It’s been a few days since I soft “finished” RDR2’s campaign (I’m most of the way through the second epilogue), and it’s still haunting me. It is not a perfect piece of storytelling: it takes too long to get going, detours too often, and repeats itself, but underneath all of that is an American tragedy that ripped my heart to pieces. Not since the original “Knights of the Old Republic” have I so feverishly sprinted through a game, staying up way too late, desperate to see its conclusion.
Whether or not you play video games, you’ve experienced this before. I was binging, the same way you flew through “Stranger Things” or, I don’t know, “Young Sheldon,” whatever you’re into. Which makes me realize that playing a video game is more like watching a television show than watching a movie. You pick it up and put it down, it takes time to get through it, and the narratives are more stretched out and episodic.
“Red Dead Redemption 2” is made by Rockstar, who are most famous/infamous for the “Grand Theft Auto”” series. I am not, and never have been, a fan of GTA; I find it puerile and mean-spirited. Rockstar has always claimed that GTA is about choice, but it isn’t. There’s no way to play those games nicely, you are required to be a sociopath. But “Red Dead” is different, you genuinely can play these games however you like. Some of that is purely mechanical: even getting from A to B in GTA basically requires running people over (unless you want to take forever getting there), whereas the wide open spaces and horseback riding of RDR make bad behavior more optional. GTA is about indulgence, RDR is about choice.
And then there’s the story. (SPOILERS) The original worked because its protagonist, John Marston, was compelling and sympathetic, one of the best lead characters in any video game. His shocking death at the end, and the subsequent chapter where the player becomes his son and avenges his father, was an emotional drop-kick rarely found in any art form.
I was pretty sure RDR2 could not live up to that, and as is often the case, I was wrong. (AGAIN SPOILERS) This time, their narrative trick is giving protagonist Arthur Morgan a phantom cough that turns out to be tuberculosis, an Old West death sentence, at the midpoint of the story. This is a brilliant inversion of the original, where John’s death was a sudden shock; Arthur knows his death is coming, and all he can do is wait around for it. This mortal clarity forces Arthur to see things he had always suspected: that his life is lie, built on a foundation of moral rot, and his closest friend and father figure is a murderous charlatan. It’s all been for nothing.
(SPOILER) The question Arthur must ask, the question at the heart of RDR2, is “What do you save when everything is lost?” Arthur chooses to save John, another member of the gang and the hero of the original game (RDR2 is a prequel). John has a wife and a child, and Arthur sees in them the potential of a redeemed life that he can only experience vicariously, and hypothetically. He sacrifices himself to allow them to escape, in a strangely Christlike act of redemptive grace. If you played the original RDR (which, again, transpires after this one) you know that Arthur’s sacrifice is for naught: John will also die a violent death, and his son will be pulled backwards into the cycle of violence that claimed them. But in the moment, it doesn’t matter. Arthur is a bad man surrendering everything for one good act. Jesus once said the ultimate love is to lay down your life for your friends. “Red Dead Redemption 2” proves His point.
(SPOILER) Near the end of the game, Arthur lays at the feet of Dutch Van der Linde, his closest friend and mentor, the man who brainwashed him into the gang lifestyle at a young age. Arthur is beaten bloody and rotting from the inside. He gazes up at Dutch, a man he idolized his entire life only to discover at the end that he’s a sociopath and a fraud, and whispers, “I gave you everything.” For once, Dutch can’t think of anything to say. A few minutes later, Arthur dies.
Lead characters die in movies and television shows all the time, but it’s less common in video games, because the player character permanently dying (not the “Game Over” screen) hits harder, and in a different way. We’re always passive observers of movies/television, but video games insert us directly into the action, and seeing our character die makes us experience that death with them. And then we rub our eyes, set down the controller, and suddenly remember it was just a game, and we were always outside of it, separate from it, and that part of us continues on.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect real death is like that, too.