Choose My Adventure: Roaming the wild frontier of Red Dead Online with a posse of friends

What, you didn’t really think I would play this game alone, did you?

I should explain just what’s happening here: I’m playing Red Dead Online for this column as both a neophyte and as a regular player. A couple of weeks ago, my best friend and my husband both got the random itch to hop back into this game together, and they were having enough fun that the peer pressure got to me and I ended up buying it for the first time. I’m still kind of learning the ropes, but I also am finding this game – this online world made by Rockstar, of all studios – to be pretty damn fun.

Considering the kind of game that RDO is – a place where open PvP can happen at any time and a game that still has its fair share of hackers – I was not about to hop in without having some backup. Mercifully, as I’ve been slowly moving through the ranks and completing story missions whenever possible, the gankfest nature of the game didn’t often rear its ugly head. I suppose a game that’s effectively been ignored by Rockstar and has seen its Steam player numbers trail off is as good a deterrent as any.

That’s not to say that random gunfights didn’t break out, of course. There have been a couple of occasions when someone got a wild hair up his ass and decided that it would be good fun to blast the low-rank guy in the head. Right until the point that low-rank guy’s friends rumbled on this lone idiot and blew him away several times.

Still, we’ve found an even better solution to the problem known as other people, and that is a mod that effectively allows the three of us (now four with another friend who recently joined in) to play the game in a private instance. All of the progression and the content; none of the bullshit.

And just how has that progression been? As I said earlier, surprisingly fun: The thing that endears me to RDO the most is the slower pace of it all. Sure, there’s plenty of action to be had and a couple of missions where things went a little haywire, but it all still feels a lot more grounded and a lot less twitchy and manic. That’s to say nothing of the setting of the game itself. The feeling of riding along the trail with the sound of thundering hooves as a thunderstorm rumbled forward across the plains is impossible to put into words.

Of course, this is all stuff that was experienced before RDO won out in the polls. I, of course, did have some work to get done, and that work ended up combining together rather wonderfully. I had kind of already settled on following the Moonshiner profession when I was able to at least start that quest, and the three of us were already just doing missions that popped up regardless.

This would be the first time I did begin blood money missions, however.

The gist of these missions, as near as I can surmise, is that they’re all about being a dirty, good-for-nothing bandit, which I admit I wasn’t initially pleased to learn that I was sort of being forced in to. Especially because I liked having a full honor score. Shouldn’t there be more to do as a good cowpoke? Luckily I was informed that wearing a bandana would let me indulge in these darker urges without having my honorable reputation fully tarnished.

Once again aesthetics and setting do a lot of heavy lifting for what would otherwise come across as edgelord-coded activities. There was at least one guy who assured my character that he was the nastiest SOB I’d ever met, but then a little while later I took a job from a fast-talking gent who appeared to do nothing more than hang out at a log cabin in the woods and pound back whiskey. There are a lot of colorful characters in RDO no matter what missions we took up, and each of them was as entertaining as all get out.

As for the missions themselves, I’ve got no major complaints. One blood money mission was sort of annoying in that it involved finding an item in a portion of the map; that was kind of boring right until we were beset by a pair of mountain lions. Another involved robbing a coach; I got to blow away a pair of overdressed bougie folks in that one.

In-between these criminal activities, we came across a couple of bandit camps, helped out a stranger find a lost cart, and were lured into an attempted trap by some would-be robbers. Variety really is the spice out here in RDO.

Circling back to the game’s slower pace, I have to admit that’s also a thing when it comes to overall character progress. The major currency – especially the one that lets me unlock the profession I actually want to do – is gold bars, and those do not come quickly. Not without whipping out a credit card, anyway. Normally that would be a sore point, but considering everything else about this game’s pacing being easygoing, I find myself not caring to rush. This will all come together in due time, and I’m having fun just living in this world anyway.

Perhaps I’m coming into this game wholly ignorant of how things used to be, and maybe that’s coloring my experience here. Or perhaps it’s because I’m playing this game with others, and that’s enhancing my enjoyment. Or maybe RDO landed in my lap at the perfect time in terms of mood and mentality. Maybe a mixture of all three. Regardless, I am really having a good time here in Yeehaw Skyrim, and I’m looking forward to letting that continue. To that point, let’s get a couple of poll questions out of the way, shall we?

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve all but settled in to the idea of chasing the Moonshiner profession, and that won’t be happening anytime soon (I need 20 gold bars to get started). So perhaps I should start with something that can unlock slightly earlier? Or should I stick to my guns?

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The next poll is a bit similar to the first, though I honestly think at this point that I’d just like to do a little bit of everything purely because I want to eat all of the goodies this platter provides. Still, let’s zero in on another focus, shall we?

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Polling will close up at the usual 1:00 p.m. EST on Friday, November 8th. I’ll likely keep playing even before polling closes, for the record, but my posse and I look forward to seeing where things shake down for this week.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.