Red Dead Redemption opens in 1911, twelve years after the events of Red Dead Redemption 2. John Marston is a rancher with a wife and a son. Federal agents take his family and send him west to bring in the men he once rode with. The first act covers New Austin, the desert territory where John hunts Bill Williamson.
Full spoilers for Act 1 of Red Dead Redemption follow.
Setting: New Austin, 1911
New Austin is the game's opening region, a dry frontier territory of desert, scrub and cattle country. Its main settlements are Armadillo, the town where John takes most of his early work, and MacFarlane's Ranch to the north. Tumbleweed sits in the far west. The frontier is closing: cars, telephones and federal law are arriving, and the outlaw era that produced John and his old gang is ending.
The deal with Edgar Ross
In Blackwater, Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham, two agents of the Bureau of Investigation, walk John from the ferry to the train for Armadillo. The Bureau holds his wife Abigail and his son Jack in government custody. The terms are simple: John hunts down the surviving members of the Van der Linde gang, and his family is released. The three names on the list are Bill Williamson, Javier Escuella and Dutch van der Linde.
Fort Mercer and the first attempt
Bill Williamson has taken over Fort Mercer, an abandoned army post in Rio Bravo, and runs a large gang from behind its walls. John rides up to the gate alone and asks Bill to surrender. Bill refuses from the top of the wall, and his men open fire. John is shot and left for dead outside the fort. The opening act turns on this failure: John cannot take Fort Mercer by himself, so he has to build a group that can.
MacFarlane's Ranch and Bonnie
Bonnie MacFarlane and her ranch hand Amos find John wounded by the road. She takes him to the doctor, who saves his life, and he recovers at her family's ranch. John works off the debt as a ranch hand: night patrols (shooting rabbits and coyotes, with rustlers suspected), herding cattle, breaking horses and bringing the herd home through a storm. Bonnie becomes his first ally in the territory; she introduces him to her father and sends him to the marshal in Armadillo. Later in the act she is kidnapped and comes within seconds of being hanged before John frees her.
Allies against Fort Mercer
John recruits three men to help him take the fort. Nigel West Dickens is a traveling salesman who sells a worthless patent tonic out of a stagecoach. Seth Briars is a grave robber and treasure hunter who wants back the half of his treasure map that, he says, his former partner Moses Forth stole. Irish is a drunken arms dealer who finds the Gatling gun and its ammunition for John, but does not turn up for the assault itself. John does jobs for each of them in exchange for their help against the fort. Marshal Leigh Johnson of Armadillo says Williamson is outside his jurisdiction, in the next county. John first rides with him against Walton Lowe's gang, the cattle rustlers of Pike's Basin and the bandits behind the Ridgewood Farm massacre. On that last ride, the posse captures Bill's second-in-command, Norman Deek. Johnson then joins the assault with his deputies Eli and Jonah.
The assault on Fort Mercer
The plan is a Trojan horse. Seth gets inside the fort first and distracts the outlaws by dancing on the wall. West Dickens drives his stagecoach up to the gate, where Seth welcomes it in, and gives the outlaws a sales pitch for his tonics. John is hidden in the back of the coach with a Gatling gun. At the agreed signal, a rap on the side of the wagon, he opens fire, and the marshal's posse comes in behind him. The fort falls. Bill Williamson is not there: a captured outlaw says he left for Mexico the morning before, and the hunt moves south. Irish, who arrives once the fighting is over, takes John across the river into Mexico on his raft ("We Shall Be Together in Paradise", the last mission of the act).
Key characters
Act 1 is carried by John Marston, the playable character, and by the New Austin locals he recruits: Bonnie MacFarlane, Nigel West Dickens, Seth Briars, Irish and Marshal Leigh Johnson. Edgar Ross holds John's family and sets the terms. Bill Williamson is the act's target.
Key events of Act 1
- Federal agents Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham hold Abigail and Jack Marston, and send John west after his former gang.
- John rides to Fort Mercer alone, Bill Williamson refuses to surrender, and John is shot and left for dead.
- Bonnie MacFarlane finds him and takes him to the doctor; he recovers at MacFarlane's Ranch, where he works as a ranch hand.
- John recruits Nigel West Dickens, Seth Briars, Irish and Marshal Leigh Johnson.
- Bonnie is kidnapped and John saves her from being hanged.
- John and his allies take Fort Mercer with a Gatling gun hidden in West Dickens's stagecoach.
- Bill Williamson has already fled to Mexico, which sets up Act 2 (Nuevo Paraíso).