mission one more time before Mexico. On the ride to the mission, I see a horse thief. I shoot the thief but lose the horse and thus fail the mission – oh well. I get to the funny man mission radius and I’m directed to find an injured guy.  I shoot through some baddies who attack me on sight. I kill them and get to the injured guy.  He tells me his friend Floyd is being held by the miners and I have to get him, and then he dies. I wade back into the fray, killing more guys as I approach the new marker on my map. I find the guy and cut him free.  He tells me there’s treasure underground that he’ll split with me if I get him there safe. I kill a bunch of enemies then take him to mine. We go in and I’m killing guys as I go down just like the time I got the Gatling gun. At a certain point, I find the writer in the mine hogtied. I free him and he talks about writing from some place warm and far. He runs off and I continue on for the treasure. I reach a large open room and die there because there’s no cover. I’m not sure if my quest saved, but the hell with it: to MEXICO!!!!

I start riding to Irish as he’s the link to Mexico. This is a massive exercise in frustration. To start with, it’s a long ride. Then there are all the deaths getting there. I die trying to stop some robbers when I stupidly run into the group I then ride for a long time and am killed again by robbers this time before I do anything. After that, I spawn all the way back to the other side of the map again. The third ride, a guy steals my horse. I shoot him as he rides away, but I lose honor for some reason and I lose the horse. I have to wait a minute doing nothing under my horse respawns. At least the dawn is beautiful. I finally reach Irish and this starts a new chapter: We Shall Be Together in Paradise.

It starts CS of Irish and West talking. West tells me Irish knows lots of people in Mexico. We have to get on Irish’s raft to get across, so John does so. Irish says he’s never done John any wrong; John says not for lack of trying. West tells them that he’s off to other places. John wishes him well.  I then get control as we rope across river to the sound of more typical not-awful dialogue between Irish and John. People on other side attack us so we cut rope to drift a while. As we drift, I have to shoot enemies on shore. That’s not too back, although the lack of cover on all angles of the raft means I’m taking a lot of damage. There’s a guy throwing bombs about a third of the way down the river, and he kills us because I don’t shoot him before he locks on to the raft. I respawn on the raft and die again further on and the die after respawning again. This scene was only mildly annoying at this point, but after this third death, the game freezes on the loading screen and I have to totally restart the game. Nice.

When I relaunch the game, I can now see on my map that I didn’t finish that funny man quest after all. I do that again. Injured guy, kill miners, free partner, get back in mine. I free jimmy again, and then I die again in exactly the same place. FUCK!!!!!! I again give up and ride to Irish for the river mission, and I am again ambushed by robbers and killed. DEAR GOD THIS IS FRUSTRATING. I decide to ride to Armadillo to buy some better fucking guns. When I get there, I play poker to destress and lose a little.  There aren’t really better guns in the store and I buy a bandoleer to hold more ammo and then I save. I ride out to Irish AGAIN, and this time help lawman catch 2 criminals along the way. I get to Irish and it’s back to the river gauntlet. I finally to a break in the river fight. It turns out Irish is loved by women here, and that he’s called rato in Mexico. Oh sorry, this river scene STILL isn’t over. Of course, I die in this new phase, even though I’m behind cover. One more try and I finally get to the end of the scene by shooting two last enemies and reaching shore. Irish looks over the horses the dead enemies left.  John asks Irish where to go next. Irish can’t remember who to talk to, so he babbles and eventually says I should talk to the governor he guesses.  Irish is going off to green pastures and so rides away.

I ride to Chuparosa  and my arrive starts a new chapter: A Gunslinger’s Tragedy. In CS, I enter town and some Mexicans approach.  They ask if John knows Spanish and he doesn’t really know more than tourist Spanish. They know English though, and they start mocking him. They threaten him and want a bribe, particularly his boots. John bends down as if he was getting the boots and shoots them all. At this point, an old man on porch gets mad at John for shooting them. The old man thinks John is a socialist. He calls John a peasant. He then goes on to insult John’s gunslinging and offer to teach him some stuff.  This is dumb narrative. Why is he having me practice shooting? I’ve been shooting from the start of the fucking game.

As I get control back and have to follow him, he tells me his name’s Landon. John heard of him from his youth — he was a gunslinger. John reveals he’s looking for Bill and Javier, whoever that is. They talk about the revolution, and he tells me the Colonel is like a feudal king down here and a bastard. He has me learn more dead eye tricks and shoot some birds, which is simple tutorial. A guy then comes out of the village and asks Landon to help a wagon.  We ride out there to get them together and there are some bandits holding the wagon guy hostage. I have to use my dead eye to kill them before they kill the hostage.  I die once because I’m too slow, but I kill them all the next time and escort wagon back.

We get back to the village and that mission is over. I’m not sure what to do, so I head to a yellow x I see. That launches a dog mission. Now that I have a lasso, I can capture the people the dog finds, and that allows me to catch to a couple of guys but then I’m killed by robbers all of a sudden with I turn a corner. With that, I call it a night on this FUCKING FRUSTRATING SESSION.

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  1. Douglas says

    Mexico made me love the fast travel feature. All the missions seem to be “ride from one end of the goddamn country to the other and back again.” I originally swore not to use the fast travel so that I could experience the wide open country and the mini-missions and whatnot but after a while I just said fuck it.

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  2. admin says

    I could not agree more. I LOVE the landscapes in this game, but I will have Marston shoot himself in the head if I have to criss-cross these godforsaken country one more time.

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