History VideoGame / DesperadosIII

* [=McCoy=] uses a Colt Buntline Special. While the Buntline was first manufactured in 1873, the "Special" suffix refers to the second generation of Buntlines that was manufactured in the 1950s following the unprecedented success of ''The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp'' television series.
* Characters tend to pepper their speech with modern and semi-modern slang e.g. [=McCoy=] can speak about giving someone a 'shot' (an injection) if you select him. The earliest usage of this word dates back to 1889.

* AddressingThePlayer: As a rule, the "Mission Failed" screen spells out just how the player managed to get a game over. However, during the Las Piedras mission, [[spoiler:interrupting Isabelle as she's healing Cooper's leg by knocking her out will result in a "Mission Failed" screen where Isabelle directly chastises the player.]] You even get an achievement for it.

* AllMenArePerverts: Except for the Long Coats, all the men can be distracted by Kate. Although the extent varies: while Ponchos generally can be seduced by Kate's wiles, they are far too professional to move from their posts. It doesn't work if Kate tries to lure away a man who is talking with a woman and/or a Poncho; they will hold their friend back.
* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: One of Baron's Challenge levels lets you play as [[spoiler:Isabelle's cat, Stella, as she sets out to rescue Doc.]]
* AngryGuardDog: Guard Dogs appear as occasional mooks that function differently from human guards. Though they only have one small, primary view cone, they are able to detect characters through bushes, walls, and other forms of cover even when crouching and are quick to attack if they spot you. Also, while being detected by one doesn't raise the alarm by itself, their barks will draw human enemies to the area to investigate, making it harder to remain hidden. They can also see through Kate's disguises.

* AscendedExtra: Rosie is a minor character [[spoiler:and antagonist]] of the Baton Rouge mission. She becomes the QuestGiver of the DLC missions and is more prominently featured as Hector's would-be lady friend.

** Isabelle's skillset is the furthest departure with her voodoo making up the bulk of her abilities along with an animal to distract enemies.

* BigGood: Marshall Wayne who has been investigating [=DeVitt=] for a while. Rescuing him is Isabelle's main motivation for much of the plot, and when you do so he gives you your penultimate mission.

** Hector is a big, strong, and loud brawler who lives for a good fight and a good whisky.

** In the first mission, [=McCoy=] pulls off a ISurrenderSuckers stunt that was commonplace in ''[=WDoA=]'' and will bullrush the survivor should Cooper eliminate only one of the two guys holding him at gunpoint.
** At one point, [=McCoy=] mentions discovering his knock-out gas in a swamp near a small town called Jennings. Come ''[=WDoA=]'', and the people of Jennings try to hang him.
** In Baton Rouge, Kate notes that a poker tournament will be happening there soon and ponders the possibility of participating. When John laughs her off, Kate fires back, saying that she'd already beaten him once. Kate does indeed compete in a tournament some six years later.

** The entire third DLC mission takes place in Pablo Sanchez's fortress of Eagle's Nest -- only without Sanchez himself, naturally. Hector even references someone called Diego who's been sizing up the fort for his son.
* ChangedMyMindKid: [[spoiler:[=McCoy=] leaves the group after Cooper screws everything up by trying to challenge Frank alone and getting the gang captured and sent to the Company's gold mines. The next two missions are done without him. However, he chooses to come back and arrives to save them from [=DeVitt=] after the latter manages to wrestle Hector's sawed-off from him and was about to kill them all. It's later confirmed that Doc knew where to look for the gang as he'd consulted Marshall Wayne beforehand.]]

* ColorCodedCharacters: Much like ''VideoGame/ShadowTacticsBladesOfTheShogun'', characters are strongly identified with a color to make their actions easier to identify in the heat of action. Cooper is teal, [=McCoy=] is purple, Hector is orange-brown, Kate is peach, Isabelle is dark green. This extends to the objects they are interacting with. Enemies tend to be associated with red, civilians with pale yellow, and friendly [=NPCs=] with bright green.
* ConflictBall: Cooper firmly grabs hold of it at the end of Chapter II. [[spoiler:Having finally cornered Frank, Cooper wants to challenge him to a duel alone. Kate and Hector both wisely protest, and Cooper responds by ''shooting Hector in the shoulder'', crippling him for the remainder of the mission and forcing Kate to look after him. Cooper then heads in, loses to Frank, and gets himself and his friends captured.]] Justified in that he's been [[spoiler:obsessed with Frank for the better part of a decade and has been cheated of revenge several times already.]]
* CorruptPolitician: Flagstone's Mayor Higgins is on the [=DeVitt=] Company's payroll and sold Kate's ranch to them behind her back. Kate is murderously displeased.

* DarkestHour: The end of the second chapter of the game [[spoiler:when all five characters are captured and shipped off to be worked to death in the [=DeVitt=] gold mines. The ensuing Las Piedras mission also qualifies as [=McCoy's=] departure had punched a hole in the gang's morale and Kate very nearly follows in his footsteps.]]

** In the O'Hara Ranch mission Hector and Doc bet on who will get the most kills. They'll keep track of their progress by counting each one out loud and they'll keep counting up to a hundred which, normally, is not possible to achieve as there are only 85 enemies on the entire map. If you cheat and keep spawning mooks for them to slaughter, as soon as one of them gets to a hundred, they'll stop and, depending on who won, will have a unique exchange.

* GuideDangIt: [[spoiler:The game makes no attempt to explain how the final showdown with Frank in the final level works despite it breaking several of the game's pre-established rules with enemy behavior.]]
* GunsAkimbo: Cooper carries two revolvers which let him take down two enemies at once. Interestingly, he carries two different models: his signature Remington New Model Army from previous games and a Colt 1851 Navy.
* HealThyself: Hector carries a flask of the Good Stuff, a swig of which will completely restore his HP. The tooltip says it's too strong for everyone else unlike [=McCoy=] and Isabelle who both can use their medical skills on anyone, themselves included.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler:Hector, in the backstory, used to work for Frank. He switched sides when Frank asked him to kill Cooper who was just a child at the time.]]

* HopelessBossFight: [[spoiler:When Cooper confronts Frank in the New Orleans docks, the player is given control to allow for one action only: drawing Cooper's Colt Navy revolver. Unfortunately, Frank is quicker on the draw and shoots Cooper in the leg which puts him out of action for a while.]]

-->'''Gunman:''' Bill... was a good man. Never hurt a fly. Beat his wife like there was no tomorrow, but who doesn't, eh? You rest in peace there, Bill.

* InstantReplay: New to the series, a post-game map replays your routes and actions at x32 speed. It also tracks your kills and knockouts, saves, loads, and which abilities you used.
* InterfaceSpoiler: Right from the first mission in the game when you hit the 'pause' button and see the control scheme, you can already see locators for the controls to execute Showdown Mode with [=McCoy=], Hector, Kate, and Isabelle, well before any of them have debuted in the story.

* JustYouAndMeAndMyGuards: In the final fight, John Cooper, the main protagonist, prepares for a [[ShowdownAtHighNoon climatic duel]] with Frank, the BigBad. The moment they face off each other, a group of guards arrive and encircle them. The task of the rest of the team is to sneak in undetected and prepare for a move that takes down all the guards at once. The area also has some {{mooks}} who can be killed beforehand, but if you are being detected at any time, it's game over.

* MuggedForDisguise: Kate can disguise herself as a civilian and walk in her enemies' plain sight, with only the Long Coats and the dogs being able to recognize her as an impostor, but it always involves stealing the clothes of another woman after knocking her out.
* NGOSuperpower: Officially, the [=DeVitt=] Company is a railroad company. However, its massive wealth stemming from its gold mine and slave trade allows it to maintain a small private army and to have several gangs of criminals working for it. It's powerful enough to control a city such as Flagstone and to put New Orleans on complete lockdown.

* NonActionBigBad: Due to being, in Cooper's words, a "rich asshole", Vincent [=DeVitt=] relies on Frank and all his guards to do the fighting for him. [[spoiler:Though he's not as weak as he appears, as he was able to get the drop on Hector and steal his weapon, and knows how to use a shotgun.]]
* NoSell:
** Female mooks are immune to Kate's charms and Long Coats will spot and identify her on a moment's notice.

** Downplayed with Long Coats and [=McCoy's=] gas flasks. Normally, the gas knocks everyone, including your party members, out cold. Long Coats are immune because of their bandanas, but the gas will still weaken them, allowing any one of your characters to melee them.

** Averted with Kate's uncle who gets hit in the shoulder by a gatling gun bullet but claims 'it looks worse than it is.' He quickly collapses and dies from the blood loss.

* RealTimeWithPause: Showdown Mode pauses the game (except on the highest difficulty) to allow the player to line up actions from several characters at once. [[spoiler:The game's final confrontation cannot be won without it.]]
* ReplayValue: Some of the game badges are mutually exclusive (e.g. in the "Until Death Do Us Part" one badge is earned by ''not'' using the Gatling gun and another is earned by killing at least 15 enemies with it), making it mandatory to replay the mission if the player wishes to collect all the badges. Even when badges theoretically aren't exclusive, it's often way too impractical if not impossible to actually earn them all on a single gameplay; for example, the speedrun badge is all but unobtainable unless the player forgoes the badges earned by ''not'' using a certain skill (as they limit considerably the strategic possibilities) or by doing a non-essential action that requires a detour from the main quest.
* ShotgunWedding: [[spoiler:Kate will be aimed at by the long end of a shotgun, when she refuses to become his bride, then she turns it on him, and it fires.]]
* SacrificialLion: Kate's uncle, a boisterous Irishman capable of holding off an entire squad of goons with only Cooper and his niece by his side during the shootout at the O'Hara Ranch, dies of blood loss after getting hit by a gatling gun bullet. His death motivates Kate all the way.

** Between Cooper and Kate who are shown to take a liking to each other during their adventures. [[spoiler:She {{Big Damn Kiss}}es him just before the beginning of his climactic duel with Frank]]. But seeing as these two are an OfficialCouple in all other ''Desperados'' games, it might come across as ForegoneConclusion.
** Between [=McCoy=] and Isabelle, though it's more of a BelligerentSexualTension flavor. The two of them constantly bicker and make bets, but [=McCoy=] keeps coming up with reasons to stick by her which she subtly teases him for, and [[spoiler:when he temporarily leaves the team, Isabelle explicitly comments that she misses him]]... before calling him an idiot. Kate is very much aware of what's happening between these two, and the "belligerent" part gets seemingly downplayed in the DLC -- mostly due to Doc being OutOfFocus for its duration.

** Cooper will sometimes quip "Film/TheQuickAndTheDead" when readying his revolvers.

** In particular, [[spoiler:there's one when Cooper finally catches up to him for the first time, although the results are scripted.]]
** And later, [[spoiler:the final encounter of the game consists of one of these, although you control everyone ''except'' Cooper in order to eliminate Frank's men at the same instant when Cooper and Frank fire.]]

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Since this is a prequel, Sanchez and Mia (who the group met for the first time in ''VideoGame/DesperadosWantedDeadOrAlive'') can't appear. Hector and Isabelle take their places as the hard-drinking BigGuy with a shotgun and SixthRanger with the TeamPet and darts that can make enemies attack each other, respectively.

* VideogameCaringPotential: The game allows for non-lethal attack options, but there's actually no penalty for killing enemies. And since the lethal actions are slightly more efficient and convenient as they don't need the characters to spend time tying up the enemies, players opting to defeat non-lethally as many enemies as possible only do it because they want to be merciful. Some of the mooks have dialogues that slightly humanize them or genuinely funny lines, making some people willing to incapacitate them non-lethally. It's even possible to finish some maps without killing a single soul, and there's actually a reward for doing it in the New Orleans, Las Piedras, and the final Devil's Canyon missions.[[note]]Though in that last case, the player has to kill Frank and you can kill his posse without losing the achievement. While it's possible to incapacitate most of them non-lethally by using [=McCoy=]'s gas and Isabel's link ability, but it's hard to incapacitate all of them in one go without using Hector's shotgun.[[/note]]

* WhatDidIDoLastNight: The Baton Rouge mission starts in the morning after a night involving things like a bull somehow getting onto the roof of a local saloon, improbable cannon fire ricochet aiming, local militia mistaking [=McCoy=] for Satan, and suspicion of swamp witchcraft. On top of that, Hector slept with the sheriff's wife, and that alone makes the gang motivated to get out of dodge.

* ArmedAltruism: {{Defied}}. Marshal Wayne, upon his rescue, attempts to {{invoke|d}} this trope by asking McCoy to lend him his Buntline to which McCoy replies that that’ll occur only if “he takes a bullet to the head.”

** From the same mission, Doc's swamp gas bombs are introduced. Ordinarily, these are non lethal, but using one on an oil pool produces [[KillItWithFire the same effect as using a torch]], since the bomb's ignition is obviously a mild explosive. This is key to obtaining one of the badges on that level, since it's mandatory to ignite the pool by the gatling gun, but needs to be done without using a torch.

** From the same mission, Doc's swamp gas bombs are introduced. Ordinarily, these are non lethal, but using one on an oil pool produces [[KillItWithFire the same effect as using a torch]], since the bombs ignition is obviously a mild explosive. This is key to obtaining one of the badges on that level, since it's mandatory to ignite the pool by the gatling gun, but needs to be done without using a torch.

* ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks: Cooper carries a knife, which he can throw for ranged kills, and something he expresses great pride in when equipping it.

** Cooper carries a pair of revolvers that allow him to dispatch two enemies at once. He also uses a Bowie Knife for both close-quarters and ranged kills.
** Doc uses a Colt Buntline Special using a custom stock and rounds for long-ranged, nigh-silent kills. He also has an array of medical equipment, such as a syringe with poison, chloroform, and swamp gas bombs that give him greater versatility than other snipers in the real-time stealth tactical genre.

** While Kate prefers to use her feminine wiles, she still wields a Derringer, which is quieter than other firearms.
** While Isabelle's blow gun can't kill anyone directly, it does have useful puppet and link abilities, making this a case of AbnormalAmmo. For melee kills, she does use a small sickle.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Since this is a prequel, Sanchez and Mia (who are met only in ''VideoGame/DesperadosWantedDeadOrAlive'') can't appear. Hector and Isabelle take their places as the hard-drinking BigGuy with a shotgun and SixthRanger with the TeamPet and darts that can make enemies attack each other, respectively.

* AscendedExtra: Rosie is a minor character[[spoiler:and antagonist]] of the Baton Rouge mission. She becomes the QuestGiver of the DLC missions and is more prominently featured as Hector’s would-be lady friend.

** Between [=McCoy=] and Isabelle, though it's more of a BelligerentSexualTension flavor. The two of them constantly bicker and make bets, but [=McCoy=] keeps coming up with reasons to stick by her which she subtly teases him for, and [[spoiler:when he temporarily leaves the team, Isabelle explicitly comments that she misses him]]… before calling him an idiot. Kate is very much aware of what’s happening between these two, and the “belligerent” part gets seemingly downplayed in the DLC.

** Just like in all other ''Desperados'' games, [=McCoy=] is still a Creator/LeeVanCleef expy, taking vastly after both [[Film/ForAFewDollarsMore Colonel Douglas Mortimer]] and [[Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly Angel Face]].