I had another game I planned to play last night, but then the first Red Dead Redemption finally released on Steam yesterday, including its Undead Nightmare story mode, and I found myself up all night enjoying the zombie western horror fest! Finally! It only took them 14 years to port it to the PC.
I'm going to be talking exclusively about Undead Nightmare today. I'll go over Red Dead Redemption another time, but this extra content is basically its own game, with a story that veers off from the main game's campaign. Treat it like an alternate universe to the main game.
Undead Nightmare takes place after the main campaign of Red Dead Redemption, but before the epilogue. Honestly, you could say it's an alternate ending to the game that replaces the epilogue with a dark twist.
John Marston, the protagonist of the main game, sends his boy to bed and is settling in to bed with his wife when Uncle shows up, bloodied, deranged, and violent. John knocks him out, then goes to get his shotgun. But Uncle isn't down for long, and he chases John's wife out of the house, getting a solid bite on her throat before John returns and guns him down.
John's son comes running to his mother's aid, only to be bitten by her! They both rapidly turn into the undead, and John hog-ties them to keep them from hurting anyone else. He leaves them tied up in the bedroom, then promises to return once he's found a doctor.
John goes to the nearest town to find it overrun with the undead. He helps the few remaining citizens liberate the town, then asks random survivors what's going on.
One girl mentions that her mother came back long after being dead and buried, and ate her dad's face off! She recommends burning coffins at the local cemetery to keep the dead from rising again. And also suggests she had an evil uncle who was buried there.
Considering her contempt for him and the loving message scrawled on his tombstone, it hints at the dark kind of relationship they may have had. Also, she mentions all the horribly abusive things that her own father does, but dismisses them because "he's a good man!" So her uncle must've been a truly terrible person.
From here, you're going from town to town, helping people survive undead attacks, following rumors about what might be causing it, and trying to find an end to the nightmare so you can cure your wife and kid.
In the original campaign, there was an easter egg where you could go way up north into the mountains and find a family of Sasquatch hiding in the forest. In Undead Nightmare, you get a quest to hunt them down.
After killing several of them, you find one crying against a tree. He can speak! He begs you to end his life because "some maniac" has killed all of his friends and family and he's the last of his kind left. It's up to you whether or not to end his life.
There are several other mythical creatures to be found roaming the lands, like chupacabra, black horned goats with red eyes, unicorns, and even the Four Horses of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not to be found.
You can wrangle and tame the first three horses, then the horse Death will appear in the wilderness to be tamed. Death is automatically awarded to you when you complete the whole storyline too. My favorite is War, because it's the only one with a fiery mane. The other three just look like regular horses with creepy eyes.
My original horse was just a normal horse... until I encountered an undead bear, which knocked me over and killed my horse. The next time I called for my mount, this undead horse showed up! Turns out there are some tame undead; although the undead horses have a bad habit of ignoring commands and doing their own thing sometimes.
There are many theories as to what's causing the undead to walk again. Some have some merit and warrant investigation, but others are completely outrageous.
Still others are so wrapped up arguing over what to do in this new chaotic world that they don't pay attention to their surroundings...
The most interesting theory I heard was that this was just a thing that happens every couple hundred years. A sort of cleansing ritual or something.
I bought Red Dead Redemption ages ago, specifically for this Undead Nightmare content. But I didn't want to jump into a story-rich game without knowing all the characters and lore, so I rushed through the campaign as quick as I could.
I later regretted it, as I felt like the campaign was much better than this zombie storyline. Sure, you get a quick tour of all the characters from the campaign and see how they're handling the "zombie apocalypse." Hint: most aren't handling it well. But the undead story just feels like it was tacked on last-minute, with very few story missions and a lot of side quests to keep you running back and forth across the land.
Don't get me wrong, Undead Nightmare is a lot of fun to play if you want to run around and shoot zombies in a "spaghetti western" setting. But I much prefer Red Dead Redemption.
