The release of a new game from Rockstar has become somewhat of an event within the industry. With the scope and budget of new triple A games becoming larger with each passing year their necessary development times have begun to balloon in a similar fashion. Back in the good old days of PS1 and N64 where everything was more pixelated and polygonal, developers seemed to release new games on an almost yearly basis. Series like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon both had entire trilogies of games in the span of three years or so, whereas nowadays those same developers would be lucky to make a single game in that time. For example, Insomniac Games (creators of Spyro, Ratchet and Clank) took almost 4 years to release their most recent project, Spider-Man. Or look at another recent PS4 exclusive, God of War, which took almost 5 years to release after the studio’s previous project, God of War: Ascension. Longer time scales are becoming increasingly prevalent, but Rockstar has always been one of the worst offenders due to their insane attention to detail and seemingly endless supply of money and resources (GTA V was the highest-grossing entertainment product ever, across all media) which enables them to basically do whatever they want. Prior to Red Dead Redemption 2’s release, it had been 5 years since Rockstar had released their last game, Grand Theft Auto V. This meant that people had been very much deprived of Rockstar’s particular style and content for a number of years (barring their continue support of GTA Online), this led to large levels of hype and perhaps unachievably high expectations from a large proportion of the gaming public. By I and many others, the original Red Dead Redemption is looked back upon as Rockstar’s greatest game, with a layered and emotional story which included their most relatable and sympathetic character to date in the form of John Marston. Many believed that Rockstar would not come back to this world, leaving the original a standalone, concise experience, as they feared they would be unable to capture the magic of this game again. By creating a follow-up to one of their most beloved games Rockstar was setting themselves a near unsurmountable task; to appease the expectations of the original fan base while also trying to craft a story and character that could rival and perhaps even surpass the original. Although it is a rather bold statement, I would say that Rockstar did achieve this. I think they created an even more emotional and resonant story with Red Dead Redemption 2, but it’s the way that this was achieved that is even more interesting. This was accomplished by creating afresh, unpredictable narrative that subverts the audience’s expectations and constantly keeps them guessing and unsure of its direction.
The game is a masterful combination of gameplay and narrative. Although this piece will focus mostly on its narrative strengths, I feel I must mention its satisfying gameplay and its incredible, fluid open world. Rockstar has essentially crafted a living world with systems upon systems of animals, humans and occasional, scripted random events that make RDR 2’s world feel constantly moving and in flux, even when the player cannot see these interactions. Even the scripted interactions are varied and different enough that they are a joy to take part in, these can be anything ranging from helping out an NPC whose been attacked by animal to running into a group of Ku Klux Klan members burning crosses late at night (and subsequently shooting them, obviously) to spotting someone that’s been taken hostage on horseback and basically every other type of Wild West scenario that you could think of. Outside of these scenarios what you can do in the world is almost limitless, there are so many different systems that have been put in place (e.g. law enforcement, hunting patterns of animals, routes of trains/carriages, NPC routines etc.) that there will always be several of them interacting and influencing one another at any one time which leads to random and unimagined situations. The best example of this I experienced was when an eagle (under its own hunting pattern) picked up a snake (also in its own hunting routine) and dropped this on a human that was sitting nearby. I don’t believe this was a scripted event as it did not have an icon like all the other scripted ones, it simply arose from how complex and detailed Rockstar’s systems are in game. The open world is a wonderful playground to roam around in with so many different events and permutations of these, yet the best experience this world facilitates is the story itself. The narrative is an unpredictable and unconventional one, and sadly I will have to get into huge spoilers in order to properly explore this. For the first couple of missions it seems to be going by a relatively traditional outlaw story, following Dutch’s gang and our protagonist Arthur Morgan, as they hidefrom the Pinkertons and local law enforcement after a botched robbery. We are introduced to many familiar and unfamiliar characters within the gang (including a younger, angrier John Marston, the protagonist from the first game) and follow them as they barely avoid capture and move on to new areas in the hopes of safety and refuge from the forces that wish to stop them. The game starts as a slow-burn (which I imagined turned of many players who were expecting a bombastic story from the start) and it repeats this similar move of finding new areas and eventually fleeing them several times throughout the story. This gets the player into a false sense of security where they always expect the characters to get out just by the skin of their teeth, but then they don’t. This starts off small with individual characters. The sudden death trope is utilized very well in a lot of media such as in The Departed, where one of our main characters, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, gets shot in the head near the end of the film but I’ve never really seen it in a game before. However, RDR 2 uses this to great effect multiple different times. The first happens during a seemingly innocuous mission in the quiet, red-neck town of Rhodes. After escaping from the clutches of the law yet again and taking refuge in this small rural town, Dutch has began planning their next big score by pinning two powerful, yet incompetent families (Braithwaites and Grays) against each other. Things all seem to be going to plan, but during this mission to meet with one of their contacts the gang is ambushed by a group of Grays who have grown wise to Dutch’s schemes. These previously incompetent Grays deal a devastating blow to the gang; one of the younger, more wide-eyed members of the gang, Sean, has his head blown off, mid-sentence, at the start of the ambush. There is no fan-fare, no time to mourn. This character is simply gone, and it leaves the audience completely traumatised. Only a few missions before this, an entire bunch of both the gang and therefore the player’s time was used in order to save Sean from being captured, where he had spent most of the early game off-screen. We barely know his character and have only known him for a couple of hours but are already invested because we feel like his character arc has only just begun. He is the youngest and least disillusioned member of the gang, it is strongly hinted that over the course of the story we are going to see him become more serious and less comedic, but this never occurs. His life is snuffed out too early, much like the potential storyline that ended too soon as well; these feelings are enforced by the sudden, brutal way in which his death occurs. This may seem like a very specific example of how RDR 2 subverts expectations, but it happens at least two other times within the story. One of the gang’s main rivals throughout the story is a fellow band of Irish outlaws known as the O’Driscolls, early on the gang slaughters a bunch of O’Driscoll men and ends up taking one of them hostage, Kieran, who happens to save Arthur’s life. Due to his previous affiliation with the enemy, many of the camp mistreats and actively despises Kieran even though he tries his best to help them out and gain their trust. It appears as if they are setting him up for some sort of redemption arc, where he finally is welcomed into and becomes part of the gang. But much like Sean, this just never occurred. While Arthur is plodding about the camp getting on with his own business (for me this mainly involved eating stew and drinking coffee to get my stats up) a horse comes into the camp with a headless corpse on it, in its hands it holds Kieran’s head with both eyes gouged out. Behind this horse is a gang of O’Driscolls ready to ambush the unsuspecting group, having taken revenge upon Kieran for betraying them and joining Dutch. Both of these deaths are so sudden and unpredictable but they still both throw you right into the heat of the action with no time to grieve the loss of the character, one forcing you into a shoot-out with the Grays and the other forcing you into one with the O’Driscolls. By giving the player no time to understand the situation it emphasises the pressure and the danger of such a violent lifestyle, putting us in the shoes of Arthur; in his world you can’t focus on the loss of those around you but instead must look out for yourself. Although the death of Sean, Kiernan and the loss of their respective character arcs is tragic, the most horrible example of this happens to a member of the gang named Lenny. Like Sean, he is one of the younger and more vibrant within the group. He becomes a very likeable character early on when a mission solely focuses on him and Arthur going out drinking and the series of drunken misadventures that they get up to. Being a young black man and recently freed slave Lenny receives a fair amount of hate and racism directed towards him in the game, but Arthur sees him for the loyal and rational man that he is. Arthur’s fair treatment of Lenny makes us sympathetic towards him; he seems to be one of Arthur’s only true friends and this makes his death even more heart-braking. Unlike Sean and Kieran who both are killed in cutscenes and whose killers receive immediate retribution by Arthur killing them in a murderous rage, Lenny’s death is payed almost no attention and he is never truly avenged. After another botched robbery (another ‘great’ plan by Dutch) the gang is on the run from the Pinkertons, as the gang dashes across the rooftops away from the gunshots of the law, several lawmen suddenly emerge onto the roof in front and shoot Lenny dead. This occurs in a matter of seconds and the gameplay does not stop to even acknowledge that it has occurred, this emphasises howhopeless their situation actually is but also is one of the first signs that Dutch and some of the gang truly did not care for Lenny. Arthur was the only one that was impacted by his death and even he could not spare a moment to mourn for him, in fear that his life may too be cut short. These deaths feel wrong within the narrative; Sean, Kieran and Lenny are the youngest and most innocent among Dutch’s gang, yet they are the ones that experience the true pain and suffering caused by their exploits. Its expected that older characters like Hosea and to a certain extent even Arthur are at risk of dying within such a violent story, but we don’t expect these harsh realities to befall the truest of these characters. The sudden, violent nature of these deaths combined with the way it seems to fall upon the most innocent and redeemable of these characters only emphasises how horrific and unpredictable this lifestyle of violence and sin truly is. The narrative technique of these sudden deaths doesn’t only apply towards the main protagonists within Dutch’s gang, but also to their various antagonists throughout the game. The first main villain who kickstarts the plot is a business and oil tycoon named Leviticus Cornwall who comes into conflict with the gang after they rob one of his trains. He is introduced in a very ominous fashion early on and his presence continues to haunt the gang throughout a large portion of the game. Rockstar appears to be setting him up as the main antagonist, with enough money and resources to chase Dutch’s gang across the country. Yet he never truly becomes the main villain. His character disappears from the story for large amounts of time (although his presence can still be felt somewhat by the Pinkertons he has hired), and then eventually they met him near defenceless, boarding a boat in Saint Denis. Dutch has a short spat with the man before shooting the old codger in a very anti-climatic fashion. Within seconds he is no longer a threat to the group. And this continues for almost every other antagonist in the game. The Braithwaites, The Grays, Angelo Bronte, Colm O’Driscoll. Each one is introduced and later killed with very little impact on the wider overarching narrative. This is when I came to a realisation; Red Dead Redemption 2 does not have the same three act structure of any traditional movie or book but is instead far closer to the format of a long-running television or book series. In a way, each chapter seems to be its own self-contained story with its own major plot and antagonist (be this the Grays/Braithwaites in Chapter 3 or Angelo Bronte in Chapter 4) much like a self-contained season of a television show. Although I may have found the deaths of some of these villains anti-climactic at first, when looking it then in this more segmented, chapter-by-chapter way it becomes clear that they are in fact climaxes of their own individual stories. Of course, I’m not the first one who’s compared RDR 2’s structure to that of a television series (it will likely become apparent to anyone who has completed it), but I believe it was such an interesting choice from a narrative and structure perspective. Having Arthur and the rest of these characters going through so many different, distinct trials and tribulations brings us closer to them and makes our time spent with them feel so much longer and more involved than if it was simply one long overarching story. The large variety of villains that are introduced but never seem to take the spotlight also emphasises another key point within the game; it makes the audience question who the true villain actually is. When all these bad people have finally been slain or destroyed by Dutch’s gang it makes us question why bad things continue to occur for these characters. Surely once the bogeyman has been defeated these characters will be able to return to a normal, safer life, but this is not the case. It reveals that the true problem is within the gang itself, perhaps Dutch and some of his more avid supporters are the true reason why they continue to fail even once all outside forces have been overcome. By doing this, the structure of the narrative directly complements the story Rockstar is telling, the introduction and subsequent discarding of these villains eventually leads to us understanding that the true villain has been under our noses this whole time. Although the game’s structure is very compelling, it’s time to get onto the heart and soul of this game: its characters. Prior to its release I was worried that this game may suffer from a problem that many prequels to popular stories do. Due to us knowing the fates of many of the characters and the eventual outcome of this story (as was shown in the first game) I was worried that this may lower the stakes and prevent me from getting invested in this story and set of characters. But Rockstar managed to avoid this particular prequel problem by focusing the main crux of the narrative on mostly new characters, with the two main exceptions being John and Dutch. Arthur is obviously a new addition and this lack of knowledge surrounding him allows the writers and therefore the player to take greater control of his character and influence more based on their actions. It allows us to decide which path we take Arthur down, one of evil or one of good. It also allows full subplots to be influenced by the player, such as Arthur’s relationship with the gang’s shady money lender and loan shark Strauss. Arthur’s honour and reactions to the horrible work of chasing down people who borrowed money from Strauss are directly impacted by the player themselves and their choices can decide Strauss’ eventual fate. Some other notable examples are Sadie Adler, Charles Smith and Micah Bell. Adding these characters into the mix gives the story far greater depth than if it focused solely on characters from the first game. It was relatively easy to infer many of the events which preceded the original game, so having to play through them all with already-known characters wouldn’t have been as original or satisfying as the approach taken here. We don’t know the fates of Sadie, Charles and even our protagonist Arthur, which makes it far easier to get invested in their stories and feel genuine fear and empathy towards them when they are put in dangerous or perilous situations. In focusing on these new characters Rockstar also created another problem for themselves; could these characters possibly match up to the original creations of John, Dutch or even some of the ancillary characters from the first game. Yet this seemed to be no problem, as a few of these characters are in fact some of the best Rockstar has ever created, characters like Sadie and Sean are immensely entertaining to be around, and above all Arthur is without a doubt the greatest character Rockstar has ever created (more on him in a bit). Although many of the new characters are arguably more interesting and layered, Rockstar still gives some attention to the returning cast as well. Its interesting to see John’s relationship to characters like Bill or Javier who he killed in the original game, but at this time was still friendly and close with. My only issue would be that they seem to turn on John (and in the process Arthur) relatively quickly after Dutch declares them as traitors; I would have liked to see some of the internal conflict these characters experienced at having to turn on their own brothers in arms. Putting this aside the game still develops these characters and many others far more than they were in the original game, especially considering Bill was essentially just a red-neck and Javier was a Mexican stereotype. Out of all the characters from the original game, the one who is expanded upon the most is obviously Dutch Van Der Linde, the charismatic leader of the gang and the eventual antagonist of the game. The reason there are so many minor antagonists in this game (as I mentioned earlier) is because Dutch is the true threat to everyone Arthur cares about. Although this is obvious to the player as Dutch was also the main antagonist of the first game, it makes the whole story far more tragic as we know that Dutch’s downfall is inevitable. From the start he’s a man whose goals are truly divided. Obviously, part of him intends to care for and protect his gang from the harsh outside world and the forces which wish to capture them, but he also exudes a sense of overwhelming greed. He doesn’t know when enough is enough. Every time one of his plans goes horribly wrong, he doesn’t change his ways but instead continues plotting riskier and more dangerous plans. Each time a plan fails he makes his plans more ludicrous and difficult in order to try and cover their loses for the previous botched jobs. Eventually Arthur and many others begin to catch on to this fact, that Dutch is dreaming far too big and in the process is endangering them all with his unachievable schemes. When they try to call his leadership and judgement into question, Dutch labels Arthur and his supporters as traitors, causing several of the men to turn on each other. Many are still blinded by Dutch’s charisma and take his side, where as others see him for the dangerous megalomaniac he is and take Arthur’s side against him. The gang is destroyed from the inside by descent and a lack of trust until eventually violence erupts amongst its members. All of this was caused by Dutch’s compulsion to achieve more and his attempt to protect his followers in his own twisted way. Near the end Dutch reveals his more savage nature and murderous tendencies in a desperate attempt to keep control of the gang, but by this point it is too late. They have lost too many people and the authorities are hot on their trail; the gang’s time has finally come to an end, but it was not any outside force that eventually destroyed then but Dutch’s own greed and hubris. But the reason Dutch is such a compelling villain is because aside from all his faults he is still sympathetic. He took Arthur and many of the others in at a young age, giving them food, shelter and a family; he didn’t do this in the hopes of manipulating or controlling them but simply out of his want to help people. By leading the gang, he hopes to preserve the traditional outlaw lifestyle that is being lost as the Wild West era begins to come to an end; he is a buck in a system, a self-named rebel who hopes to continue his fight against society until the very end. Its impossible to tell why he truly wants to help those in his gang, it may be so they continue to follow and support him (in an almost cult-like manner) or it may simply be because he sees them as his family and wants the best for them. Dutch operates almost entirely in shades of grey and his motivations are not always clear, that is why he is so compelling and that is why it is difficult to truly hate him. At the end of the game, after he had let Arthur die and sided with the traitorous Micah, I was almost certain that Dutch had to die, that his death at the hands of John in the original game was now justified, however even then he makes another baffling and somewhat heroic move. In order to save John and Sadie he shots Micah in order to give John enough time to kill him and finish the job. Although this one good action can never make up for the multitude of wrongs Dutch has committed, it makes the player and John question whether Dutch was really as bad as they once believed. This explains why John is so conflicted about killing Dutch in the original, he is obviously a bad man but one that shows glimmers of kindness and sympathy towards those he loves. The relationship between Dutch and John has now been forever heightened by this game. In the original Dutch seemed far more psychotic and evil, a cookie-cutter villain for John to slay before he can get back to his family. But now, it means so much more. We have seen their troubled history, violent break-up and the hints of reconciliation that occurred along the way. I used to think that the backstory of these two characters would be too predictable and traditional to base a game around, but in actuality their relationship was more complex and layered than I could ever imagine. Although I have not mentioned him as much as I should, I feel I must say that my favourite aspect of RDR 2 is the character of Arthur Morgan and his journey is perhaps one of the most emotional I have ever experienced in any medium. This was incredibly surprising to me as John Marston was one of my favourite video game characters of the last generation, he was a charming, sarcastic gunslinger who had to kill in order to protect his family and met a tragic end in the process. When the government he had been working for the whole game finally killed John after he had murdered several people under their instructions, I felt personally betrayed. The whole game I was fighting for John to finish hunting his old gang members and return to his family, and although he was allowed to for a time, the agents felt they could not let such a dangerous outlaw escape justice and decide to kill him. This felt so wrong and unfair to me, I had never felt such a sense of injustice from a game. In the lead-up to RDR 2 I was worried that no main character could rival John Marston in my heart, but little did I know that Arthur would affect me emotionally in ways that I could never imagine. At the start of the game he seemed like a relatively standard outlaw protagonist. His personality was a lot drier and more straight-forward when compared to John’s, and at first I was worried that this may make him quite a boring protagonist. He felt like an older, disillusioned man (similar to Michael from GTA V) which would have been unique several years ago, but nowadays that’s become the standard for a lot of stories; perhaps older, sadder protagonists are supposed to better connect with the audience. But as I spent time with Arthur, he began to grow on me, due to how real and harsh his view of the world is. Arthur has been in the gang his whole life and has grown up surrounded by violence and was taught to hate the system of government that threatens to end their way of life. He isn’t afraid to use violence to solve situations and threaten people; you get the feeling that he has no problem killing anyone that gets in his way. Arthur is not a good person and he knows this. Many of the other gang members try to delude themselves with the idea that they only kill and steal from those who deserve it, but this is completely contradicted by their actions. Like when they rob a train full of innocent passengers or Strauss’ loan shark activities which only seem to target people/ families who would be unable to pay back the debt. Arthur, on the other hand, knows how wrong his actions are and continues them anyway in order to protect the people within the gang, even at the cost of his own soul and morality. Once I realised this, my appreciation of Arthur was so much greater, he isn’t some Walter White-esque anti-hero who tries to justify his actions; he does them for a good cause but does not try to claim this makes them acceptable. This may make him a more layered and flawed character, but it isn’t even the best thing about him. The greatest part of Arthur’s character is also Red DeadRedemption 2’s greatest subversion of expectations. Just over about half-way through the game, Arthur collapses on the way to another mission. He is hauled into a doctor’s office wherehe is examined and subsequently diagnosed with Tuberculosis. Although it’s an affliction which is easily cured today, back in the game’s less advanced time of 1899 it was essentially a death sentence. This reveal completely shocked me from a narrative perspective. Of course, main characters die in media, hell it happened to John Marston at the end of his adventure in the original RDR, but usually they go out in a blaze of glory. Usually they don’t see their death coming or they allow themselves to die for a particular cause, but Arthur is not afforded this luxury (at least initially). Being told that he only has a short time left to live causes a complete shift within his character; his approaching death is now inevitableand it forces him to consider what meaning his life has actually had. Contracting this illness is almost a karmic punishment for Arthur’s years of misdeeds, this is especially obvious since he likely contracted it while beating a sick mannamed Mr Downes in order to claim a debt. Arthur seems to realise this as the illness causes him to look back on his years of violence and crime and attempt to make up for these. This theme of what makes life meaningful is present in other media, such as in the classic Akira Kurosawa film ‘Ikiru’, but it is one that I have never seen attempted in a game before. This kind of retrospection on death and the meaning of life requires a level of writing skill and talent which is difficult to come by in the industry, Rockstar is one of the only developers I feel could explore this effectively, rivalled by maybe only Naughty Dog in my mind. In order to be successful this story also requires a vessel, a developed character who is used to explore this very personal, human story and Arthur (being as flawed and layered as he is) is perfectly suited to this. As the player you expect Arthur to live at least until the end of the game, maybe even into the post-game if possible, but revealing that he is dying changes the whole experience. We’re forced to watch this man struggle through the last few weeks of his life in order to try and right the wrongs he has committed. The revelation of his illness causes a complete character shift for Arthur, he is no longer the tough, no nonsense killer that he spent most of his life as but instead becomes a more sombre, reflective man. He wants to make the most of the time that he has left and wants to help the people he cares about most, even after he’s gone. He begins trying to help those around him in the best way he can. Instead of chasing down people who owe them debts he now decides to cover the debt himself sometimes even gives the debtors money in order to allow them to escape: after all, money is of no use to a dead man. This change is best shown in the way he treats the family of Mr Downes, the man he likely contracted tuberculosis from while beating. He saves both the now widowed Mrs Downes and her son from dangerous situations and gives them money in order to cover their debts and allow them to start a new life elsewhere. He says himself that this is not in order to get forgiveness from them, but simply because he wronged them and now feels obliged to support them. Although Arthur wants to help the strangers he has wronged in his life, his main goal is to help those within the gang that are still innocent and capable of saving. He stops living in the present and begins to look forward at the long-reaching plans of Dutch and the gang; in doing this Arthur soon realises that Dutch is going to continue to put the gang in increasingly riskier situations with his far-fetched plans. He tries to warn Dutch of this and make him see the error of his ways, but Dutch is too wrapped up in his own mind and sees this as Arthur trying to take control away from him or overthrow him as the leader of the gang. Arthur now sees that Dutch will soon cause the downfall of the gang if he continues to lead in this way. Arthur does not want to take Dutch on directly since he raised him, but also because Dutch still has a lot of support from several of the gang members. Arthur begins telling many of the other members to try and leave the gang before it collapses, something he would have considered traitorous before his diagnosis. Many of them, such as Charles and Sadie, agree with Arthur and see through Dutch’s schemes. However, the people that Arthur wants to help the most are John and Abigail Marston, as they have a young son, Jack, who would be most negatively impacted by Dutch’s actions. Arthur tries to convince John to leave the gang many times following his diagnosis in order to try and protect them, but John does not have enough money or resources to care for his family; that is why they have stayed with the gang all these years. To allow John’s escape, Arthur devises a plan to steal the money that Dutch has been keeping from their various jobs over the years and give it to them. Obviously, this doesn’t go according to plan and Arthur ends up in a final showdown with Dutch and any of the followers he still has left (e.g. Micah, Bill, Javier etc). Neither side particularly wants to kill the other and the men are left in a standoff over how to proceed. If this had continued perhaps,they could have come to a mutual understanding, however this is interrupted by the Pinkertons and several government officials who finally catch up with the gang after months of searching. Here you can choose whether to go back for the money or help John escape, although any rational person would help John escape, not only because we care for him but because going back for the money would mean certain death or capture. If you chose to help John, him and Arthur are forced up into the hills where they have a final, touching farewell where Arthur gives John his hat. Arthur decides to sacrifice himself by staying behind to fend off the incoming hoards of lawmen and Dutch’s remaining men. But this isn’t what kills him (at least if your honour is high enough), even after he has survived the gunfight and had an extended brawl with Micah atop the mountain (although this likely contributed to his early death) he isn’t killed. Dutch and Micah seem to take pity on him, on this broken, dying man and flee before the law have any chance of catching up with them. And there Arthur is left too die alone, despite being betrayed by Dutch and losing the only life he had ever known he isn’t sad. He is happy to have saved John, his family and any other people that he decided to help in the last days of his life. As the sun rises above the horizon and the illness finally claims him, Arthur, the reformed outlaw, is allowed to die a hero; knowing in his heart that he tried to be a better man. Arthur’s diagnosis and death was a uniquely emotional experience for me. Never in a game before have I seen a character, let alone the protagonist, truly fear their impending death. Although he begins the game as a tough, emotionless killer this revelation seems to strip away all the layers of bravado and swagger until all that is left is a sad, hopeless man with a life full of regret and empty of meaning. Unlike many characters in the medium, Arthur is obviously impacted upon by the disturbing and emotional trauma which he is forced to endure as part of his journey. Near the end of the game he isn’t afraid to let his emotions be known, one of the most effecting scenes occurred when he was talking to a recurring nun character who shows up throughout the game.He finally admits that he is dying and that he is afraid, helped along by the fantastic performance from Roger Clark. This line broke my heart. In a single sentence it showed all the years of regret and sadness culminating in full on terror of his own demise. I have never felt so closely connected to a videogame character as I did to Arthur Morgan in this moment. It is impossible not to find him sympathetic, he may have done horrible things, but he feels genuine guilt and remorse for those that he has wronged. He does not want people to forgive him, but simply wants to feel like he has put some good into the world after years of taking from it. There was a similarly emotional moment during the climax where Arthur’s horse is shot down in the chase. Even though there are bullets flying and John is telling him they must go, he stops and allows a moment of grief for his loyal animal. He whispers a simple painful “Thank you” to his horse. This is amplified by the connection the player forms with their horse over the course of the game and it could be seen as a little manipulative (e.g. trying to pull some heart strings by killing of the animal) but it doesn’t. Arthur’s reaction is just so heartfelt and beautiful that it makes any of these more cynical or analytical thoughts leave your mind. He risks both his and John’s lives to say goodbye to this loyal animal that has allowed him to accomplish his goals and in some cases has even saved him throughout the game. Earlier in the game Arthur could barely spare a second to mourn the deaths of characters like Sean, Kieran and especially Lenny out of fear of dying himself, this moment feels like a response to those moments. Arthur is a changed man, he now understands that the loss of life, whether this be in humans or even animals, is something to respect. These two scenes are only a few of the numerous instances in the game where I felt genuinely emotional for and connected to Arthur; he felt truly human and alive. That’s why it was so hard to face the fact that he was going to die. Although you know well in advance, for almost half the game, it didn’t make the loss of this character any less traumatic. When Arthur finally passed away on top of that mountain, I was completely split emotionally. Part of me was happy that he had saved John and the others; he had achieved the redemption he didn’t think he deserved. But the other part of me was practically in mourning, he was the most real character I had ever had the pleasure of playing as and losing him made me strangely upset. By the end of the experience I thought he was a better character than even John Marston, probably one of the only other characters I’ve ever felt truly connected to. Rockstar characters just seem to have this effect on me. Although I’m conflicted about my feelings towards Arthur’s sacrifice, its indisputable that he achieved his goal of protecting John and his family. His actions allowed John to escape to a quieter life with his family, where he was allowed to build a farm (during a sick-ass song) and provide for his family. This is shown in the Epilogue to the game, where we once again take control of John Marston after not playing as him for more than 8 years (his last appearance being the Undead Nightmare expansion of the original, although its obviously not canon). At first I was kind of surprised by how underwhelming I found playing as John. In the lead up to RDR 2’s release I did assume that we would once again be able to take control of John Marston, probably after the death of the other guy (the little respect I showed Arthur at the time). I was very much looking forward to spending time with John again, but when I eventually got to this point my opinion had been completely reversed. I was severely missing Arthur (a type of withdrawal almost) and even John couldn’t fill the hole in my heart that he had left. After a few hours with John, seeing him met Uncle and Charles, seeing him build the classic farm from the original and seeing him propose to his wife, I began to feel more comfortable with John again. But this time only confirmed my original statement, I liked Arthur far more. Although I can understand why this had to be done. By allowing us to roam around as John and see him begin a normal life after Arthur’s death, it emphasises why Arthur sacrificed his life; so John could truly be free. The Epilogue (and entire game) concludes with John and his previous fellow gang members, Charles and Sadie, heading to finally kill Micah, the man who previously betrayed them by talking to the law and essentially killed Arthur during their fight on the mountainside. I mentioned this altercation earlier when talking about John’s relationship with Dutch, but it is a perfect ending to the game. As John, I killed hoards of Micah’s men, all the while wearing Arthur’s hat which he had given to me. It was cathartic, as if John (and in turn myself) were continuing on the legend of Arthur just a bit more by donning his hat and finally killing the traitor who he had warned Dutch about so long before. It also leads perfectly into the original game, with Dutch killing Micah this makes his position as a villain less concrete and makes John even more conflicted about being asked to kill him later. If this were where the story ended it would be a happy, yet bittersweet one; with Arthur losing his life in an attempt to save John, and John later returning to take revenge on those who had wronged them both. But the story doesn’t end here. Rockstar had to deliver one last painful reminder about the fates of these characters. After the ending John returns to his family and they continue to work away on the farm, hopefully for the foreseeable future. But we as the audience know this peace will not last. Soon the government will show up and force John back into his old killing ways; and even after he’s done everything they’ve asked they will kill him anyway. This is the true tragedy of the game. It was horrible to lose Arthur butknowing John’s inevitable fate almost makes Arthur’s sacrifice pointless. This is a very bleak way to look at the whole message behind the game, perhaps no matter how hard we try to achieve something it can’t be maintained forever. But I think there is a more beautiful and poignant way to look at this. Even though John will technically die, Arthur’s sacrifice may still have payed off. John has been immortalised in the post-game of Red Dead Redemption 2. After the original game John was simply dead, there was no way to be with him again without replaying the same events. But now he can continue to live on forever, with his family and his farm, and we can go on this journey with him as often as we want (you just need to start up the game). I could put RDR 2 back into my console in 10 years and John will still be there, raising his son, loving his wife, bantering with Uncle. This is what Arthur would have truly wanted, his sacrifice meant that John Marston will forever be there to take care of his family; whether we as a player are there to see this or not. It’s just too bad Arthur will never be afforded this luxury. He’ll never be able to live on in the game, that is something we simply cannot change, but he will always live on in my heart.
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authorSo this is weird. I’ve made a website, I’m not expecting anyone to read it (actually I’d rather they didn’t.) Basically I’ve been struggling to write creative things recently, every idea I come up with, no matter how much I think I believe in it, leads me nowhere. I guess you could call it writer’s block, but it’s more so that I tend to overthink and second-guess myself down to the smallest details, this means it takes me forever to make anything and once I have I’m incredibly demotivated to continue it. So, after being inspired by an Australian writer, Gabriel Bergmoser, who’s blog and podcasts I’ve been reading and listening to for the past few years I decided this would be an interesting experiment to try out. Basically I have no idea what I’m going to write, it’s unlikely to be creative or short stories, more-so this kind of string-of-consciousness opinion piece based on the things I’m thinking about at the moment. From films to television or maybe books and music. Anyway I hope you find some of this stuff interesting. Let’s hope I don’t say anything too incriminating considering my name is plastered all over this. Granted, this is something I will probably only update about four times in my life, unless I really enjoy it. It’s more so to help me be more creative and actually produce something for once.
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January 2021
CategoriesNot really sure? Opinions on the blog, mainly about entertainment. I'll also be posting some fiction or short stories eventually for your feedback and enjoyment.
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