October 7, 2020 5:43 PM EDT
Mr is right, it is nice to see you, Legion! I didn't quite know what to say when I read your OP yesterday, definitely not how a dense vs non-dense map is a good or bad thing for Cyberpunk as a genre, but your mention of RDR2 has me wanting to put thoughts into words and type those words.
Which I'm doing.
Right now.
I recently finished RDR 2. It took me about nine months, having stalled somewhere just after starting the final arc, I guess. One thing I definitely appreciated throughout the game and all it's litle flaws and idiosyncracies, was the map. 2010's Red Dead Redemption was a major inspiration to me - I'd kind of grown up with a father who was a Clint Eastwood fan, so it wasn't as though I was a stranger to the Western as a genre. But it wasn't until I played RDR that I actually appreciated it in any meaningful way. Long story short, I was blown away by the game and its central themes - which I interpretetd as futility and lonliness. So, eager to dive more into that, I watched literally every single western I could get my hands on before finally coming home with the discovery of the Revisionist Westerns: Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Eastwood's Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid... Hell, even No Country for Old Men.
It's probably safe to say that, when we think of what a modern Western is in today's world, it's the Revisionist style that carries the most resonance and has stood the test of time. The rousing, sometimes boysterous nature and slapstick comedy moments of the Classic Western from Hollywood's Golden Age are a bit hard to take seriously if it wasn't for the stunning cinematography and often incredile scores. At least, in my mind. When playing RDR2, then, it was these revisionist themes I was looking to experience over and above anything else.
Sure, for the first chunk of the game I was bowled over by the visuals and was testing the boundaries of the world while feeling like a proper outlaw. You know, eager for the next gunfight and hoping some dude in a saloon looks at me funny to give me that excuse I needed to have a proper barroom brawl and turn the poor fool inside out. Yet it was the quiet elements of the game that innevitably won out once I'd stopped comparing Arthur Morgan to John Marston as a protagoinist and started accepting the former for the character he was.
Am I rambling? Stop me if I'm rambling.
Arthur's tale quickly gained my attention for all the themes I've come to love in a Western film. He was conflicted, unsure of his place in a world so rapidly changing that he felt the arrival of the innevitable civilisation more keenly than other member's of Dutch's gamg. Naturally, this sets him apart somewhat from others, leading to a certain lonliness and sense of futility.Who was he now, in this moment in time? What was the point of it all, all that running from one camp to thenext chasing a dying dream?
It was then I truly started to appreciate the beauty of the map in more than an aesthetic sense. There's no two ways about it, the game does frequently send Arthur right to the other side of the goddam gameworld just to extort money out of a guy who stupidly signed up to Strauss' (thoroughly deplorable but utterly believable and relevent) schemes. Arthur's own inner conflict is nicely told in a microcosm as those missions progress. Sometimes this journey backj and forth across the length and bredth of the map felt a little frsutrating, especially when I knew I only had an hour because of real life and wanted to actually "play" the game.
However, as i said I grew to really appreciate how the map is used to tell the story and address the themes. It's the sense of scale that does it, I think. It's the long ride through hard country and the sweeping vistas that make you feel small. It's the lack of any control over the weather, how one moment you can be awed by a particular view and use of light and sound, to then having that moment ruined by dark clouds and the coming of rain. Suddenly the long ride is not as enjoyable, or is but in a different way. There's a real sense of loneliness, of being small and utterly inconsequential in the world. There are moments when the beauty of nature get broken by the grime and dirt of civilisation, to the point in which you can't help but share Arthur's disgust at the city of Saint Denis.
It all comes to a head at the very last playable segement of the game, which I won't spoil apart from to say there is an area about one-third the size of the playable map that has absolutely nothing to do in it. There are the occasional NPCs to be found, bandits to shoot and so forth, but no meaningful dialogue or story to undertake. It's just you, a horse, and an empty world. Nothing in the game up until that point felt quite as Western than that area, to me. Bleak, lonely, and futile as the player is left to think on what has gone and what will be, to see the beauty of the world and nature slowly but inevitably fall to the encroachment of civilisation.
I couldn't help but ask myself, was Dutch right in chasing that fading dream and fighting that losing war?
In my mind, RDR 2's map ws a map done well becuase it complimented the story by visually and audibly adressing the central themes of the story. It forced you to feel lonely, to feel small, and to feel the things Arthur felt.
I'm curious as i'm not a cyberpunk enthusiast, more just a casual fan: What could the map do to help define and showcase Cyberpunk as a genre in the way RDR2's map does for the Western?
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