This article incorporates large ending spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Red Dead Redemption is a narrative of atonement, however John Marston by no means needed to pay for his sins – he’s pressured by authorities brokers. Marston lived a nasty life: he killed, he robbed, and he was typically out for himself. In his head, he deserved to depart all of it behind and reside a traditional life together with his spouse and son.
Red Dead Redemption 2 fleshes out Marston’s character, and we see him develop from a egocentric, considerably lazy outlaw right into a household man. But whereas Red Dead Redemption 2 does a improbable job of setting Marston up as the person we all know, Arthur Morgan’s journey is extra poignant.
Most open-world games begin us off with a personality at their weakest. Rather than rising them by way of the story, we see characters develop in energy by way of programs: improve timber supply higher skills, permitting us to tackle more and more harder enemies. Red Dead Redemption 2 turns all of that on its head.
You begin the game as Arthur Morgan, gang chief Dutch Van der Linde’s proper hand man. You are the man everybody goes to with their issues. If somebody wants violence inflicted upon them, Morgan is the gang’s fists. He’s not the neatest individual within the group – nor does he declare to be – however he makes blunt instrument and he’s virtually clever.
Morgan’s stamina and well being enhance as you play (you possibly can max out your stamina and well being reserves early on), however the first handful of chapters have you ever enjoying as a person at his bodily peak. He’s additionally at his most brutal. Morgan has a fierce loyalty to his chief and mentor, Van der Linde, and he isn’t afraid of inflicting ache on others to see his group thrive.
As the game attracts to a detailed, Morgan softens. An early scene sees Morgan amassing a debt from a sick man. You don’t realise it on the time, however this encounter seals our antihero’s destiny. He contracts tuberculosis, a illness unfold by way of the air when somebody ingests the blood or spit of an contaminated individual – in Morgan’s case, it’s a person who he simply beat to a pulp over a measly mortgage.
It’s some time earlier than the illness takes maintain, however the data that his destiny is sealed alters Morgan’s psyche. Unlike Marston, he isn’t pressured to atone – he begins considering again on his life, mulling over what’s necessary, contemplating how far blind loyalty ought to stretch. Those concerns sow the seeds of doubt about Van der Linde, his delusions of grandeur, and his capability for empathy.
During the nineteenth century, tuberculosis turned generally known as the ‘romantic disease’ as a result of the had been stated to develop extra delicate as they edged in the direction of the grave, and the sluggish progress of the illness allowed them to get their affairs so as. I can’t consider one other video game the place you’re setting the world proper earlier than your demise.
You can see this character development in Morgan’s journal. Depending on the place you’re within the story, the writing adjustments, the pen strokes really feel extra rushed. It’s extra clearly seen in his persona, and you may see it in his gaunt, pale face, and skinny body. In one touching second, he admits that he’s scared.
Even your environment replicate Arthur’s journey. As the gang heads additional east (in the direction of the civilisation they hate and away from the bountiful landscapes they crave), your camp loses key individuals, and the surviving gang members retreat inwards. People cease trusting one another, and the surroundings displays this transformation, turning into gloomier with every new settlement.
Remember how Horseshoe Overlook means that you can see proper throughout the plains beneath, into the wilds? Compare that to the camp in Chapter 6, nestled subsequent to a dank cave and soaked within the soot of the close by mining city. Rather than upgrading your lodgings because the game goes on, the camp – in the event you totally improve it – is nearly as good because it ever will get in Chapter 2.
Where most games are obsessive about our characters rising stronger, Red Dead Redemption 2 flips conventions on their head. It takes Morgan on a metaphysical journey of development as his physique degrades, till he lastly succumbs to the illness whereas staring out in the direction of the setting solar. These themes are what make Red Dead Redemption 2’s story one thing I’ll always remember, and it’s additionally what elevates Arthur Morgan into one of many all-time greatest protagonists within the medium.
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