Red Dead Redemption 2 is a paradox: despite justifiably being called one of the greatest games ever made, as a work of narrative art, it falls short of greatness. In aspects — the standout performances, the rendition of characters’ facial expressions, the golden choruses of the sunsets — it is superb. However, despite the story's powerful effects, RDR2's reputation as a superlative work is undeserved. Some of its formal problems are, perhaps, inevitable in a narrative form as nascent as the video game. Plot holes break the fabric of the story here and there.
Warlock — an 1958 Western by American novelist Oakley Hall — influenced Red Dead Redemption 2 deeply. Its complex plot is loosely based on iconic elements of the incidents now known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Johnson County War. Like RDR2 itself, it reimagines and reworks its source material. Tombstone, Arizona, becomes Warlock, a frontier town plagued by random acts of violence: a group of men associated with local rancher Abe McQuown shoot the place up, rustle cattle, and rob stagecoaches. Because the state governor, General Peach, is senile, he hasn't issued Warlock a town patent, which means the townspeople have no authority to hire a…
Finishing our journey through the intertwined Eden and Hell of RDR2.
The relationship between RDR2 and the Bible is an odd one. The game seems thoroughly secular on the surface, but its ideas about sin and redemption are not unchristian — perhaps because it relies so much on Paradise Lost to shape it. But the use of that text doesn't entirely account for the use of Biblical material in the game, which indicates a broad familiarity with that body of work.
Paradise Lost is one of the most celebrated literary works of all time. Paradise Regained, John Milton's followup to the epic, is less so. The second poem tells the story of the Son (Christ) wandering in the desert, where, after 40 days and 40 nights, Satan accosts him and tries to tempt him to break his obedience to God. It is, quite frankly, not very interesting: there's no suspense at all. Satan losing is foregone conclusion. The Son is totally unbothered.
Red Dead Redemption 2 mourns the loss of Eden: the outlaw life in pre-Industrial America. But under the brutal rule of colonialism, who is it who lost paradise? All articles 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 cleverest things the developers did in Red Dead Redemption 2 was to make the technical limitations of Red Dead Redemption thematic. John can’t swim; Arthur can. John prints; Arthur writes. Arthur is more eloquent…
One of the writers’ apparent motivations in writing Red Dead Redemption 2 was to make Red Dead Redemption even more sad. The way the first game is retconned in the second one can be annoying because of the mismatch in details, but at times, it’s very effective ...
One of the ways Red Dead Redemption 2 often makes literary allusions is in prophetic statements from special NPCs. Blind Man Cassidy gives Arthur Morgan one that alludes to Paradise Lost and that appears, at first blush, to be about Dutch Van der Linde and Micah Bell: “Your father is seduced by the one with the forked tongue. It's no use hoping.” However, that isn't the truest reading of this prophecy. Dutch is also Satan/Eve (as we’ve seen, these characters combine in Dutch) to Hosea Matthews’s Adam. It's Hosea who is Arthur's truest father.
