All posts on this site feature detailed discussion of literary allusions in Red Dead Redemption 2, and as such contain unmarked major and minor spoilers for the game, and occasionally the eventual fates of some characters in Red Dead Redemption. Read at your own risk.
One of the most popular video games ever made is not just a game, but a text of texts, thick with allusions to historical personalities, movies, and most of all, literature. Poems, novels, short stories, and plays, not to mention writers themselves, inspired Red Dead Redemption 2. The names of characters, missions, and places weave double and triple references together. The game alludes not just to narratives themselves, but to the allusions found in those novels and epics. Because these nested allusions are often found in multiple works, it is sometimes difficult to tell where, exactly, a thread comes from. Sometimes the works tie together neatly, forming a complex net. Other times they tangle into knots, or they rub together and the line snaps from the friction.
It’s a game of extremes: often gorgeous and occasionally brilliant, it is also beset with plot holes and oversights and displays of ignorance. It’s overambitious, underedited. The ending of the main story, for all its visual grace, has secret catches and snarls that can only be felt and not easily understood, making it common for players to find it brutally depressing, persistently troubling, even strangely confusing. These snares are places where the game has drawn texts too disparate together.
This is Read Dead, a site dedicated to analyzing the literary works that inspired Red Dead Redemption 2 and exploring how they shape the narrative.
New here? Visit the Table of Contents to read the essays in order, or the Index & TL;DR to explore the site by topic. New essays are published Wednesdays at 1 p.m. E.T./10 a.m. P.T. Sharing the site is always appreciated!
