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Jenna Hurley's review of Red Dead Redemption 2
Date last edited: 12-06-2024 at 11:51PM
Rating: Mature 17+
Review: Developer/Publisher: Rockstar Games Genre: Action Role Playing Game Version Number: 1.32 Primary Audience: Young Adults+ Platform: PC, Xbox, Playstation Year of release: 2018
Set in a fictional version of the end of America’s “untamed west” era, Red Dead Redemption 2 follows Arthur Morgan, an outlaw on the run with fellow “Van Der Land gang” members and found family. Following the orders and guidance of the two leaders, Dutch Van Der Land and Hosea Matthews, he strives to get the gang back onto its feet so that they may head somewhere where they can find freedom, without the penalty of law. However, it seems nothing is going their way and no matter how many jobs they pull or how much money they bring in it is never enough. They move from place to place as their past, and bounty hunters catch up with them and the gang seems to be coming apart at the seams no matter how hard they try to keep it from falling apart. Arthur continues to try to bring as much money in as possible, as well as help (or torment, depending on how you play) strangers along the way. During one of the collection calls on a loan one of the other gang members gave out, he is particularly rough with a kind and very sick man. Arthur later finds that the man has succumbed to his sickness and collects the loan money from the man’s wife and son instead. As the game plays out the player notices Arthur coughing more and more, especially after a hard run or smoking a cigar or cigarette. He ends up blacking out in the street and a good Samaritan brings him to the doctor who tells him that he is dying from Tuberculosis. Despite this news, Arthur continues business as usual. Trying to make money so the gang can escape out west or Tahiti or wherever it is that Dutch, their leader, is trying to bring them to escape their past. All the while, Dutch, who practically raised Arthur and some other members from adolescence, is slowly descending into a paranoid frenzy and distrusts nearly everyone around him especially after his right-hand man Hosea is killed while they attempted a bank robbery. In the end, he only trusts Micah, a chaotic low life who only recently joined their gang and is further poisoning him with bad ideas and lies. Arthur tries to keep everything from falling apart as he navigates the perilous journey of coming to terms with the mistakes he has made as he approaches the end of his life. Red Dead Redemption 2 is similar to real life in that the player has the choice to interact with people either kindly or harshly. They can choose to ignore a man on the side of the road who has been bitten by a rattlesnake or stop to give him medicine or suck the poison out. He could also choose to rob the poor man if he saw fit. Assuming the player makes the right choices, his honor grows, and we can see Arthur grow and change, continually making better choices and helping more people even when we don’t have control of the situation. However, despite having to option to choose to have him free slaves, help the Catholic church, and make amends with those he has wronged, he will continue to run jobs for the gang which means robbing stagecoaches, stores, and the like and getting rid of whoever gets in his way.
The First Media Key: Balance Arthur Morgan’s life seems woefully out of balance. He is hot-headed, violent, and seemingly unreasonable at times. However, he is also fiercely loyal, helpful, and he does choose to do the right thing at times when certain opportunities present themselves. While his helpfulness does not atone for the violence, there are moments of gentleness that can be played. The ability to fish, take a quiet horseback ride through the fields and mountains, and hunt are all options throughout the game. Does this make up for the shoot-outs and evilness we must get through when we play the main story? Most likely not. “As long as it is not morally problematic, it’s okay to consume a little bit of everything. We can play the occasional video game, post the occasional status update, and send the occasional text-message.” (Gan, pg. 27). While it is possible to simply stop playing through the story missions and simply camp and explore to your heart’s content, it seems doubtful that this is how most players are spending their time. These are wonderful options but when the player is also presented with opportunities to rob, kill, over-drink, and just be generally rude, it is difficult to say that the game keeps an even balance within it. As far as its target audience, the game is rated M for Mature which is an entirely appropriate rating for such a violent game. Even though I would say some parts are plenty safe for children to watch, such as exploring the wilderness, fishing, hunting, etc., most of the game is harsh, violent, and heavily laden with cursing and debauchery.
The Second Media Key: Attitude Awareness Given the climate in 1899, it is safe to say that the idea of being progressive in Red Dead Redemption 2 is a lot different than the modern-day progressive movement. The idea of being progressive in the game means standing up for women’s right to vote, wanting the freedom of people of color, and generally treating everyone with the same level of respect. Arthur, as well as most of his fellow gang members, generally fall into this “progressive” category. Arthur has the option of helping escort a group of women in a “Votes for Women” march, confronting Klansmen, among many other tasks that represent the greater good. “What comes to us through the flesh-through our eyes, noses, ears, and hands-affects our spirit. And virtually everything we will ever experience comes to us through the flesh.” (Gan, pg. 38). Generally speaking, Rockstar Games seems to hold a more liberal stance when it comes to politics, however, in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2, it would seem that their affiliations didn’t completely bleed through. They keep to what would have been the political climate of the times, where it would have been dangerous to announce to your neighbor that you were in a homosexual relationship or that your daughter believed she was your son. While some people condemn them for this, I always appreciate when media doesn’t simply add a “token gay friend” so that there is inclusiveness. On top of this, the Catholic characters in the game, Brother Dorkins and Sister Calderon, are surprisingly shown to be kind, intelligent, and compassionate people, helping others and wanting justice for those who are truly oppressed.
The Third Media Key: Dignity of the Human Person It is obvious that there is extreme violence in the game, from hand-to-hand combat to having the ability to throw a stick of dynamite wherever you’d like. While some of it could be argued to be righteous, saving a woman or friend from getting hurt, for example, that is not usually the case. Throughout the course of the game, the player is forced to shoot his way through hundreds of unnamed characters, whether they’re rival gangs, officers, or bounty hunters. While playing through side quests you have even more options to continue inciting violence. While this amount of carnage might be typical for the life of an outlaw, it hardly upholds the dignity of the human person to the level that the church asks of us. “The films reduce humans to pieces of meat, with one life after another ‘sacrificed’ to a thirst for blood, a thirst viewed by many as ‘entertainment’.” (Gan, pg. 56). Despite this overwhelming violence, there are quite a few moments in which Arthur has the opportunity to prove that he does hold at least some regard for the dignity of the human person. When he meets Brother Dorkins, a Catholic brother, he is asked if he would investigate and free captive slaves in a black-market basement. In another side quest, Arthur ends up confronting a man who had been a slave trafficker before the war. As violent as Arthur may be, he does still know the difference between right and wrong in some regards. Coming from a developer like Rockstar Games, who is mostly known for their Grand Theft Auto franchise, it is extremely surprising that there is little to no sexual content in the game. When anyone even propositions Arthur, he turns them down automatically, without giving the player a choice. Although Arthur does speak of a previous, casual, relationship in which he had a son out of wedlock, he shows regret for this relationship and love for his son despite the fact that both his son and the mother passed away in a robbery gone wrong. I believe Arthur learned from his past mistakes and doesn’t participate in premarital sex because of this.
The Fourth Media Key: Truth-Filled While violence, and a near disregard for human life, runs prevalently through the game, there are some deep seeded truths lingering within it, and some lies as well. For instance, Sister Calderon calls Arthur a good man on several occasions, and while she may be speaking about the good that dwells in all of us as children of God, she is ignoring the fact that he has hurt and killed several people just in the last few missions of the game. At the beginning of the game, you can see that Arthur looks up to Dutch, the gang’s leader and a sort of father figure, quite a bit. He becomes inspired by his speeches and is willing to follow him into the night no matter what the circumstances may be. However, as Arthur begins to see through Dutch’s specious talks, he begins to see him, as well as himself, as they truly are. Towards the end of the game, Arthur has the chance to try and do what he believes is the right thing, even at the expense of someone else. “Hell is full of good intentions and wills.” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux). Would Arthur Morgan ever become a saint? Most likely not. However, I believe at the heart of this game lies an incredible truth and lesson that everyone should know as a sinner needing to repent. It is never too late to change.
The Fifth Media Key: Inspiring “The root of ‘inspires’ is the Latin inspirare, which literally means ‘to breathe into’. Breath is the literal meaning of the Greek pneuma, which also translates as ‘spirit’.” (Gan, pg. 85). There are a few moments that will breathe as much life into your soul than when you’ve hit rock bottom and need to pull yourself up from the bottom, just as Arthur must do when he is aware that his life is reaching its end and the family he once knew is slipping away from him like sand. If Arthur has helped Sister Calderon, he will speak with her at a train station before she sets off on a mission in Mexico. In a beautiful and heart-wrenching monologue, he confesses to her that not only is he dying from tuberculosis, but he contracted the disease by beating down a sick man to death for a “few bucks” as well as the fact that he knows that he is not a good person. “I’ve lived a bad life, Sister.” (Red Dead Redemption 2, 2018). She explains to him that we are all sinners and that he has more good in him than he realizes. As the conversation continues, he informs her that he does not have faith in the Lord. “I still don’t believe in nothing.” Arthur tells her, to which she replies, “Often, neither do I… and then I meet someone like you and everything makes sense.” (Red Dead Redemption 2, 2018). Arthur shows remorse, he remembers the wrong he did. A real part of him wants to change, and in the end, he has the option to help give his friend and brother a way out before it’s too late for him. While, of course, the player has the option to play the game as ruthlessly as possible, it seems the game was built to encourage Arthur to do the right thing and seek some sort of redemption in the end. As a Catholic convert myself who struggled with the idea of faith for the better part of a decade before converting, I can relate heavily to this exchange from both sides. I have been Arthur, feeling as if I cannot do good in any aspect of my life and not believing there is a good God to guide me through it and I have been Sister Calderon, understanding that faith is not so black and white and that it is in the small moments that God gives us that we can see His love and plan for us. It’s in these types of conversations of the game that the player has the opportunity to look at their own life and how God wants them to live it.
The Sixth Media Key: Skillfully Developed If any category in this review deserves to have more than five out of five, it’s this one. “If they want to attract users, sell games, basically keep their jobs, the media they create and market must be skillfully developed.” (Gan, 2018). For the creators of Red Dead Redemption 2, it would seem they took this advice and ran with it. The game holds a 97 percent Metacritic with a “Must Play” badge, has a rating of 8.9/10 by users (Metacritic, 2018), and has been played by over 64 million users since March of 2024 (IGN, 2024). Rockstar Games may put out some morally bankrupt games, but no one can deny that these games are some of the most well-made games on the market. From stunning graphics that can sometimes be mistaken for real life, to well-fleshed characters and their development, to the soundtrack created for the game, there is no corner of this game that didn’t have the utmost thought put into it. I can attest that it is difficult to play through the game without caring for the character and becoming emotionally invested in the story. It’s immersive world and incredible storytelling draws you in and keeps you wanting more and more. Whether you load it up to cause some chaos or you simply want to ride your horse through the mountains and do something hunting, there is something about the game that simply encourages you to keep exploring.
The Seventh Media Key: Motivated and Relevant to Experience I would, most likely, be safe to assume that anyone who plays Red Dead Redemption 2 is not a gun-slinging outlaw on the run. However, I don’t know anyone who could not relate to the idea of needing to atone for their sins and there are even some who did not know how to even begin to turn their back on a life of sin. While Arthur never fully turns away from his violent and sinful ways, he does realize many of the wrongs he has done and tries his best to atone for them the only way he knows how as he was never taught otherwise. His mother passed away when he was young, and his father was a terrible influence as well. He was a teenager when Dutch and Hosea found him and brought him into their little gang. Not to say that anyone should use their past as an excuse to continue sinning, but there is something relatable to those who grew up in less-than-stable homes and had to find their family rather than be born into it and even build their lives from the ground up. This is especially true in our modern age where single parenthood is more prevalent than ever, and the amount of poverty grows with each year. “It (the Seventh Media Key) also can become a guide for each of us as we struggle to know our culture and ourselves better.” (Gan, pg. 128). By knowing more about Arthur’s story and his struggles, we can use the seventh media key to help us use his story as some insight into how another person may have gotten to where they are today.
Despite all its faults and violence, Red Dead Redemption 2 is still my all-time favorite video game. Watching Arthur change and grow and learn as time passes feels as if I am watching a friend. There is a genuine heart within him that encourages me to keep playing again and again. I would (and do) recommend this game to the appropriate audience of course, whenever someone asks me what they should play next. It is an incredible and heart-wrenching story of a man who may not know any better, but who has the opportunity to do better. While he is not a perfect human and would most likely identify himself as something as an agnostic, I still believe that had he been given more time on Earth he could have completely turned his life around. Humans are not perfect, and some of us indulge in our sins more than others, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are all worthy of redemption.