i didnt know who to tell so i will sperg out here
I played rdr2 and here are some things that went over my head-
>Arthur morgan character is torn apart whether to be a self insert for the player or be an actual character. The character is just too good to be an outlaw and felt more like a cop.
There was this meme about how Arthur really is a psychopathic mass murderer (I know my Arthur was!) who will fly off the handle at people looking at him funny on the streets, but then greet twenty people on the same street he shot up ten minutes ago and achieve R E D E M P T I O N. Personally I found being a good person really difficult, as I kept getting into massive shootouts over nothing, and this one time I made a point of riding to Blackwater and back without dying while killing about a hundred Pinkertons certainly didn't reflect well on my honor. Honor itself being just how Arthur views himself, so... Yeah. Pointlessly helping around camp and greeting people on the streets does not a mass murderer unmake. But I guess when you have been so bad for so long, a small measure of redemption is all you can find.
I found it tracked better if you started as angry shooty man and then became honorable outlaw man. It really doesn't help how Arthur is just such an extension of Dutch and his ideals and views. Basically, Arthur is Dutch if Dutch hadn't gone crazy. To a point where he cares more about keeping the gang going than any goals of himself. He could have fucked off with Mary Linton, hell, just fucked off period, and been much better off for it. God knows none of the gang could have come to take him back.
There's this Hadish, Hamish? Dude in the game. He's basically Old Arthur. And I took that to mean that Arthur would just be happy living according to Dutch's ideals in a shack in the middle of nowhere. Live off the land, hunt and gather for yourself, defend yourself when necessary.
If you play High Honor Arthur all the way through, he really just doesn't track well at all and people will just wonder what the hell is he doing with a roving gang of robbers and murderers. He doesn't even just help the people he cares about, he helps damn near anybody, and if you keep his guns holstered in free roam, he rarely is the aggressor in any given conflict at all. Which makes him into more of a tragic hero who really just keeps extraordinarily bad company. Sure, he's done some bad stuff in the past, but... Is he really a bad guy? Outside of the whole career criminal thing. Even then, he tries to keep casualties to a minimum, and likely doesn't just rob people off the street.
>Sadie Adler is given a lot of passes and is also allowed to take revenge while other characters face consequences, also how come a simple rancher wife turned out not only to be a great shooter but also a master strategist and a better outlaw then the whole gang?
It's expanded in Online which a lot of players never really seem to touch. I didn't myself but I looked it up. In general it's all meta assumptions and implications, but there's a few as to her prowess:
- Dutch is heavily implied to be some sort of god tier marksman trainer. He taught Arthur how to Deadeye. 50-50 on whether John canonically can Deadeye before meeting Landon Rickets, but Dutch certainly could. Dutch was gonna be playable in the Low Honor Epilogue, but it got scrapped. He could have trained her, but then, I don't remember seeing many camp interactions between the two of them. Still, not implausible.
- She takes revenge succesfully because nobody gives a fuck about a dying gang of outlaws like Colm O'Driscoll's, who are her primary target. From a moral viewpoint, she takes revenge succesfully because it's not fun if the monster the villains created falls at the first hurdle and gets shot down by the guy who killed her husband.
- Gameplay and story segregation but she's a god damn idiot while in-game. She charges positions armed with her shitty revolver, she takes a year and a half to shoot, and she's REALLY hard to keep alive during that one John mission in a quarry unless you just start spamming Deadeye, which, granted, most players will do anyway. She's marginally better with a rifle but she's still terrible about sticking to cover. Ironically, her AI closely mirrors Micah's in that she's just supplementary DPS completely out in the open and extremely likely to catch a bullet sooner rather than later.
In a general sense, I think Sadie's this unstoppable woman because haha she's woman Arthur. I bet they drafted her character like that and that and then they just kept piling exploits onto her resumé. Mind you, the gang doesn't even make much use of her for how insanely effective she's supposed to be. Worst thing you can say is she's reckless and endangers innocents like that balloon pilot guy. Were she at the bank job, things would have likely gone a lot different.
>Why did micah even betrayed the gang? His betrayal almost led to him and the whole gang being Annihalted almost 3 to 4 times but no where there is any advantage to him. He dosen't get a government cut nor does he get an out and join the pinkertons, instead according to the net. He devised all this just be Dutch's bitch?
He's manipulative from the start. Dutch kinda sees through it. Hosea definitely sees through it. Arthur thinks he's full of shit. The gang, however, has just lost two pretty good gunmen and is implied to be hurting even at the start, so kicking out one of the most effective fighters they have wouldn't be a sound choice.
It's all implied, and to Arthur's detriment, he never really figures it out. The Pinkertons talk to him, see if he'll turn Dutch over. It's pretty easy to think other members of the gang got tapped too. Most probably turned it down, but Micah likely didn't. He was also running interference during the sitdown with Colm and later, and he's the one who got Arthur pinched. Micah was a rat from the start, and his goal was to get a gang large enough to pull heists way out of his scope, take them out, and pocket the money.
All in all, if Micah gets to keep the money, turn in the Van Der Linde gang and go free, no law to even chase him off, well... It's a pretty good deal. In the Epilogue, his corpse gets found by Ross, so, again, never stated, but heavily implied that Micah was still trying to somehow capture the remnants of the Van Der Linde gang and he was allowed to get the Blackwater heist money. Which does turn out to be a lot of money.
When he gets arrested, he makes a point of killing the guys he used to run with. It's apparently just his MO. Surprisingly enough, people like Joe and Cleet are loyal to him. Probably because he's really good with a gun.
Also the whole "It was probably Javier's role" thing. It doesn't exactly track well with how loyal Javier was still shown to be in RDR1, but you can easily chalk that up to RDR1 not thinking that far ahead when it came to the prequel. I think it being Javier would make a lot of sense. And he'd also have better reasons to betray the Van Der Lindes, like his conflicting loyalties to Mexico over them.
>The bad ending dosent makes sense, why would arthur betray john for money? he is already suffering tuberclosis and money won't do shit cause he has nothing that money can buy? And what ever you do in the game, the game ending is decided on these 2 choices?
I think this is mostly a player thing at that point. The ending choice doesn't just have to be about money. The money itself isn't even about the money, it's about the recognition. Arthur carried the whole gang on his back for many years, even when normal men would have been on their deathbed from TB. He forsook seeking a cure, or even slowing down to see if he could survive it longer just to get the most out of his last remaining weeks with the gang, while pushing himself to the limit.
Yet Dutch wouldn't even give him money for a hospital stay. Dutch wouldn't even prioritize getting him well. Dutch just wanted more money for his already large hoard. Arthur sees Dutch as his father, and this man, his adoptive father, doesn't even give a fuck about him dying and all he seems to want is to get the most out of him as he dies. So you're getting the money as a final middle finger to Dutch. Sure, you'll probably die soon after, but at least this piece of shit who literally molded you into a weapon and used you most of your life will be fuming over it. It's a really well written parent-son conflict, to be honest. First comes a rift, then estrangement, then enmity. All naturally over the course of a few months. Dutch is, after all, entirely in control of Arthur's life. Arthur himself doesn't really seem to want anything else, but when Dutch runs it into the ground, and Arthur starts making a few complaints, all he gets from Dutch is FAITH, ARTHUR. So since Dutch refused to even listen, Arthur may just want to get back at him.
Also, there's Micah. Are you, as a player, really gonna let this traitor motherfucker get away with it, scot free? Don't you want revenge? Sure, things have been out of your control story-wise, but in gameplay, you can probably take him down. If you're not spoiled, that might be enough to get you to try. If you're spoiled, and high honor, just knowing that Arthur takes his eye, one of the most important assets to a gunslinger, and will die soon after anyway, may be enough to get you to make that choice. If you're REALLY spoiled, you may just want to dodge-riposte him all day, which CAN and DOES kill him. The game basically doesn't know what to do after that, but you can make a headcanon ending where Arthur lucked out, nicked a couple vital arteries and Micah bled out painfully, while he told off Dutch, flipped him the double bird and died peacefully watching the sunrise. Or he actually makes it out with the money, bails to an island, and lives the rest of his days in peace in a farm. Maybe he even does beat TB. Hell, maybe he gets to gun down Dutch on the way out. At that point, it's all up to you. I understand why they didn't just do a golden non-canon ending like this, but I do miss the times when games had this sort of thing.
Low Honor Arthur hasn't really come to terms with the whole dying thing and does want to get well, so the money would help with that. Again, low Honor Arthur is a dude who routinely mass murders entire towns and shoots at people for the hell of it, so I guess this admittedly dumb and pointless choice makes a lot of sense for that character.
A lot of people have made this point over the years, but it would have been much better if the endings were called "Hope" and "Revenge" or something.
>How come a whole gang of rag muffins manage to destroy a city mafia and a powerful family? Without any consequences, no character die in these conflicts nor do the gang face any trouble? I was expecting some hunt or areas locked off where i cant go there any more, Instead it was no biggie
There's mafia around later and they do try to kill you, but it's rare. I guess locking down Saint Denis after already locking down large parts of the map would have been too much. As usual with Rockstar protagonists and their crews, they are just much better than everyone else at fighting, so it's, you know, not entirely realistic, but action movie stuff. It really isn't much more implausible than Tommy Vercetti taking down the Diaz Gang while saddled with Lance Vance, or CJ vs the entirety of the Ballas gang at once being a fair fight, skewed in CJ's favour, if anything.
The Mafia survives and is under new leadership anyway, so the new leader is likely grateful to these dudes. Or maybe the fact that you can ocasionally see Bronte soldiers around Saint Denis is just an oversight. I don't know. Bill could have caught a bullet or something during this.
>The redemption arc of arthur is too forced and every cutscene just shows arthur as a sorry fellow who regrets he did bad things, out of which he did only one bad thing which in game and out of player's control that the player can later fix it by doing the side mission. While Rest is his past before the main game began.
This I can say is mostly a player thing. After the TB your honor gains and losses are multiplied, so that's the point to start working towards a redemption if you've been naughty Arthur up to there. It really depends on how much and how you play it. I was going on shooting sprees all day in the early game, and actively tried to change that as the game went on so Arthur could be high honor, so to me, it felt like I did have to put in some work for the good ending. My Arthur had plenty of stuff to be sorry for.
Girlfriend played it though. Never shot a soul unless necessary. Worst thing she did was lasso some dude and kick him in the face. Would disarm enemies in duels rather than headshot them. Tried to fish and couldn't ever keep a single fish. Tried to hunt, it was too sad. She thought it'd have been more like Animal Crossing. Figured out to stand on rocks to prevent being instakilled by wildcats. Refused to kill any wildcats. Ran from the Legendary Cougar. Never tracked the Legendary Bear. When she had to kill a lion she just went "No." and Alt F4'd. Ran from conflict "Because I'd have to kill them if I stay!" when the supposed redemption came about she was rolling her eyes every two seconds because "Dude, my Arthur was ALREADY good, what even is this" She was right, and so are you.
Basically, the game dangles the shooty and fighty fun in front of you, then punishes you for it. In GTA there were never any real consequences for engaging in the fun stuff. You could hire hookers, get into gunfights and steal and murder with impunity. Red Dead 2 basically puts roadblocks on the whole thing, but the thing is, gaming and culture in general has changed a lot since the days when GTA first started becoming big.
The early days of the murder sandbox where players would usually cheat straight away for weapons, start sowing chaos and almost never care about the story are long gone. Most players I've seen are fairly civil. Hell, a lot of GTA online players were fairly civil back when I still played, and many of them were annoyed at me shooting them on sight because "That's rude, man." and similar stuff.
Also, when I got control of John and didn't have to care about honor any more? Back to shooty fighty fun it was. But a lot of players really don't do free roam chaos. I've seen guys playing this who just bail from camp, set up their own camp and just hunt and gather for weeks at a time. The gang sends someone to check on you. This never even happened to me, I was doing gang stuff and criminal stuff pretty much 24/7. The honor system and the redemption thing will just completely miss some more peaceful, nicer players who really just don't do anything dishonorable at all. To them, there just is no redemption, Arthur was always good... Because trying to make the player feel guilty over stuff Arthur has done in the past, whether it does make him a bad guy or not, is pretty pointless. It was before we ever controlled him, so it's not on us.
I apologize for the texto mucho, but the game was very dissapointing and idk why people like it?
Ah, it brought up a lot of valid points and the game was disappointing in some regards. To me, the thing that soured my whole experience was a AAA game with gamebreaking bugs if you played with controller on PC. Some chair QTE sequence at one point in Guarma. Fucked up my no death run. I was probably more mad about it than I should have been. Ended up doing one with keyboard anyway, but like... That shit's amateur hour. Resident Evil 6 had this stuff back in the day too. Really aggravating.
