There are some games that are just better with friends, and Red Dead Online is one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love exploring the vast, rich world that Rockstar has created by myself, but that can be done in single-player. RDO truly shines when you gather some friends to form a posse of outlaws and ruffians in search of infamy and riches.
Back in February, I played RDO every day for a solid month. I was writing a lot of guides on it at the time, so I could play guilt free, knowing my time was going towards becoming a better guides writer. Now, I don’t write guides as often, but I still enjoy playing it from time to time. I play it in a less scheduled way, so I mostly play alone - while it’s still nice, it just doesn’t compare to the experiences I had back then.
Because I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 at launch, I had loads of goodies stacked up in my Red Dead Online account. I had discounts on most roles and about $1,000 right off the bat. My other friends bought the game as a standalone product when it was on sale, so they made me buy the posse license and off we went.
The first few sessions involved all of us just finding our feet. We had terrible horses, awful guns, and not a clue what we were doing. Learning how the game worked together was a huge part of the fun we had with it. It was like being kids exploring in the woods or sneaking into an abandoned building in a bad part of town. We had no idea what the world had in store for us, but we were excited to find out no matter what it was.
Because I had so many discounts and started with a load of gold and money, I was able to buy all the roles pretty quickly. This meant everyone could do jobs and missions with me while figuring out which was their favourite. Two of us preferred Trader and the other two loved Collector. We spent a whole afternoon following an interactive map that someone had made that showed where every collectible was. That would have been crushingly boring alone, but doing it with mates meant we could chat as we rode, or jump on someone else’s horse if we needed to go grab a drink or make some food.
Once we found our feet and got some money in our pockets, spending our ill-gotten money was also more fun together than it would have been alone. Going into the shops and showing off our new guns, fly chaps, or purebred horses was always a great way to revel in our spoils. It made us braggadocious and opulent, and made spending our money just as fun as earning it. Fashion is one of the best parts of the game, but while I like buying Arthur a nice new suit in single-player, that’s just for me. Showing off a slick fur coat with a wide hat and some fresh kicks, though? That’s for my friends.
The problem with our outrageous spending was that it meant we had to earn more too. It really helped motivate us to continue with the gameplay loop. Alone, I’d have been happy living modestly. Maybe upgrading my tent, some warm clothes, a clean suit - that would have suited me fine. Together, we were constantly trying to outdo each other and be the biggest and coolest outlaw around. We grew bolder with our missions and had to prepare for more PvP if we wanted to get truly rich. Long Trader deliveries get more money, but a rival posse can attack you, so we had to make sure we had the best guns and fastest horses before we set off. It was tense, and we lost a few deliveries, but the successes were worth all the failures.
After a while, we all had every role, any gun we wanted, and a horse we loved. There’s always more to do though, and we’re really hoping Rockstar adds proper player homes at some point. Our campsite looks more like a small village than a shanty town, but we need some proper abodes so that we can properly show off our wealth. The new burglary update will also be fun, as we can try and be stealthy together - that’s never worked in the past, but it’s worth a shot.
The next update will bring the gang out of retirement. We’ll dust off our guns and put on our spurs, ready to take over the Wild West again. We went from a ragtag bunch of prison escapees to the flyest looking, biggest gun-toting, fastest horse riding gang in the Wild West. That was a journey we could only undertake together, as without egging each other on, we all would have settled for mediocrity. Alone, we were bad, but together, we are infamous.