Rockstar Games
Red Dead Redemption

It's a starry night. Too beautiful to sleep. Too... even to die. My black horse strolls wearily as I admire the sky. I hadn't done that for a while. Clouds of blue smoke come from my dry lips. The coyotes in the distance devour their prey. Today I don't feel like dying. Let's say I'll leave tomorrow... my family will understand. My son, as he grows up, will stop hating me. Then I will be just ashes of these dusty lands. And I'll watch the sunset. Forever.

When a video game manages to move you so much, you never want it to end. With the end credits, an entire world goes away. A world that you have lived in. You're no longer the cowboy John Marston with his old scars. You lose your eagle eye aim. You lose your friends. Your enemies. Suddenly, the people who accompanied you for many days no longer exist.

You will always remember the long rides towards the blazing horizon. The unnatural calm of entire prairies painted red. The brawls in the saloon after one too many whiskeys. The shootouts to the last blood. The bank robberies. The fire that warms your bones in the snowy northern lands. The cacti that disorient you with their all the same but all different shapes. The sounds of wild nature living around you. Immense. Majestic. Sublime.

Everything is recreated with millimetric precision. Music worthy of the best Morricone. Silences. Pauses. A slow game, to be experienced like life itself. Throwing yourself into the fray, never stopping. Fleeing. Freezing time to smash a bandit's face with surgical aim. Then calm again. Wandering in the dark night. Just to be brushed by magnificent atmospheres.

Never stop.

Never.

It's survival.

Would you have liked to be there, for a moment? Right on top of that canyon, the roof of the world. A stone's throw from the sun. A stone’s throw from the void. Would you have liked to be there?

I was there.