A few hours after disembarking the dusty train that winds into Red Dead Redemption, reformed bandit John Marston meets a smart young journalist from Manhattan. His assignment? To observe life on America's final frontier and dramatise his findings in an article for the well-to-do ladies of New York. His pressed clothes and clean-shaven jawline contrast with protagonist Marston's facial scrawl of stubble and scarring, but beneath appearances, the men share a common purpose: to find gold in the sun-baked Wild West.

The meeting mirrors the wider context of Red Dead Redemption's release. Liberty City with its buffed taxis, resolute skyscrapers and air of affluence may appear a world away from this arid, adverse wilderness, but peel back the skin and the framework is identical. Red Dead Redemption is GTA: Wild West, a sandbox most familiar, albeit one that, for once, is filled with sand.

Set 50 years after the events of the more light-hearted Red Dead Revolver, Redemption's frontier has become a cat's cradle of political interests, stretched taut by moneyed men in bed with federalised government. The Wild West has grown mild in its old age, and grizzled gunmen with their brutish ways are growing obsolete.

In setting the game in the twilight days of a clich

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