In the 19 th century, tuberculosis was one of the main reasons for fatality as no cure had been developed yet. So while it’s realistic for Arthur’s fate to end this way, it’s definitely unexpec

And speaking of tuberculosis, how is it that Arthur didn't infect a single person? TB is a very contagious disease that spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes, and only a few droplets of spit are required for infection. And, in case you weren't paying attention, Arthur is hacking all over the place by the end of the story. Yet no one became sick. The epilogue catches us up on various characters' fates, and not a single one of them has passed from tuberculosis. It's possible that the disease is latent in some of them, but that's just speculation. It's a miracle that no one became infected after Arthur coughed all over the c

A side mission in Red Dead Redemption 2 sees the player interact with a character known as Francis Sinclair. He sends Arthur Morgan on an adventure through the west to find old cave drawings but is very vague as to why he needs this task d

Just threaten him a little bit. If that’s not your style, you can purchase this first High Stakes Treasure Map at a fence. This first map should lead you to Cumberland Falls, a waterfall to the west of the town of Valentine. The stash and the next map are behind the fa

During your play-through, you may notice that Arthur Morgan has many dream sequences. In these dreams, he usually sees either a coyote or a deer. Depending on your honor system you will see one or the ot

I kept imagining that this was the type of story that Houser wanted to tell, and while Hell or High Water might have its own set of problems, it never needed to reduce anything to caricature the same way that Red Dead Redemption 2 does. This is a game that tries to desperately to show its maturity, that it's past the simple morals of fantastical and escapist gunslinger movies, and more along the lines of a "prestige" film like those of Sheridan or Dominik. Yet somehow, old Houser habits have a stubborn refusal to die, creating a product that is in odds with itself.

The thematic discrepancies of this game couldn't be more evident to me every time that goddamn deer showed up in Arthur Morgan's dreams. These are brief sequences that felt like a fetishization of the frontier—they recall not just nostalgia for the Old West, but for the first Red Dead Redemption game, with the basic melody of the theme playing in the background. It can be debated for hours what the English-class level metaphor that the deer is meant to represent, but I had this feeling that by showing us Arthur trying to remember the "glory" of the West, the game is trying to invoke the same feeling in the player. Think of the way that Kingsman: The Secret Service attempted to argue in favor of bringing back the camp and irony of old spy films, which undid its own argument when the movie ended with an homage to sex scenes of James Bond films past, reminding viewers of how problematic that era was.

Red Dead Redemption 2 weapons Dead Redemption 2 is a graphical and visual achievement for sure, but every "exceptional" story element is merely surface level. By the end of it all, the game feels like a package designed for the mainstream media for some futile campaign proving that games are movies now; a movement that personally seems like it comes more from self-insecurity than from true reverence for the medium. By attempting to signal a movement forward for video games, I feel that in certain ways, this game has moved the form backward.

I kept thinking back to Andrew Dominik's 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , which I've been presuming was the most prominent visual inspiration for Red Dead Redemption 2 for a few reasons. For the most overt example, look no further than the major train robbery sequence from early on in the story, and compare it to one of the first scenes in Dominik's film . From the foreboding music, the light in-between the trees as the gang members await the train, and the point man standing on the track to stop the train, the two scenes are nearly the same beat-by-beat.

[pullquote]"This is a game that tries to desperately to show its maturity, that it's past the simple morals of fantastical and escapist gunslinger movies, and more along the lines of a "prestige" film."[/pullquote]

You could argue that they were waiting for Dutch to return before attacking the new hideout, but that's just more speculation. We later learn that Micah revealed their new location to the Pinkerton agents, and there's nothing to indicate that they already knew about it from the let

There’s a lodge near Cairn Lake. Look inside the lodge, underneath the bed, and you’ll find the first Poisonous Trail Map. We say map, but it’s more like a drawing. It’s a drawing of a hill that looks like a face. This hill can be found in Lemoyne, north of the Southfield Flats. If you make you way past the face, you’ll find a fallen tree. Search an old, standing tree near this fallen one, and the second Poisonous Trail Map will be inside