#red dead spoilers

[sapphic-outlaw]

made a dumbass meme + an alternative

[marstonsboy]

you guys remember how dutch says “when i’m gone, they’ll just find another monster. they have to, because they have to justify their wages” to john before he dies? now remember that and try not to think about jack marston killing a former government agent and dooming himself to the life of an outlaw at nineteen years old. try not to think about how he made himself the new monster the bureau wanted dead.

[iicaru2]

ruined my own day just now by remembering that, upon finding her husband’s corpse riddled with bullets in front of their home, abigail immediately went to feel for a heartbeat despite it being genuinely impossible for him to have survived that, and her sixteen-year-old son was the one who had to pull her away from john’s body while she sobbed and desperately tried to find any sign of life

[acewhitlock]

rip Arthur Morgan you wouldve loved cracker barrel

[aintan0driscollnomore]

since jack's real name is john [there's proof in rdr1], do you think in 1914 if anyone ever found out and called him by his real name instead of the name he had gone by his whole life he would either just start breaking down sobbing thinking about what happened to his dad just 3 years earlier or he would instead show all the emotions he's had pent up for all those years [even after killing agent ross] through aggression and violence and end up shutting himself out for days to even a month or two

[puffyhairedhipster]

was doing chores around camp and just overheard Hosea talk about Bessie and how she’s in heaven and he’s definitely not gonna go there PLEASE MY EYES ARE DROWNING

[ratwife77]

RDR2 in retrospect

Major Spoilers!!!!

Things to keep in mind: I have a bad memory and I didn’t look anything up again because I wanted to see what stuck with me

And I played rdr1 first

Chapter 1: Colter

Probably my least favorite. It certainly does its job, but I wasn’t super invested yet. I got really excited to see John, it wasn’t necessarily lackluster, but this chapter pays for how short it is. The hunting mission with Charles was nice, too.

Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook

One of my favorites because camp was bustling and I liked stopping and talking to literally everyone. Also, I remember listening to Dutch and Molly fighting and that stuck with me, Dutch’s priorities. The missions for Strauss made me feel so icky that I avoided them and yeah.. The mission with Lenny is really rooted in my mind because my game was glitching so in the saloon the walls were disappearing?? I remember a conversation with Mary Beth and I think one with Tilly where Arthur talked about feeling like he was hurting more innocent people. Very important to establish, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. As a whole I think this chapter is very important for setting the foundation and is very fun to play through.

Chapter 3: Clemens Point

This is the real turning point in my mind— it was built up to before but at this point I think sets it in stone. Dutch won’t listen to Hosea and his eyes are definitely turned in a different direction (or if you’d like to argue he just got worse at hiding it- I don’t have a true stance on this yet) than before. Also, I think the Braithewaites vs Greys plot line was well realized. I really like the fishing mission with Hosea and Dutch and it’s easy to see why Arthur was so wrapped in it, especially if Dutch wasn’t so sloppy about everything before. The mission where you escape the O’Driscolls I think had room for growth, it felt very climatic and then it dropped off pretty fast because of the lack of consequences. We get a time skip and.. and what? But the escape was really fun to play through! And Sean’s death also set a big change in tone.

Chapter 4: Saint Denis

Saving Jack and all was awesome and it was nice to see John stepping in the right direction. An important thing in this chapter was Dutch going after Angelo Bronte and I think this is one of the first times where Arthur questions him out loud?? My memory could be way off. Not even a main mission, but the missions with Father whatever his name was and the Nun were great and it was inspiring to hear what they both had to say to him, the option they presented to him. It’s never too late to do better, really. Not everything will be fixed, but you can do what you can. Redemption is possible. Hosea and Lenny dying... man. Ultimately I do wish Hosea had more missions like the hunting one just with Arthur because I don’t really feel like I know him as much as I should considering his role in Arthur’s life. But to be fair, I need a lot of story to come around to a character enough to say I know them.

Chapter 5: Guarma

I really liked this chapter because I was starting to want a break from the main areas and really, just something new and less “open” was nice. I liked the open world but it could get overwhelming just how many things I had in front of me. In general I think it’s important to have things like this in games, switching gameplay up. The brutality Dutch shows the guide was disturbing and served its purpose for sure. Also, the mission where you escape was one of my favorite missions and I don’t really know why but it’s just very fun. Getting back from Guarma and the music that plays.. literally one of the top moments for the entire game.

Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow

Tuberculosis. Hearing all the things that people said and seeing the golden lighting and the deer was just unforgettable and I just can’t fault anything about it. Dutch refusing to go back for John and Arthur doing it with Sadie was written well. Arthur’s preparations for John and all.. the whole chapter was hard to play because I knew what was coming, but I still found myself rushing because the story is like watching a train wreck happen.

So. I went with John, and then Arthur’s death made me cry. I didn’t cry for anyone else’s (at least in rdr2) and I just generally don’t cry but I almost didn’t want to keep playing after because it hurt so bad, even though I love John.

Epilogue, Pt 1: Pronghorn Ranch

A solid chapter, but it had big shoes to fill after 6. I didn’t enjoy it as much simply because of its placement, but I won’t discredit it. John taking out Jack is very clumsy but it feels right considering John’s character at the time. Abigail and Jack leaving and John trying to be better is wonderful and I don’t think anything can really be done for this chapter to make it much better, but if I see a take I like I’ll definitely come back and point it out. One thing that really annoyed me here was lack of certain resources but it makes sense story wise.

Epilogue Part 2: Beecher’s Hope

Enjoyed this more than part 1. It was nice to see Charles, Uncle, and Sadie. Also I felt so bad for Uncle 😭

The proposal mission made me so happy I can’t, I usually don’t get super attached to canon ships but awwwww

The last mission, now. Absolutely killed me to see Abigail begging John not to go and him going anyway. Honestly I think both of them have a fair point of view. The end of the mission was perfect and the music during the fight was so good. I know that’s a very bad explanation but I’ll need a whole post about it. It was very tense and felt like the correct conclusion to everything.

[magewardensurana]

Gee Dutch, how come the narrative let's you have two fridged partners whoes deaths steadily drove you down a dark path from which you could never return?

[freakofnurtures]

i am going to explode.

[1000emotions]

someone edit john to this song omg. “old habits die screaming” pretty much sums up the rdr2 epilogue

[sapphic-outlaw]

Asshole. lmao

[marstonsboy]

on the topic of that time sixteen-year-old jack marston got mauled by a grizzly bear: he definitely retained some scars from that, right? when john finds him, he’s covered in a decent amount of blood, and he has visible scratches on his face.

his character model doesn’t reflect that he almost died to a full grown bear after the event. maybe rockstar didn’t know how to do this in 2010, i don’t know, but i always assumed he got some nasty scars from it. because, i reiterate, he was a scrawny sixteen-year-old that almost died to a Massive Grizzly Bear.

plus, with the fact that he almost definitely would have died right there if not for the plot armor of being haunted by the narrative (doomed to become the playable character in the de facto epilogue), i have to imagine there’s no way he walked out of that alive without any very obvious signs of injury.

this would also lend to the fact that he can get very easily mistaken for john multiple times by strangers. there’s this one stranger who tells him “you look younger,” as if the only obvious discrepancy here is jack being about twenty years younger than john, not the absence of those vicious scars he got from the wolves.

something something cinematic parallels. i don’t know. this is just something that bugs me a lot in the back of my mind.

[iicaru2]

i still really hate the opinion that rdr2 “ruined” john’s character. like, no, it didn’t. john is not perfect. john has never been perfect. multiple times in rdr1 he admits to not having been the best father. there have also been implications in rdr1 for almost fifteen years now that john has walked out on his family before! the events of rdr2 are not unprecedented! 1899 john didn’t come out of nowhere!

jack says to john that he feels he has to prove himself, or john will leave again. when he’s 19 he makes it pretty clear in dialogue to edgar ross that he understands john was forced against his will to do the bureau’s dirty work in order to keep his family safe. he knows john did not willingly leave in 1911, and that isn’t what he’s talking about. abigail says to john that jack is “a kid growing up without a father.”

john himself even tells jack at one point that he hasn’t always been the best father. he admits he’s made mistakes. he loves his wife and son more than anything in the entire world, but he knows that he’s flawed. he’s not a perfect person whatsoever and it irks me when people complain about him being unrecognizable in rdr2— as if that isn’t the point? we’re seeing him 12 years younger. none of us are the same people we were 12 years ago. he has issues on top of issues and he gets better. he doesn’t get to the point he’s at where we meet him in rdr1, but he gets close enough that his character development makes sense.

tldr he’s fantastically written, i really like his character development, and i’ll never get over the marston family ever

[zaddyazula]

rdr2 spoilers under the cut

this cutscene is really interesting to me because it really does start to mark the shift in the game’s narrative. sean’s death is the beginning of this shift, almost foretelling of what’s to come, but you’re still safely in chapter 3 territory at that point; it’s only when you get (officially) introduced to saint denis that this shift starts to become apparent (at least to someone who’s played the game before. obviously, first time players won’t have a clue in the world what’s about to happen). the smoke billowing up into the sky, the grit of the city that’s visible even in the sliver of it you see in this cutscene: it’s nothing positive. chapter 4 is such a pivotal chapter, not with only the deaths and missions, but with the obvious (the tuberculosis diagnosis), and the mood the game fully develops into after that. there is a sense of pure dread to me in this scene, but even without the knowledge of how badly the game goes downhill from here, this scene is anything but pleasant - it hardly paints a lovely picture of the chapter - which makes it all the more interesting. if we take the point of view of a first time player, we don’t know arthur’s ill, we don’t know how messing around in saint denis is going to domino the entire story, we don’t know hosea and lenny are going to end up dying. so having this scene here must be strange. why is there such a negative light cast on saint denis? on the beginning of a new chapter? it’s an unprecedented mood to start the chapter on, thinking about how the other chapters start before this, even with the content they might contain. they are the starting chapters, obviously, but chapter 2, we have thomas downes; chapter 3, we have sean’s death and the pinkertons looming even heavier over the gang. both chapters start wholesome enough, so to someone playing the game for the first time, it’s unusual. instilling worry into those first seeing it, and further reinforcing it into us who have played the game before - it’s the right choice for the chapter, starting off on a comforting foot: running around after children, a whole new city to explore, before returning to the sentiment it started on - absolute dread. the chapter tricks you after this scene, lulling you into a false sense of security, making you take the introduction to it as a bit strange, but nothing more, but before you know it, you’re at the bank robbery watching it fall to pieces - and it doesn’t stop there. the entireties of chapter 5 and 6 you are just forced to sit there and play as the gang falls apart.

[fledermaus-mainblog]

Torture a Micah Bell today. It'll change your life forever