Red Dead Redemption: The Hero

After six hours of Red Dead Redemption, I don't see how anyone could play this game as an outlaw. The title toys with your emotions – anger, love, sympathy, guilt – and casts you into a world that's crying out for a hero. There were plenty of situations I encountered where a bullet to the head would've made my mission easier, but these weren't just faceless folks in a videogame world – I needed to help them. I can pinpoint the moment when the depravity of the henchmen I was up against made me sick to my stomach and I knew that being good was the only way for me to play this game.

A number of campsites were found raided, complete parties wiped out by a gang of bandits. The sheriff of Armadillo and I were on the trail of these bastards and came to a farm that was far too quiet. We made our way to a barricaded barn, busted in, and found death. In the center of the room, a naked man was hanging by a noose. He was the patriarch of the house, and he was dead. Below him were the beaten and tortured bodies of his family. From the shadows, the murdered man's daughter emerged and told us that the rest of her family was being held captive in the main house.

The entire barn episode angered me in a way few games have. I was completely enveloped in the experience and furious at the monster who would do such horrendous things. I made my way to the house and relished every headshot I pulled off as I killed these men room by room. I saved a few women that I found bound in bedrooms, but their faces were beaten, swollen and bruised. One of them would only tell me that the captors had done "unspeakable things" to them. When I got back outside the house, I found another group of abused women, but rather than the traditional "Thanks, hero!" most games give you, these ladies wailed and blamed the sheriff and I for letting this happen to the family.

It was this event that cemented the fact that I could never play this game as a bad guy. The main character of Red Dead Redemption is on a quest you won't fully understand for quite sometime – I played for six hours and don't truly know the scope of his mission – but the themes will ring true. In a world with this much heartache, there needs to be a hero, and John Marston is meant to be that savior. Hell, the title of this game gives away the man's motivations. John Marston already did terrible things long before you ever pushed start. He's looking for redemption.

Last week, IGN's own Erik Brudvig walked you though his hours in the town of Armadillo, except he played as a bad guy. He shot horses in the head, left women to die in the desert, and raided the countryside. Basically, he was a maniac, and that's the kind of the virtual life I can't live. I need to save people. I need to walk the straight and narrow.

Trouble is, being that beacon of hope isn't as easy as I thought it would be in Red Dead Redemption.

When I first stepped off the train in Armadillo, I assumed being the good guy would be no sweat. Don't kill innocent people, help people in need, and do whatever it takes to make the world a better place. Turns out, Red Dead's open-world freedom Rockstar is always talking about makes being the good guy a little more difficult. During my first real ride across the countryside, I heard gunshots and stopped in my tracks. I did a 360-degree turn, scanned the horizon and did everything I could to find the disturbance, but I had no luck finding out what was going on. Was someone getting hijacked? Was there a fight? Was it just some idiot shooting birds out of the air? I rode towards where I thought the shots were coming from, backtracked, and searched all over the area, but I never found out what was going on.