It’s tempting to want to see our favourite characters in fiction again, maybe in a sequel or prequel. But sometimes I wonder if it’s best if they’re left alone.
According to everything that Rockstar Games has shown, the upcoming game Red Dead Redemption 2 will take an extensive look at the Van der Linde gang, a cadre of outlaws, during their wildest days. In the process, the game will bring back one very familiar face in the process: Red Dead Redemption protagonist John Marston.
While it might be nice to see him once again, bringing him back for a prequel threatens to rob the first game’s conclusion of the impact that made it so memorable.
At the end of Red Dead Redemption, John Marston has finished hunting down the old members of his gang as part of a deal with Federal Agent Edgar Ross. In exchange for eliminating his old compatriots or turning them over to the government, John’s wife, Abigail, and son, Jack, are freed from incarceration. John retires back to his ranch.
He enjoys only a temporary peace, as Ross and his goons descend upon the ranch hellbent on killing John. Surrounded and unable to run, John walks out to confront the lawman in order to give his family time to escape. He draws his gun, taking down as many foes as he can before being shot to death.
Red Dead Redemption 2 takes place in 1899, 12 years before the first game, and, as best we know from what little Rockstar has shown of the game so far, follows Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang during the crew’s most notorious years. It will reunite us with characters such as Dutch Van der Linde and, of course, John Marston, who has appeared in trailers and featured in promotional images.
I’m not convinced this is a good decision, because losing John in the previous game was so powerful. When asked by Kotaku for comment on the decision to bring back Marston and if there was concern it might take away from the first game’s conclusion, Rockstar declined to comment.
Screens from Red Dead Redemption 2
Featuring Arthur Morgan, Dutch, John and the rest of the Van der Linde gang at https://t.co/Aag008si90 pic.twitter.com/l0ncHL7kSP— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) May 4, 2018
Rockstar wants players to feel connections across its Westerns. The new game began as a “direct companion piece to Red Dead Redemption,” Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson told The Telegraph in a recent article. “We wanted to tell the story of the gang that John alludes to in the first game.”
It is entirely possible that spending more time with John Marston will provide a more complete picture of who he was, for good and for ill. But that contact and continued exposure comes at the cost of rolling back an important concept from the first game: All things end.
At its core Red Dead Redemption is a story of failure: The failure of an outlaw to survive against authority. The failure of a father to prevent his son going down a similar path. The failure of society to preserve the natural world around them.
Most importantly, it is about the failure of the player to assert their own dominance over John. It doesn’t matter how many side quests you completed, weapons you gathered, or time you spent controlling Marston, in the end he decides to take a last stand. No matter how good a shot you are, you can’t save him from dying at the hands of Agent Ross and his posse.
John cannot survive the end of an American era; all he can do is decide how he will exit the stage.
After John dies, his son, Jack, becomes the new player character. Some players lament the change from John to his son Jack, seeing the latter as a pale imitation of his father, but that’s largely the point. Jack is an intellectual dreamer, not as taciturn as his father, whose behaviour and dialogue belie a suicidal streak. Jack is an awkward fit for an open world protagonist, forced to step into the role in John’s absence.
Robbing the player of John and offering a hasty substitute is bitter, but that bitterness is essential to Red Dead Redemption‘s tale of failure and disappointment.
John’s death is an end to the normalcy we’d grown comfortable with, and nothing can ever be the same afterwards. To see him alive and well during Red Dead Redemption 2, in any context, repairs the damage of his death. Our loss isn’t really a loss at all if we can just boot up the prequel and sit down with John Marston by the fire.
Fleshing out John’s backstory also risks robbing key moments of their mystery. In one memorable side mission, John encounters an unnamed man in a black suit who seems to know him. The figure, loosely representative of God or the Devil, asks John about his past:
John: I’m pretty good at remembering faces.
Strange Man: Are you? Do you remember Heidi McCourt’s face?
John: Who?
Strange Man: She was a girl Dutch van der Linde shot in the head on that raid on the ferry a few years back. Same one you got shot on. Pretty girl… until her eye was hanging out by a thread of tendon, and her brain was plastered over a wall.
John: Not really.
Strange Man: Then why would you remember me, friend? You’ve forgotten far more important people than me.
Part of what makes John’s journey so compelling in the first game is the fact that we only ever have allusions and references made to cold-blooded, violent actions he participated in. The spectre of the past hovered in the background, never knowable but still undeniable.
The story of John’s past and the failing therein work as set dressing for his choices in the earlier game. The more explicit it gets, the more difficult it becomes for players to project their own faults and disappointments onto it.
I have no doubt that we will see Dutch shoot Heidi McCourt in Red Dead Redemption 2, and while it might end up being a horrible moment of sudden violence, it makes John’s past tangible and knowable in a way that fundamentally undermines the first game. Just as John can’t remember Heidi McCourt’s face, it is important that we never know her either.
Of course, it is entirely possible that things work out. That seeing John once again only increases our attachment to him and makes it easier to trace his growth throughout the years. Red Dead Redemption‘s writing portrayed a wounded and complicated man, and that portrayal resonated. Maybe all of my worries are misplaced and I will walk away from the sequel with a greater appreciation of John than ever before.
But for now, I am convinced that ghosts should remain ghosts. John Marston is dead and it is important that he and his past stay buried. Bringing him back could provide a reunion that undercuts the original game’s emphasis that loss is inevitable and irreversible. It might feel nice to see our old friend again but, in the end, it might do more harm than good.
Comments
15 responses to “I Love Red Dead Redemption, But I Don’t Want To See John Marston Again”
I liked how final RDR felt. This new concept detracts from it for sure.
I’m still off my tits with excitement for the new game, it’s just that the West was FULL of stories that’s culminated to the modernisation and empowerment of the US. Although the idea of connecting the RDR games is nice, is makes the world smaller by leveraging off of prequels and familiar faces.
I woulda preferred something set in one of the Dakotas during the 1880’s.
I too will definitely buy it. But I loved the finality of the original a nice wrapped up story. They put all their effort in to the one game. Not setting it up for a franchise like everything else these days.
You’ve literally listed reasons we *need* to see John again. Namely because hes so integral to the past and the growing story.
Cynical me fears Rockstar made this choice in order to duplicate GTAs online popularity….make it about gangs and heists etc.
RDR and John’s character was so good because it was an actual personal story of redemption. I fear RDR2 won’t be the case.
Which is exactly what the multiplayer RDR did – separate from the great single player story. Just like GTA V. Both of these games are great examples of giving the SP and MP players what they want.
We aren’t playing as Marston though in this one, we’re an entirely different character. If anything, Marston will just be a footnote in this one. So the story of some sort of redemption in this, is still entirely possible and likely.
I’m sure it will be fine.
John is a bad guy, lets face it, he screwed over so many people, killed innocent, pissed off lots and lots of people and at the end he thought he could make a deal with the big wig railroad politicians to leave it all behind. Johns ignorance was quite frustrating as I kinda knew how it would end while I played the entire game.
A new story with Jack’s life would have been refreshing but I guess people want to be the cold hearted murdered and lay waste sort of character.
I bet the game will give us an idea of why his gang are such maniacs and maybe contradict a bit of what John had to say about things.
See, I didn’t get that from John, playing RDR. Maybe it’s down to the way I played it, but ex-gang turned farmer John Marston was a civil if not downright polite man who didn’t go looking for fights for ego, and who didn’t practice unnecessary cruelty. He was thoroughly fucking open-minded for the time in that even if he couldn’t internally keep from judging, he held his tongue as often as not on things he didn’t understand or sympathize with. The times he did indulge in wrath, it seemed damn well-reasoned. Where he harmed innocents it unwillingly, in service of the higher pursuit of his family’s well-being, and came with healthy and sincere regret. He was not a cruel character, and by the time he finally received the justice he probably deserved, he appeared to have genuinely sought – and to an extent achieved – redemption for his past wickedness, seeing it for the wrong that it was. There’s plenty to admire in that, and it was far from your characterization of him as cold-blooded and rampaging.
Depends how many nuns you elected to tie to railroad tracks as well.
I completely agree with this. I like the passing cameos in Rockstar’s previous games, but introducing character elements to someone who was more of a blank slate in the first game introduces the very real possibility that this John Marsden will conflict with “my” John Marsden.
To me, it would have made more thematic sense to have a new character whose life is the inverse of Marsden. A disgraced former law enforcer who is forced to cooperate with outlaws in order to achieve something that they perceive as a personal justice.
But what I want from most Rockstar’s games usually end up being the opposite of what they produce, it never stops me enjoying the heck out of their games.
With so many holes in his history there was a lot left to the players imagination. I am like yourself I have my own John Marsden.
If it is only 12 years in the past that means Jack has already been born as he looks to be a teenager in the first game. He should already be with Abigail and have a young family by 1899. Hope they don’t retcon that
It’s funny, because I’m pretty sure the entire reason I didn’t give two shits about the most recent trailer was because I didn’t give two shits about any of the characters on display and spent the entire time waiting to hear John’s voice. (And was consequently disappointed.)
The opening act of RDR2 has a hell of a fucking job to do if it wants to convince me to give a shit about the characters I’ll be about to spend so many hours with. I just hope to God they aren’t devoting so many resources to
GTA Online 2RDR2 Online that they fail to deliver on the campaign.Two things that Rockstar excell at are character and story.
The Godfather Part II didn’t spoil Don Corleone’s legacy or death – it enhanced them. They got this.