If any aspect of RDR2 is perfect, it's the light. Rich and golden, the sunsets and dawns immerse the player in the game's themes — nostalgia for a lost world; wonder at nature — drawing on the senses to create poignant emotion. That light, itself, is an allusion to a 19th-century artist who in turn inspired one of the game's most charming minor NPCs.
Learn the story behind RDR2's Strange Statues, plus much more.
As should be apparent by now, RDR2’s use of literature ranges from deep and extensive to brief and glancing. Sometimes, the writers allude to a work broadly rather than dealing with its themes.
Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is the first science fiction novel. Famously, it was conceived as part of a contest between Shelley, her husband Percy, and their friends Lord Byron and John William Polidori. The group was staying in Geneva, where Byron rented a house called Villa Diodati. They were “delighted to learn that Milton had once stayed there, an astonishingly good omen for this group who by now saw themselves as fallen angels, like Milton’s Satan: rebellious and misunderstood” (Gordon 168).
