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Rockstar reaches for the skies.

Grand Theft Auto IV was in many ways a generational reflection of GTA3 on the PS2, rebooting the series on brand new hardware and implementing as many changes as possible to take advantage of the PS3 and 360's processing power. It's easy enough to see the parallels, after Episodes in Liberty City refined the visual grandeur of Liberty City's vistas just as Vice City came in followed by San Andreas' engines, each game continuing to pump out more technically stunning engines and better-told stories. It's both interesting and jarring not to have an exact parallel between generations, since Red Dead Redemption would technically fall into place where Vice City sits on last generation's timeline of games for Rockstar, but that would also assume that Red Dead Redemption is a straight-up Grand Theft Auto title in the first place, and that's just not the way things are.

A few years back Rockstar tried their hand at the wild west with Red Dead Revolver, and have returned to the same era in Red Dead Redemption, a title that has as much to do with the game's plot as it does for the franchise, after Revolver's low-balling gameplay came out mostly bland. The game now features a GTA model, free-roaming and random missions all aboard next to the main story, and strangely enough it manages to fit the mold even better than a place where freedom of choice and inherent mayhem would work best, in places like Vice City. So what does that make it? Is it the easy pitch of "GTA in the Wild West", or some happy accident of the right place and right time? It could be both, or something different altogether, but one thing's for sure - within an hour of play time Rockstar has its hooks into us deeper than ever before and there's no turning back.

In fact, it's difficult to come up with new and engaging things to talk about in Rockstar's material, because the compliments are all the same. Each new release prompts recognition of their technical achievements in storytelling and crafting a free-roaming world that breathes and moves at times. While not as bustling as the scum of their cities have been, the American Old West still has plenty going on with a healthy mix of wildlife and humanity sprinkled across the landscape. Sandbox gameplay almost seems more fitting for this reason, due to Marston's bounty hunter motif and the fact that it was simply a different time. Rockstar's research on their setting includes not only watching films, but actually taking notes on daily life in the West around 1911, where a man has any job that will pay, and all manner of trouble can come his way if he loses his direction. Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like city life...

Then again in a city you won't have a cougar maul your car and run you off a cliff in terror at the middle of the night.

For instance, if I could count the number of times my horse ran off a cliff in attempt to find me then it might be above the number of horses I actually shot and skinned. But aside from some strange AI issues, the game is technically sound for the most part, which is still surprising to me considering what it does. There are even safeguards, such as your horse refusing to be steered off that same cliff if you happen to be riding, but he'll happily gallop along the edge. The Dead Eye mechanic is helpful and becomes a necessary evil in order to get out of sticky situations that may require a helping hand, such as lighting up a dark firefight, or trying to shoot up an oncoming group of thieves from behind, which can be a headache to pinpoint. I stuck with the Expert aiming mechanic as it was more precise, but there are easier options that basically will hold the player's hand and auto target all enemies, instead. Rockstar still has work to do on their gunplay, if anything, but this is next to GTAIV in the least amount of hassle required to get a bead on a target.

The game looks gorgeous, of course, and the cloth ruffling and billowing in the wind at points had me just standing in place appreciating the little things. Sunsets in desert canyons might just be my new favorite setting for a short time, as well, and a firefight in a storm just couples tension with tension, nailing that "happy accident" that creates the moments in Rockstar's games. The river and rare body of water still continue to impress me, and smoke is looking better and better. The facial and character animations have found a new high to hit thanks to the physics and procedural animations in place, next only to the most notable games that have impressed us recently in that area, and textures look great on the landscape for the most part, with more low-res and simple surfaces being placed on the ground. Still, it's the same ground that horses leave hoofprints in and carriages lay wheelmarks across.

Couple the single-player's longevity with some online play and you've got another game with many many hour sof life left in it. Unfortunately the online lobby configuration and respawning in RDR has some kinks to be worked out, notably in free-roam games. Rockstar still delivers with its own new gameplay variations in order to keep multiplayer games from being ordinary deathmatches, although they aren't missing and begin with the hurried Mexican standoff to kickstart that scramble for more ammo and weapons. The game has variants of capture the flag as well, and a Gold Rush collectathon for lobbyists - I mean gold-diggers.

If anything, and confusingly so, Red Dead Redemption makes me want GTA V so much more than I did when GTAIV's Episodes were hitting. On the same token, it's a much-welcomed break from the metropolitan landscapes that the sandbox formula was born and raised in, and brings to mind all sorts of settings which haven't been explored yet, because for all we know the GTA model could very well fit a futuristic cyberpunk setting. That may not be so likely, as Rockstar pens the more cultivated mob and gangster stories that spill over with the character-driven missions and storytelling the developers have found their place in, but we can still wish really hard for it.

If anything, the Old West setting fits well enough that I'm expecting another return in the future, and the future looks good in my hopeful eyes. Red Dead Redemption may be a departure of setting, but it's a finding of place for the gameplay model that Rockstar has standardized and I'm glad they're in the saddle. They've grown up again, giving players a more mature role to play as a man fighting to save his family rather than for more selfish reasons, and layer the story with a bit of human condition which hasn't been well-reflected up until just recently in video games. Just as GTA3 came from the starting block with simplistic graphics, sophomoric humor, and buggy gameplay, the GTA series' storytelling was refined along with the technical aspect over the PS2's lifetime, and if that's any indication of Rockstar's aging process then it really doesn't matter where their next IP is set - so long as they keep following the track they're on.