This is gonna be long, but I hope you’ll stick with me. I also didn’t want to put it in the general thread because people can accidentally tap on the spoiler thing, I don’t want to ruin it.
I bought the game at launch but the problem was that I was deep into The Witcher 3 as well, and after that game @ 100% plus the first expansion, well, you could say open world fatique set in big time. When I finally did start with RDR2 I kept being sidetracked from the story and then after a while put it down. As much as I love this game, and Witcher 3, for some reason they were easy to put down and for a long time too. Until earlier this year and decided it was time to really finish this bad boy.
The story itself isn’t even that amazing, but it’s the way it’s told. The characters and how you’ll bond with them , the voice acting, the music, my god the music at times. The visuals, the world itself and all the insane details in it.
SPOILERS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Kinda like Game of Thrones, I guess you shouldn’t bond too much with characters because they can be dead in the next scene. Take Sean for example, I jumped up from the couch when that happened. Did not see that coming at all and just for a second or two I sat still on my couch, kinda shocked, lol.
And then when you really didn’t expect it in a much later part while talking to Dutch a horse comes walking with the head of Kieran. What the hell man, I really didn’t like this because I wanted to have more missions, more talking with him because he seemed like a cool dude. At the same time I do like how randomly this happened, no big dramatic cutscene or mission where it happens, it’s just there out of nowhere.
Or when Hosea got killed, I kept hoping the lawman wouldn’t do it, but they just did and that was it for good old Hosea. And right during freaking gameplay they end Lenny, not even a cutscene, no time to even mourn, crazy. But what really destroyed me was when Arthur visited the doctor, he had already not been looking too good since the island, but still.
From that point on you play as a dying man, and jesus this hit me hard. Maybe because I’ve had a lot of loved ones dying, maybe because I’m getting older like we all are, but I think especially because I had started to bond a great deal with Arthur. You do spend tons of hours playing as the guy and he’s far from dislikeable. Actually a very likeable outlaw, and despite his crimes he does have a heart.
And then during missions and after most missions you see and hear him getting sicker. His voice starts to get rougher, he increasingly looks sicker and sicker, I noticed how he became skinnier too. But that could be because for some reason I wasn’t able to get his weight back to normal, no matter how much I fed him. I loved how u got the option more during stranger missions to actually help them, make things right for Edith Downes and her son. I love how it wasn’t cheesy, Arthur made it clear he didn’t want any forgiveness, just for Edith to set away her pride, accept the money and have a better life.
I just love how we get some stranger missions only popping up at that point, because they make sense. Like the hunter guy. Or the way we learn about how he had a son when he spoke to Rains Fall. I adore the parts where Arthur just rides to a certain place and music kicks in, goosebumps all over man. Like the part where he gets back to Van Horn after visiting Guarma and he has to ride to Shady Belle to check on the gang, the song Unshaken kicks in and this stuff is just bliss.
Way later when he and Sadie have saved Abigail and he tells them to go, you have to ride to the Beaver Hollow camp to confront Dutch and Micac, we get beautiful music again, this time we hear words from the people we’ve helped out, we hear the doctor giving Arthur the diagnosis. I am not gonna lie, this stuff got me teary eyed 100%, this part destroyed me a bit. Later when the horse dies and Arthur goes back and thanks him, that got me too. And of course when he breaths his last breath while looking at the sky and Unshaken again playing…it ruined me.
I cannot think of many games that affected me this much. I absolutely got some tears when I was at the ending of MGS3 back when I was much younger but I can’t think of much else. It’s almost a day after and I’m still like “fuck man!”. Rockstar could have decided to just have Arthur killed in action and then you switch over to John but the way they handled this is magnificent. For a mission he had to be rough with a man that was already extremely sick, this man pretty much signed his death sentence too.
Arthur is easily Rockstar’s best protagonist ever for me. I remember the first trailer where he seemed like a douchebag, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t want to write a book here so I’ll just say what for me is the bit that keeps it from being a perfect game. It’s the story missions. Some very cool ones, but if the player had been given a bit more input, more options to take on these objectives, that would have made it perfect. You know, maybe some immersive sim elements like Dishonored and Prey allowed for. I also can’t deny that at times it did become a bit of a slog, but that could also be because I wanted to do everything the game has to offer. Every single mission, hunt every animal to get every outfit, every challenge and so on. In hindsight I wish I had ignored the non mission stuff and just went 100% for (story) missions only.
So I’m at the epilogue now, please no spoilers about any of this. But man, what an experience overall it has been. Rest in peace Arthur, for goddamn sure.
