Red Dead Redemption - Once More, With Meaning
Spoilers for Red Dead Redemption follow. You’ve been warned!
Games, open worlds especially, often have trouble ending. Sure, they often have finales, where the hero beats the big bad, the day is saved, etc etc… but they struggle to be final.
A lot of these games will simply plop you back into the world just prior to the final fight. “Go explore!” they say. “See the #content you missed!” This leaves it up to the player to decide when they are done with a game.
On one hand, that’s great - if you want to keep interacting with the world, exploring, trophy hunting, getting stronger. On the other, it leaves behind a taste of dissatisfaction, that a game has just kind of, petered out by the time you decide to put the controller down. You always know that the game world will forever be frozen in place, like an ex who will not move on, waiting for you as if you’d never left.
Because of this, their stories, and the messages they bring, suffer. Any conclusion is never truly concluded. Any reflection of a message is brushed passed. Any lessons a tale may have is washed away by the next level, the extra side content, the ever perpetual game loop.
Finality continues to become ever scarce in our interactive worlds.
Red Dead Redemption could have ended with the mission “And The Truth Will Set You Free”. It could have you complete your mission, take down Dutch, and go home to your family. But it doesn’t, because that’s not the story it is here to tell.
After the final showdown, there are nine more missions and one side mission left solely for the end. They all focus on three key characters of John’s life - Uncle, Abigail and Jack. They aren’t particularly difficult - in fact, they align most with the introductory missions of the game.
Mechanically, they focus on the fundamentals of ranch life - herding cattle, wrangling wild horses, hunting for food. Narratively, they provide a slow exhale, a chance to reflect on your journey, and the meaning that can be pulled from your adventures.
Uncle, Threads of the Past
In Uncle, John can only see his past. A life all but completely spent, wasted. A resentment for what has been.
John’s treatment of Uncle is harsh and brutal, particularly stark next to his interactions with his wife and son. Yet, that is the Marston we’ve known for the last 30 hours. While arguably deserved with a handful characters through the game, Marston is always quick to defer to threat of violence - if not the muzzle itself. Uncle is undeserving of this treatment - yet all John can see when he looks at that face is a past of pain.
Uncle is rooted in the old world. He is a connection to a past that can never be severed - it is a part of who John is now, that can never be denied. John knows this. And that knowledge only fuels his bitterness toward him.
Abigail, Sowing the Seeds of Change
Marston dons a plethora of outfits as he blends in with a swath of varying colourful characters. With Abigail, he is simply John.
There is a dropping of the guard between John and his wife that only comes from years of knowing each other. Theirs is a love built from mutual respect, deep understanding, and open-hearted truth.
Their moments alone reflect the best of them - open, honest conversations, laying bare of fears and doubts, and most of all, their shared hope. Hope for a brighter future, of a safe and secure world. Not for them, though. They understand and accept, on an almost subconscious level, that their past can not be forgiven in the new world.
Their hope for the future is instead for their son, whom their sole wish is to break free of their shackles, and have the chance to thrive in a world that they never could.
Jack, A Foreboding Hope for the Future
John’s interactions with his son are soaked in apprehension. They are written with the knowledge that time between these two is limited. They are spoken with a primal need to impart a lifetime of knowledge in the span of a few short days.
By traditional measures, John Marston has succeeded. He’s free of a life of crime, living The Dream on his own ranch with his family, and has put the gruelling government “job" thrust upon him in the past. But John, in his core being, suffocates in his failure. His sins are behind him, but they can never be truly gone. He knows his due will come.
The only hope left for a positive future rests solely at Jack’s feet. All John can do is use whatever time he has left wisely, and hope that his son learns from a lifetime of a father’s mistakes.
We’re quite used to action in our video games. We shoot and we kill, we break the law and we leave a path of destruction in our wake. What we don’t often see is the quiet moments; the times when our protagonists can simply just be, once they have finished performing their heroic(?) duties.
The time we spend with our protagonists are never a time of normalcy. Players demand action, adventure, intrigue and plot twists. The characters we control rarely get a chance to be, of all things, simply ordinary.
Red Dead Redemption’s finale isn’t simply “the bad man had what was coming to him”, or “the government is a corrupt body that discards its people when it no longer has use for them.” They are the crude crux of the action ploy, sure; but they are only part of the tale. They are not a reflection of the lives and lessons learned of those a part of it.
The stories we tell are a reflection of emotions, of snapshots; of lessons learned. The conclusion to John’s reminds us that stories are meant to be listened to, and learned from. They are meant to end, and we are meant to be better for hearing them.