Red Dead Online, or the Multiplayer Redness in the West

“The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor. Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth's long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness.” - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

What’s a little fisticuffs among friends?

After two years of avoiding it, I dipped my toe into Red Dead Online, the multiplayer version of Red Dead Redemption 2. The original Red Dead ranks as one of my favorite games; the sequel, not as much, but it’s not bad. I’d avoided the multiplayer, in part because I don’t have time to “get good” at a twitchy-shooty game, in part because I’d read about the pay-to-play aspect and it turned me off.

A couple of weeks ago, some friends convinced me to join a posse, and I set off on my Online adventure. What I found was not at all what I expected: a far more interesting multiplayer experience than I was led to believe, and a sandbox world of almost sublime beauty, where animals and other players alike will butcher you for the sheer savagery of the act. Online may have inadvertently created what a generation of filmmakers could not: the ultimate, immersive experience of being inside Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian.

It’s a kill-or-be-killed world.

Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West follows a protagonist called “the kid” and his falling in with the Glanton Gang, a band of mercenaries who murdered Apaches, Mexicans, and Americans along the United States-Mexico border from 1849-1850. Riding with the Gang is the mysterious Judge, a massive, pale, hairless man who may or may not be a supernatural avatar of evil. The novel does the opposite of romanticize the West and its inhabitants. The Gang are murderers and torturers, and the action is so bleak, with so little disregard for humanity, that it can be a hard book to finish. It’s also beautifully written, with descriptions of the sweeping, gorgeous landscapes standing in sharp contrast to the brutal actions of Glanton and his Gang.

A gathering darkness.

Red Dead Online is a very similar experience. You build a character and after a series of tutorial missions, you’re turned loose on a massive map that covers a fictional version of the American West. There are missions, stories, and activities that you can initiate, but your first couple of hours will likely be spent marveling at the eye-popping graphics and vast open sandbox. It’s the same map and graphics as the single-player game, but being free of the drive to complete the story and just play in the open world is liberating. It’s a thing of wonder to simply sit and watch and listen to a thunderstorm roll in across the prairie, for example.

But you are not alone. There are NPCs, sure, but you’ll also find a few dozen other players on your map. Most of them seem content to leave you alone, but you can quickly find yourself on the business end of a gun. You can set your game to “defensive,” indicating that you don’t want to participate in player-vs-player combat, but if you don’t you’re fair game. While Online seems largely free of griefers and trolls, gunfights can break out with alarming alacrity, especially in towns where players tend to congregate. And like the real West, they’re quick and deadly. (If you find yourself repeatedly griefed, there’s an option called “Parley” that prevents you from trading damage with another player, giving you time to get away).

A beautiful if deadly landscape.

The world is also full of animals that will maul, scratch, and trample you just like they do in the single-player experience. If you’re not paying attention, a bear will shred you or a cougar will eviscerate you and your horse before you can mash the aim button. Between the players and the animals, Online can be a merciless experience.

The true nihilism is present in the form of gold bars, which you can either earn by participating in challenges or purchase with real-world money. It turns out a good deal of Online’s middle- and late-game content is stuck behind paywalls that require you to have these gold bars. A prestigious bounty hunter license, which gives you access to the entire bounty hunter set of content (missions, cosmetics, weapons, etc.), costs 30 gold bars.

The nighttime of the soul.

It will take you approximately 200 days of grinding away at challenges to make that much from the game, or you can purchase 55 gold bars for $19.99 USD (plus tax). If you want to participate in the other character classes (Moonshiner, Naturalist), that’ll cost you more gold bars. The “best deal” is to buy 350 gold bars for $99.99 USD. Yikes. Gold bars can (and in some cases, must) be used to buy in-game items, like boots, hats, and weapons. So even if you exhaust all of the paid content, there’s still ways to spend real-world money.

While it’s not the most egregious form of multiplayer monetization out there, the mercenary vibe of the gold bar system makes the game seem like it’s little more than a beautiful and deadly wrapping around a way to suck money out of your wallet. It’s not hidden: like the kid in Blood Meridian, if you buy into it, you walk in with eyes wide open. McCarthy’s novel is, in part, about the conflict between the “freedom” of the West and its required cost in humanity.

Even here, bounty hunting is a complicated profession.

RDO plays in the same space, where your freedom to explore this gorgeous sandbox is stymied by the need to empty your wallet. This overlap of freedom and cost may be the “evening redness” in Blood Meridian’s title, but in RDO it’s more of the “multiplayer RedDeadness”—where a full experience requires buying into developer Rockstar’s capitalist nihilism. Is it worth it? That’s up to you. You can go in just like the kid with no surprises. It’s certainly enjoyable and you can parcel out your purchases a bit. I will say I was able to have quite a bit of fun just screwing around without paying for anything.

Should you choose to ride with this posse, be prepared to open thy coin purse. Enjoy the beautiful scenery, don’t forget to draw your iron, and be ready to headshot the unlucky bastard that draws down on you. Because this is the West, and it is a place of lovely darkness.

Addendum: If you’re looking for a less nihilistic place to play an online Western, and you own the PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2, check out WildRP, an online role-playing server. You must apply to join, and have a good-quality microphone, but the game is rumored to be incredible, especially for those looking for a RP experience. The author has not joined the game himself.