The Wild West PvP multiplayer in Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to be a role-player’s heaven. Once that first tumbleweed bounces past your avatar something magical happens. You click into Eastwood mode. And when your Clint-squint eyes lock onto an enemy player — be they good, bad, or ugly — we challenge you not to hear a phantom Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack whistle in your head.
Blood will be inevitable at this point but you might also find a bit of be pre-gunfight trash-talkin’ fired your way first. As a general rule a proper cowboy or cowgirl like yourself mutters very few words. It’s a consequence of two things — a pistol does your talking for you, and that Toscano cigar hanging from the corner of your mouth (but hopefully not too close to your headset mic) prevents long conversations.
Be that as it may you’ll need to shift the cigarillo aside sometimes and put the fear into your online opponents. When your word limit is unnaturally low you’d best be spouting something pretty bad ass. Doing a Buford ‘Mad Dog‘ Tannen and calling somebody “duded-up, egg-sucking gutter trash” is gonna get you laughed out of the saloon.
You need gold and in a rush. This is where we (and cinema’s greatest Westerns) come in…
Pre-Duel Bants Designed to Fill Pants
An epic exchange of bullets really ought to start with an opening salvo of threats. When striking first, Red Dead Redemption 2 PvP quoteslingers can’t go past a good rhetorical question. Affect a drawl, or a whiskey-soaked lilt, and deliver one of the following. Low, slow and deadly…
“Well are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?” – Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, The Outlaw Josey Wales).
“You gonna do somethin’, or just stand there and bleed?” – Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell, Tombstone).
Even the cockiest opponents will get rattled in the face of proficiency, so advertise your superior abilities with a shootin’ iron. Whoever wants to throw down with you ought to know this is their last chance to save/quit this one-horse town…
“I deal in lead, friend” – Vin Tanner (Steve McQueen, The Magnificent Seven).
“Now I don’t wanna kill you, and you don’t wanna be dead” – Mal (Danny Glover, Silverado).
“I’m a lot faster than you’ll ever live to be” – The Stranger (Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter).
“Young fella, if you’re looking for trouble I’ll accommodate ya” – Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne, True Grit).
“Boy, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals” – Butch (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid).
“Yoo hoo! I’ll make you famous” – Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez, Young Guns II).
“You would not want to be staring like that at me” – Al Swearengen (Ian McShane, Deadwood).
If you have a poor memory when it comes to remembering script snippets — or in general you just don’t do vocabulistics so good — maybe keep this last threat as an all-else-fails backup. Shout it into your headset, then jerk that pistol and go to work…
“Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!” – Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges, True Grit).
Returning Serve to a Threat
If the insult sword-fighting system in Monkey Island has taught us nothing else it’s that whoever responds with the witty rejoinder will win the day. If a threat gets fired your way, best have a few of these comebacks chambered and ready to go.
“Well you’re a daisy if you do” – Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer, Tombstone).
“I’ve killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you” – William Munny (Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven).
“Go ahead, skin it — skin that smoke wagon and see what happens” – Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell, Tombstone).
“I’m 30 years older than you, I’ve had my back broke once and my hip twice — and on my worst day I could beat the hell out of you” – Wil Andersen (John Wayne, The Cowboys).
Striking Fear Into an Absolute Posse
There’s also a fair chance you might come up against multiple opponents in PvP, thanks to a party/posse system not unlike the one we saw in RDR. In this case you’re going to want to laser-focus on the leader whilst putting the fear into the betas around them. You can be as to-the-point or as verbose as you want to be…
“Men are gonna get killed here today, and I’m gonna kill ’em” – Charley Waite (Kevin Costner, Open Range).
“You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe” – Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell, Tombstone).
“Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it don’t matter… I’m gonna blow your head off. It’s as simple as that” – Jacob McCandles (John Wayne, Big Jake).
“Move a little strange, you’re gonna get a bullet. Not a warning, not a question… a bullet” – Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson, The Hateful Eight).
If all else fails you have the last two classics as one-size-fits-all standbys. They work in just about any situation.
“I’m your Huckleberry” – Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer, Tombstone).
…or the always entertaining…
“You gotta purty mouth!” – some toothless redneck (Deliverance).
