Red Dead Redemption Day#16: A Small Dose of Savagery

It’s a short session today and a lot of it is sucked into a bounty that takes forever to finish. Despite this, the plot remains good, and while the mechanics are nothing I haven’t seen before in this game, they are still pretty fun.  The main villain remains an excellent character in the brief scenes I see him. It’s a pretty good session on average, although it’s nothing too original and nothing too stellar. Spoilers within.

I start with my daily dose of poker. Wow, the guys in this town play tight and cowardly. I come up a little ahead. I go then to the next Macdougal mission: For Purely Scientific Purposes. In CS, the professor is high.  He says he’s solved riddle of savage soul — he knows what makes civilizations what they are and what causes savages to revert. He then says he can prove it and get Dutch at the same time. I get control as I follow him out. I get on my horse and follow him and Nastas who arrives as we start to leave. We’re going to meet the tribal elders to try to get them on our side. Along the way, we run into a bear that I have to kill for no particular reason. I do so with two well-placed sniper shots and skin it. We ride a bit further and then get off the horses to a CS of us entering the native’s hut. The three natives inside almost immediately insult the  whites for being enemies and putting them in poverty. The professor stutters a response and the natives pull their weapons. Nastas tries to intercede and make peace and for this troubles, they shoot him in the face. John kills the three natives, and I then get control back to kill the others that start attacking the house.  Killing done, I get on a horse and fight back enemies on horseback until we reach Blackwater. In CS, the professor thanks me for saving him as the mission ends.

Having control back in the middle of town, I first buy paper, but there aren’t any really interesting stories in it.  I go to watch a movie. It’s an anti-suffrage cartoon showing women losing all moral fiber and becoming men. This movies are well-done, but they just leave me uncomfortable. I still have to kill time until next Macdougal mission so I ride around to see if I can find anything. I do some trading in a post. I find some robbers on the road, but I weirdly have no dead eye and get killed. I ride out again, encounter a different set of robbers, and get killed again. When I respawn in town, I decide to take a bounty for some cash. The guy I’m looking for is way up in a mountain. I leave my horse at the base to climb it, and it takes a long time to find a path I can climb. When I get to the top, I kill a bunch of guards and then capture the bounty alive. It then takes FOREVER to fight my way down mountain because my horse won’t go up it and enemies spawn every couple of minutes. When I get to the base of the mountain, I have killed over a dozen guys and one wild boar. I finally ride away and still have to kill another six enemies before I get out of the woods. Riding full steam, I get the bounty back to Blackwater and earn my reward and an achievement.

The next mission is ready so I go to it. The new chapter is The Prodigal Son Returns (to Yale). It starts with the CS of John at the professor’s door. The professor’s leaving for the East because he’s not cut out for the violence. He’s panicking but takes his drugs and calms down.  Dutch yells from downstairs and shoots into the window. As John and the professor take cover, Dutch tells us he’s going to kill us for sport. John wants Dutch to let the professor go and to send his thugs home to his families. But Dutch says his friends have already lost families – they are fighting for more than themselves. John tells the professor they are going to take to the rooftops to get away. The two of them CS enter a room with a couple having foreplay, and wouldn’t you know it, the couple freaks out! Who would have thought that? John tells them to stay down and shut up and then follows the professor to escape to the fire escape. I get control on the roof where I have to snipe Dutch’s guys who are shooting at us from the surrounding buildings. It’s pretty easy overall. Once I kill them, we run across roofs and then drop down to the ground to get our horses. I escort the professor to a train while fending off enemies.  As we ride and I kill, the professor says he just wanted to write something that romanticized the Old West, but the West is just people killing each other. Several dead enemies later, I get him to the station. CS he says there’s no civilizing this land. He hugs John and gets on a train to New Haven. I head back to town and bust out at poker before I say goodnight.