I may catch some heat for this (I am used to that by now), but I honestly believe that Red Dead Redemption is the single greatest game of this gaming generation. It was a perfect game, with every single element adding up to a “perfect storm” of gaming. From the graphics to the storyline to the gameplay, it was the best Western we’ve received since Unforgiven, and it wasn’t even a film.
Thing is, there was one moment when you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t a movie. A moment so cinematic and perfect, you got lost in it. A moment where you truly FELT like the hero, felt like the lost soul trying to find his way home and make up for all the time he lost sinnin’. That moment was in the middle of the game, when you were journeying into Mexico to try to find your old gang and finish them off, and the Jose’ Gonzalez song, So Far Away, started playing.
I swear to you, in all my life, I will never have an opportunity to feel like a cowboy. The world is just too different now. But in that decidedly quiet moment, I felt like it. All you do is ride your horse into Mexico, in real time. No one jumps out of the bushes to rob you, you are not dragging anyone behind you. No wolves are chasing you. It is just you and your horse, slow riding into Mexico, with an absolutely amazing song as your soundtrack, and there is no experience quite like it in all of gaming.
If you look at most of the moments on this list, they are epic and on a massive scale, and the reason this scene worked so well because for once in gaming, it was the opposite. It was a sort of intermission to all the killing you had done so far. And it gave you a moment to marvel at just how well constructed and well executed this game was. And I swear, in that four minute section, I could feel my horse’s hooves hitting the dirt road under me. I could smell the open air, and feel the bus, buzzing around me. It was unforgettable. And I know there are a great deal of quite moments in films that work effectively (think Drive), but for me, few have captured the feeling of what they were trying to convey quite as concisely as the Far Away moment in Red Dead Redemption.