Red Dead 3/Red Dead Redemption 2 - IT'S HAPPENING.gif

[Mega Black]

dragged. People already complained that Colter dragged too long.

I am sure they restructured the opening quite heavily across the development but imagine if there was a span of time where you play in the Blackwater area and then go to Colter, the pacing would have been fucked.

It would have been cool to see this heist in person, but it's not really necessary.

He could just as well be a Progressive, a fascist or any other thing if it justified waging his pointless war against the world.

This is really how I think it's meant to be interpreted, it just so happens that not being racist makes him more palatable to modern audiences as well.

John in 1 really puts it well. He remarks that Dutch and the gang talked talk about all their noble intentions, but it didn't really mean anything. They were just bad people.

By the time we see the gang in 2 they have already regressed to the point of preying on the little guy in a way that Dutch lies and says they aren't and don't do. The debt collection turns the gang into the exact same kind of corrupt government entity style usury Dutch's supposed anti-capitalist ass should take direct umbrage with.

It isn't badly written that the gang are hypocrites. It's the whole point.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I am sure they restructured the opening quite heavily across the development but imagine if there was a span of time where you play in the Blackwater area and then go to Colter, the pacing would have been fucked.

It would have been cool to see this heist in person, but it's not really necessary.

This is really how I think it's meant to be interpreted, it just so happens that not being racist makes him more palatable to modern audiences as well.

John in 1 really puts it well. He remarks that Dutch and the gang talked talk about all their noble intentions, but it didn't really mean anything. They were just bad people.

By the time we see the gang in 2 they have already regressed to the point of preying on the little guy in a way that Dutch lies and says they aren't and don't do. The debt collection turns the gang into the exact same kind of corrupt government entity style usury Dutch's supposed anti-capitalist ass should take direct umbrage with.

It isn't badly written that the gang are hypocrites. It's the whole point.

It isn't a bad concept but I do feel like it's badly written. Maybe it's unfair, but I got the vibe that the game wanted to have its cake and eat it too.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I found the forced KKK random encounter and Slave Hunter side missions to be more annoying that Charles or Lenny being in the gang tbqh

I disagree with the slave catcher one being annoying because it's the only side mission in RDR2 that even comes close to having that same eerie, and disturbing feeling as the majority of the ones in RDR1 did.

The KKK random encounters are utter bullshit though because they're incredibly anachronistic, and serve no purpose to the plot, or world-building. They should've been cut entirely.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I disagree with the slave catcher one because it's the only side mission in RDR2 that even comes close to having that same eerie, and disturbing feeling as the majority of the ones in RDR1 did.

I think it feels out of place for Arthur to be so vindictive about slavery.

I also feel it's one of the few times that the game is trying to send a clear "message" with how there is no honor loss for murdering the guy.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I think it feels out of place for Arthur to be so vindictive about slavery.

I also feel it's one of the few times that the game is trying to send a clear "message" with how there is no honor loss for murdering the guy.

I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense for him to be so upset. Why wouldn't it? Arthur's not racist, and it's not the only time in the game where he's disgusted by the practice.

Same with there not being any honor loss for what you do to the guy. He's an unrepentant ex-slave catcher. Like it, or not, the sort of shit was, and still is really, really fucked up, and honestly, it'd be weird if you did lose honor for killing the guy. Although, I guess I could see the argument that killing him would be letting him off too easily, that he deserved to suffer for the rest of his life, and who is Arthur to judge because he's also an outlaw, but that's beside the point.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense for him to be so upset. Why wouldn't it?

You're saying this from the perspective of living in modern day America. Not late 1800's America.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

You're saying this from the perspective of living in modern day America. Not late 1800's America.

No, it actually does make sense for Arthur to be upset because of how he's written, as unrealistic as that may be.

 

[Mega Black]

but I got the vibe that the game wanted to have its cake and eat it too.

I don't necessarily disagree. The game uses Dutch's ideology as an excuse to have you play a badass gunslinger in the late 1800s while also making it so that neither John or Arthur have any icky racist thoughts or tendencies, but extrapolated to the whole gang, it does go out of its way to show that Dutch and the gang are hypocritical.

No, it actually does make sense for Arthur to be upset because of how he's written, as unrealistic as that may be.

Yeah it makes sense for Arthur to shit on the guy but the way the quest ends feels a little too mouthpiecey, and you should have had a choice to return the items for money or not.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

You all fucking mystify me sometimes.

You realize that the abolitionists in the Civil War, 35 years before the game is set (so, well in living memory), were repulsed by slavery to the point that the War more or less began with one of them trying to start a slave revolt and exterminate every slave owner and was cheered on by the Northern press? Or how one of the main books that lead to it depicted slave owners as sadistic murderers?

Why the fuck would Arthur NOT despise a slave catcher? It's hypocritical, it's gross, but it's not just consistent with his character as written, it's consistent with how quite a few people in the Civil War era, much less later, felt. Even a lot of Southern slaveowners had a hypocritical relationship to drivers and catchers and reviled them. Like a necessary evil.

Sometimes I think people around here, talking about fiction, overcorrect. There were large chunks of the country that were never segregated at all. Had a lot of voluntary de facto segregation, but plenty of places where people mixed. Especially poor people and, you guessed it, criminals. Whites and Indians did TONS of business together and ran in mixed gangs. Indian and Black gangs, too. Can't think of White and Black, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't happen.

I think Kiwi Farms often has this sort of overcorrection. A good chunk of people in the past were opposed to this kind of stuff. It's like you've taken all that propaganda that the US was filled with AmeriNazis and then decided it's normal instead of evil.

@BunnyTracks The KKK is out of date in the sense that they were only really active in Reconstruction and the 1920s (and later), so RDR2 falls in a period of time between the Klan being a purely Southern resistance campaign and being a nationwide proto-fascist movement. They're out of date in a narrow sense, but it's also a setting with fictional states and cities and stuff, so it's like, I don't really care?

I'm much more bothered by the Confederate holdouts, who are goofy as hell running around 35 years after the war ended. And the thing is, they could have set it in the 1870s (wouldn't have been a sequel, but it could have been a Landon Ricketts prequel, which probably would have been much more fun and interesting than another damn elegiac Western) if they wanted Confederate holdouts (Redshirts and Klansmen) to be a big part of the game. Politics of Rockstar aside, I think the Mississippi River Valley of Reconstruction would be a very fitting setting, or with more epic scope, a three-part epic of Antebellum, Wartime, and Reconstruction.

I also like Civil War era Arizona Territory for having absolute chaos with both American and Mexican civil wars and several rampaging groups of Indians.

Somebody should make a game set in the 1930s American heartland. It wouldn't fit for RDR, but Depression era bank robbers fill a space that nobody has.

My problem with Arthur and Friends is that it always feels like the game is satisfied with itself, dunked on that evil bigot and you’re supposed to cheer with full soyface. Simultaneously cheer them on for their rampage on pioneer America while also doing the whole morally gray thing. I don’t like it. It feels skeevy and dishonest.

But the premise that someone in that era isn’t a bigot is ridiculous is itself absurd. It’s like those people that expect everyone from before Civil Rights to have been racist, even though Civil Rights had to have come from somewhere, you know?

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

You realize that the abolitionists in the Civil War, 35 years before the game is set (so, well in living memory), were repulsed by slavery

How many of these abolitionists were outlaws?

"I may call a bunch of thieves and murderers my family, but I draw the line at slavery!"

It isn't that there are abolitionists in the game. It's that it's fucking stupid for Arthur to be one. You even seem to think this by saying it's hypocritical. It's not the *only* thing that is stupid and hypocritical about Arthur in the game by any means, not even the only one that bothers me, but it's the one "racial" thing (well that and the KKK event) I was annoyed with.

 

[William Murderface]

I took it as Arthur is all about freedom and not being beholden to anyone. As a result, he is disgusted by slavery. Not just in dealing with the slave trader, but the slaves kept in the Saint Denis pawn shop. And he isn't in the least bit thrilled with racism simply because he taken men one at a time. He even tells the white supremist in Saint Denis when he mentioned he's even known Chinese and Italians and never had a problem with any of them. So it isn't a big stretch that he goes after the KKK types or helps out the black doctor he runs into in Rhodes or the Wapiti or anyone else. Mostly he wants left alone.

He and John (and Charles and Javier and Hosea and Lenny) have a moral code of a sorts. They're thieves and stone cold killers but only want to be left alone to live their own lives in a world they see as increasingly not letting them. They don't rob people who don't have anything unless forced to by outside forces (robbing Shamus' cousin to get the carriage) and when they do rob the little folk they take a hit to their honor level for it. But they don't hesitate to rob the rich and powerful who they see as keeping oppressing them. They don't kill unless forced to and when they do Hosea sees it and tells Dutch to his face they're nothing more than killers who have no moral code. Arthur clearly dislikes being Strauss' loansharking muscle but does it because the camp needs money. That doesn't mean Arthur et al will hesitate to pull a gun and go to town when needed, just that they have no desire to simply kill or cause chaos unlike Micah or Dutch who both seem to delight in it. Even Bill has his introspective moments where he almost seems to regret what he's had to do to survive, like in the boat ride to attack Bronte when he seems haunted by the death and destruction he saw in the Army against the Indians. Arthur even calls out Dutch for killing the old crone while they were in Guarma. Plus Arthur and John both keep their words. John even tells Abigail he's always honest, maybe not always good, but always honest and Abigail retorts that her whole life she's been surrounded by men with moral codes that don't seem to include just helping people. But John does put his family first once he accepts them as his family, even if Abigail doesn't see John's efforts on the ranch because he tries to help the rancher who had given John a chance at a new life. John was trying, but Abigail just didn't see it until he built Beecher's Hope.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

How many of these abolitionists were outlaws?

Probably not many. But just because someone's a criminal that doesn't mean they don't have political/social views or principles. It just makes them disgusting.

Like, take Eldridge Cleaver for example. He was a Communist and Black Power guy, but was also a serial rapist who bragged about raping women, including those of his own race. If anything you often find criminal lowlifes adopting some kind of ideology to justify their misbehavior, it's just that most of the time they're too stupid to express it coherently, unless some asshole takes them under their wing. Which is basically the case of Antifa and their 1960s-1970s predecessors.

"I may call a bunch of thieves and murderers my family, but I draw the line at slavery!"

Yeah. Arthur's a shitbag.

Okay, I'll give a real example. You know how pedophiles have this reputation for getting killed in prison? Whereas regular murderers don't. (I assume child murderers do.) Now, common sense would say that a regular murderer, let's say one that had no valid excuse for what they did, has done a worse act. At best they're maybe an EQUAL to the molester, but that murderer has stolen someone's entire life. Despite that, murderers will stay act morally righteous for carving up the pedo.

I figure it's exactly like that. I'm complete human trash, but I can make some arbitrary distinction between my villainy and someone else's villainy to make myself feel better, even feel good despite being a blight on the world.

It isn't that there are abolitionists in the game. It's that it's fucking stupid for Arthur to be one.

I disagree.

What does bother me is Arthur speaks with a very thick Texan/Anglo-Louisiana accent but seems to regard himself as not being Southern and shares Daddy Dutch's bigotries. I suspect they just weren't thinking at all when they wrote that.

Now, I will say: there were WAY more outlaw gangs that were ex-Confederates than ex-Union. The Civil War was even what basically caused that problem. Probably was just because the South was torn up and the North wasn't.

You even seem to think this by saying it's hypocritical.

Hypocrisy isn't bad character writing, though. It might be a bad choice for a protagonist since it's an especially ugly and unjustifiable character flaw, but it's very realistic.

It's not the *only* thing that is stupid and hypocritical about Arthur in the game by any means, not even the only one that bothers me, but it's the one "racial" thing (well that and the KKK event) I was annoyed with.

I was annoyed with a lot of little things in this game. American Krogan's video hits every single thing I noticed, but he also includes a bunch of other crap that's just him reaching. The single most horrendously retarded thing is not being able to insult (much less shoot) in the Indian reservation.

One thing that's a bit annoying is that they don't give the same Burger King Kids Club approach to the villains, which a lot of older, pre-woke media would have. Specifically, you've occasionally got Black gangsters and there's the Indians in the Skinners, but you can tell they wanted to have an Indian faction with the Skinners but pussied out, whereas the Whites have weird swamp people, weird hill people, weird incest farm people.

They could have made the Nite Folk be swamp Louisiana Blacks with voodoo and shit, made the Skinners be Indians, and then you'd have a gang of fucked up nightmare people for every race just like you've got allies/gang members from those different groups.

What's odd is that the Mexicans only seem represented in game (besides Javier) to be greasy bandito stereotypes.



Maybe this'll sound dumb, but honestly bros I wish they made more games where you play as the hero. Not an antihero. Not some morally gray wank. Just to be the actual good guy.

 

[William Murderface]

The Skinners were a missed opportunity. They could have easily made them Indians, thrown in some dialog about them being pissed off Wapitis that didn't get sent to Canada with Rains Fall, and they have some mysterious leader and a base of operations somewhere in West Elizabeth no one can find. It's a call back to Dutch and his Indians in the first game.

Either that or after you clear the Skinners out locals in West Elizabeth will mention in passing an increase of Indian attacks from the west into the area or something so that by the time you do encounter Dutch in RDR1 there is more of a link to them.

But we know why R* made all the gangs white (except for the Del Lobos who were expressly said to be multi-racial with Mexicans and whites by Sadie).

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I heard a theory somewhere that suggested the Skinners were originally supposed to be the remnants of the Natives kept at Fort Riggs, and that's why they have so many Native things about them, why they have no backstory outside, or lore outside of hating civilization, and why Fort Riggs feels like it was supposed to have more importance to the plot, and why it has more cut content than other parts of the game.

When you put it in that context, things make a lot of sense, especially the part about them hating civilization.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Why the fuck would Arthur NOT despise a slave catcher? It's hypocritical, it's gross, but it's not just consistent with his character as written, it's consistent with how quite a few people in the Civil War era, much less later, felt. Even a lot of Southern slaveowners had a hypocritical relationship to drivers and catchers and reviled them. Like a necessary evil.

At least for me the issue is that it doesn't feel earned. People who hated slavery had more concrete religious or moral reasons than a murderer who, depending on the player, doesn't believe in anything. And seemingly is willing to hurt other people's liberties as long as it isn't race related reason. The target is also a person on the bottom rung of the totem pole that (now) should be hated because relations to slavery, despite never owning slaves himself.

It's current year "You have to hate something because what it represents without needing any reason".

 

[Snekposter]

At least for me the issue is that it doesn't feel earned. People who hated slavery had more concrete religious or moral reasons than a murderer who, depending on the player, doesn't believe in anything. And seemingly is willing to hurt other people's liberties as long as it isn't race related reason. The target is also a person on the bottom rung of the totem pole that (now) should be hated because relations to slavery, despite never owning slaves himself.

It's current year "You have to hate something because what it represents without needing any reason".

Or Arthur can just hate and resent authority. You're talking about a man who hates bounty hunters despite frequently working as one to help put money in the gang's coffers. Hell, in a camp convo Hosea even bitches at Bill for being lazy and rattles off a bunch of things for him to do, one of which is to go take on a bounty. Logically and even morally consistent the gang is not.

As to anachronisms like the KKK... didn't the Housers outright admit they were creating a Hollywood western in video game form? Hell, there's even random kapwings in combat like in those old pulp Westerns. The KKK showing up for no reason isn't exactly out of place when you realize you're in a modern take on a spaghetti Western or some 1950's serial instead of a serious recreation of 1899 America.

 

[Sergeant Bilko]

it isn't a big stretch that he goes after the KKK types or helps out the black doctor he runs into in Rhodes or the Wapiti or anyone else. Mostly he wants left alone.

If Arthur Morgan just wanted to be left alone he would not be helping strangers or running with a gang. Morgan kills more people in the game than most serial killers in real life. He does this despite how many "good" choices you make or how many fish you catch and release. The people Morgan kills are overwhelmingly individuals trying to hold him or members of his gang accountable for stealing, murder, and a litany of other misdeeds. It's a stretch to show a man like Arthur having compassion and empathy for people who are being abused because he's a thieving murderer who inflicts a tremendous amount of abuse on innocent people.

"Well Arthur is supposed to change" He does not change. At the beginning of the game Morgan guns down hordes of law enforcement officers during a bank robbery. At end of the game Morgan guns down hordes of law enforcement officers breaking Jim Milton out of prison. Throughout the game Morgan is constantly inflicting suffering and abuse on innocent people.

They're thieves and stone cold killers but only want to be left alone to live their own lives in a world they see as increasingly not letting them

They. murder. and. rob. innocent. people. Nothing about that lifestyle indicates that they want to be left alone. They just don't want to be held responsible for their crimes.

They don't rob people who don't have anything unless forced to by outside forces

Morgan robs train passengers. He robs stores, pedestrains, travelers, herders, homesteads, the list goes on and on. Morgan patently does not care about the hardship he repeatedly inflicts on innocent people.

Arthur even calls out Dutch for killing the old crone while they were in Guarma.

and does exactly nothing to intervene on her behalf. Nor does Morgan intervene when, after breaking Micah out of the Strawberry jail Micah kills a woman. Then there's all the innocent people Morgan kills. . . .

just that they have no desire to simply kill or cause chaos unlike Micah or Dutch who both seem to delight in it.

Morgan breaks Micah out of jail. Morgan robs a train full of innocent people. Morgan robs sheep herders. Morgan robs homesteads. Morgan repeatedly robs, murders, or otherwise inflicts suffering on innocent strangers who are unlucky enough to cross paths with him. It does not matter if Morgan enjoys his misdeeds.

Even Bill has his introspective moments where he almost seems to regret what he's had to do to survive

Bill CHOOSES to rob and murder just like every other member of The Wet Bandits.

Morgan is a villain no matter what you do in the game. Dan Houser's inane attempts to generate sympathy or redemption for Morgan fail because of the extreme suffering Morgan repeatedly inflicts upon innocent people. When Arthur, Lenny, and Sean died I felt zero remorse because of all the terrible things I saw them do to innocent people. I felt more sorrow at the death of Morgan's horse; not like the poor thing choose to carry around an asshole like Morgan.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

If Arthur Morgan just wanted to be left alone he would not be helping strangers or running with a gang. Morgan kills more people in the game than most serial killers in real life. He does this despite how many "good" choices you make or how many fish you catch and release. The people Morgan kills are overwhelmingly individuals trying to hold him or members of his gang accountable for stealing, murder, and a litany of other misdeeds. It's a stretch to show a man like Arthur having compassion and empathy for people who are being abused because he's a thieving murderer who inflicts a tremendous amount of abuse on innocent people.

"Well Arthur is supposed to change" He does not change. At the beginning of the game Morgan guns down hordes of law enforcement officers during a bank robbery. At end of the game Morgan guns down hordes of law enforcement officers breaking Jim Milton out of prison. Throughout the game Morgan is constantly inflicting suffering and abuse on innocent people.

But Micah is seen as bad guy. Arthur here is a cold blooded mass murderer, WAY worse than him but because Micah is racist and not as "wholesome" as precious Arthur he is the villain.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

The problem isn't that Arthur is a bad person. The problem is that the game goes out of its way to act like he's not that, even when he clearly is, and the braindead fandom believes it because they can't get Arthur's balls out of their mouths for five seconds.

That, and the fact that this kind of "tell, don't show" bullshit wasn't a thing in RDR1.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Morgan is a villain no matter what you do in the game. Dan Houser's inane attempts to generate sympathy or redemption for Morgan fail because of the extreme suffering Morgan repeatedly inflicts upon innocent people. When Arthur, Lenny, and Sean died I felt zero remorse because of all the terrible things I saw them do to innocent people. I felt more sorrow at the death of Morgan's horse; not like the poor thing choose to carry around an asshole like Morgan.

But you see, he isn't racist or involved in capitalism so he is a good guy who's simply misunderstood. More seriously it's guilty of the writing sin that anyone who is not explicitly named might as well be literal in universe NPCs, which basically makes gameplay pointless as a narrative part of the game.