At the risk of taking a Rockstar game too seriously, I've come over all role-player in Red Dead Redemption, maxing out my honour stat at the price of my own convenience and precious, precious gamerscore.

John Marston is a reformed outlaw, after a fashion. He's a killer with a code. And he's a married man. A family man. He doesn't look twice at the terribly pleasant Miss "Call Me Bonnie, You Fool" MacFarlane. He's just an ex-con just trying to go straight and get his kid back, you know how it is.

That's baked into the game, that's not me. That is, how do you say, the plot. But the rest of my game, that's me interpolating between the plot points, keeping Marston in character from cutscene to cutscene. In a duel, my John Marston shoots men in the hand, not the face. He helps anguished strangers. He is depopulating Mexico of bandits and cannibals.

My John Marston is also a man of nuance. Of contrasts. He has been known to gather wild flowers and stab a wolf pack to death in one evening. He is bringing back the poncho. He is and does all these things. But he definitely does not hogtie prostitutes and watch them get pulped by the 9:45 from Armadillo.

Which brings me to an achievement impasse, and a finer moral dilemma a game has never raised: can I really break character for just 5G?

PS. I did feel pretty vindicated when I met, with a clear conscience, the top-hatted cowboy devil himself atop a cliff. I DIDN'T MUG THE NUN.