The themes of Red Dead Redemption are ones that I can't help but love. It's about the end of an era, what is just, and what is morally right. It's about sacrifice and consequence. Ultimately it's a tragedy about redemption.
The story beings with a train taking John Marston, the games protagonist, into the wild and yet untamed lands of America. Marston is a criminal, living his life as an uneducated man on the wrong side of the law. Having walked away from it all to raise a family he's now thrust back into it all by government agents to catch the leader of his former gang. The story that unfolds is John Marston's redemption and the consequences of a life already lived.
This whole breakdown will only be worth reading if you've played the game. To retell the story would take away the discovery the game offers. So do yourself a favour, play the game. For everyone else, here's is why this story worked for me.
Marston isn't the prototypical "good guy", he is our antihero. He is a career criminal with a very violent and bloody past. It's a life that should have seen him dead by now but his skills as a gun fighter and his smarts have lead him to quiet life raising a son with the woman he loves. Federal Agent, Edgar Ross is after a man named Dutch. Being the former leader of the gang Marston used to be part of Agent Ross brings him in to hunt Dutch down and does so by holding his family hostage. And so you play as a tool of the government to kill a wanted man. Through this story you discover that is all part of cleansing this America of what is deemed unfit to exist in the the new civilized world that is being built.
Rockstar attempted a very similar thing with Grand Theft Auto 4 to create a character who aims for a somewhat honorable life but is unable because of the world around him but this ultimately failed as the constant killing (and in such a bloody and repetitive fashion) became almost comical and the character of Niko Bellic was lost beneath a swathe of contradictions and moral vagueness. The setting of the wild west and the fact that Marston is forced into his situation, and has strong objections to it, gives Marston his moral and ethical weight. His family and their safety is his driving force. His past his obstacle.
Abigail, Marstons wife is a woman who you discover was originally a prostitute and was passed around in his former gang and his young son Jack, that may not even be his are what grounds and gives him purpose. Even with such possible issues he is completely loyal to them as this his family. All these issues are irrelevant to a man who walked away from his former life of violence to start anew with a woman he can call his and a son he can raise right.
After a bloody battle across the Old West Marston finally tracks down his former leader Dutch. Once an idealistic bandit fighting what he saw as his battle against the oppressive capitalistic government Dutch has become extremely cynical and deranged. His new gang fashioned similar to that of Colonel Kurtz small force in Apocalypse Now, Dutch has coaxed oppressed Native Indians into believing they are fighting for their rights but are just bloody mercenaries for their unstable leader.
Their confrontation reaches it's end at a cliffs edge with Dutch disarmed. His final words "Our time has passed, John" and with this lets himself fall. This death encapsulates the over arching theme of the game. The world Marston knows, the old West, is dying. The gradual change from the small country town of Armadillo (where you begin the game) to a verging city that is Blackwater (towards the end). The reveal of the automobile being a revolution of transport. The government agents, new powerful law enforcement that supersedes any other. The world is changing and there is a civilization being built and will soon consume this beautifully untamed land.
With this Agent Ross allows Marston to return to his family and ordinary life on his farm and here is a bit of genius from Rockstar. With the "bad guy" dead, family safe and life back to normal this is where a game would typically end, the credits roll, and look to see what game to play next (or go outside if you're a sane person unlike me). Leaving at this point it would have been a solid game. But no, instead they give you a chance to live that life that was earned through so much blood. To experience this world of simplicity and normality. You go around and clean up your farm and start building it back up. These are all menial tasks but tasks performed for your farm. A farm and life you've earned. Though it's John Mastons you as a player have traveled through this all with him and you feel the stakes have been yours as well. And you finally get to meet his wife and son.
By giving us a chance to learn about Marstons family you gain a better understanding of the man that fought and killed for them. His wife is a strong, stubborn and a caring woman, an equal to Marston. His son young and impressionable but an avid reader and good at heart. Marston tries teaches him to respect the land and life within it, carefully trying to guide him away from the life of crime.
Jack is an obviously smart kid, infatuated with books about adventure and with the hopes to one day have his own gun slinging journeys. This in itself is an important point, Marston is illiterate while John is not. Marston knows his son has a chance to live a better life with an education and that may be the most important thing in his eyes.
This act of the story I played in a single sitting. In retrospect I wish I had taken more time to relax and enjoy it. To sit back and enjoy life and all its small treasures. I'm sure I would have if I realised how short lived it would been.
Agent Ross returns with an army, their goal to kill Marston. As Agent Ross see's it, he is just another piece not fit to be part of the new civil America. Here begins a shoot out where every kill is satisfying. By this point you are in Marston's shoes, you have just spent dozens of hours getting to the point where he can be with his family again in his home. And an army literally rolls up to take it all away and of course there is no way you are going to let that happen. You've fought too hard, and long, and tirelessly to get this all back. It may be an outlaws outlook or a fathers but I was more then happy to kill every one of them.
Taking the battle to the barn Marston organises his wife and sons escape. Against his wifes objections (Marstons untypically wins this argument) he stays to hold back the Army with promises to meet up with down the road. With a quick goodbye he sends them off. As Marston takes a moment to watch them ride off this is when you know he will never see them again.
John Marston walks out of the barn to the Army and Federal Agents waiting as Dead Eye automatically triggers. Dead Eye, a simple gameplay mechanic that slows down time so you can set up shots is used for a very specific and painful purpose (and here this game mechanic that has no right to be anything more became's integral part of how this part of the story is told). As you select your targets one by one as fast as possible you quickly realise that there is simply not enough bullets in the gun you hold to take these men out. The inevitability of what is about to happen sets in. Marston will die.
Marston unloads his gun and then the army returns fire. I was honestly devastated, how could they let me go through all this just to watch him die. I wanted things to go differently, I wanted revenge, I wanted so much because this game had me so invested. Too few games create such deep and flawed characters. Ultimately this was the consequences of the life Marston lived, he had earned his families safety but could never earn his own. This was the most his redemption could bring and with the hero dead I thought I could never get my revenge. Agent Ross would walk away, the "bad guy" would win.
His wife and son return to find Marstons body. They bury him at their farm and with this the story of Marston comes to an end. We flash forward and see Jack now grown up and having just buried his mother along side his father. Dressed similarly to Marston he leaves the farm and it's now Jack who you control and you have a single mission. Revenge.
This last act for me took this game from great to unforgettable and something that will always come to mind when I think of great story telling. Marston wanted his son to not grow up like him, to not become a man of violence and death. I understood this because the game showed me this, it showed me who this man was. And this is why I wanted Agent Ross dead, he murdered someone I knew and respected. Who else but Jack even cared about Marston? The only person left who could get revenge is the only one that his father wished to have a better life.
When I reached Agent Ross I hesitated pulling the trigger. I was ready to kill him but I was doing it with Marstons son. I would make Jack exactly what Marston didn't want him to be. The duality of Marston was now my duality and conflict. The decision I was making would decide who Jack would be.
And with this thought I killed Agent Ross. There was no other way for this story to end. Like any tragedy, there is no happy ending for anyone. Only loss and regret.
I've rarely felt so conflicted by a game and it seems almost if the entire game was created for that end point, to make me feel the weight of the decision of pulling the trigger when in so many games that's just the "fun part". This game achieved something special in my opinion, it took me into the mind of the characters and made me feel what they felt and it eventually tore me apart inside. That, to me, is graceful and powerful story telling. That is what story is all about.
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