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Editor's note: Ron brings us an interesting look at some of the subtext of Red Dead Redemption. Do you agree with his takes on progress and final bosses? I've played through the game and feel he's right on with regard to most of these topics. Oh yeah, spoiler alert! -Greg
Red Dead Redemption features so much well-written and -acted dialogue — especially the incidental atmospheric discussions that really sell the experience — that it's easy to overlook the depth of its narrative arc. The rest of this post is going to be full of spoilers, so stop here if you haven't beaten it. Also, I apologize for the length, but even now I cringe at the gross oversimplifications I've been forced to make to keep it from being five times as long.
Redemption's shallow theme is easy to identify: You can't escape the past. It's even alluded to out loud several times. Protagonist John Marston serves as the relentless past the rest of his gang can't escape, yet Marston himself can't escape the consequences of what he did previously, even despite the most virtuous of actions he's allowed in this new landscape. Likewise, John's son can't escape the sins of his parents.
But there's more than that to Redemption's theme. No, you can't escape the past, but the game's deeper message is that the future may be even worse, and you can't escape that either. I find this to be the more interesting theme — the price of progress and the veneer of civilization over the bestiality of man.
You start the game among simple folk. The situation isn't exactly anarchy — it's just quirky individualism, which is some mixture of selfish and altruistic. The MacFarlane Ranch is its own little feudal town, a shining beacon of what some good country folk can accomplish with a little sweat and hard work.
On the other side, selfish people have a lot of latitude for evil behavior. There's not much law out here, and constant skirmishes against petty criminals and gangs fill the first chapter; without Marston's help the MacFarlane ranch would be ruined. The optional '"American Appetites" plot line particularly demonstrates the nadir of animal behavior possible in this situation. Everyone in the game is aware this state of affairs can't last, and there's a constant undercurrent of fear and anticipation as the federal government stretches its tentacles west.
From here the game moves to Mexico. Instead of selfish individualism like in the first act, we have selfishness masquerading as benevolence — leaders realize it's easier to get suckers to help you if you sell it as a benefit for the sucker. "For Mexico" is the refrain on every man's lips, but it's really for their own pocketbook and carnal conquest. Every man of the people's real goal here is to be the next tin-pot dictator…or at least his right-hand man.
The carnal appetites are still here, but they're more channeled and organized. In Armadillo a man can sleep with his horse and everyone laughs, but in Mexico De Santa sleeping with his serving boys is barely tolerated. Luisa may be the only sincere revolutionary, which just makes her a convenient stepping stone for Reyes. This represents progress, though; we are moving up the ladder of civilization. Your time in Mexico should make you feel very unclean, because the deceit is so transparent.
The game's final chapters take place back on the U.S. side of the border. Ah, it's such a relief to be back to civilization. The streets of Blackwater are so clean and modern, there's a glorious town plaza, and law enforcement and the Feds are everywhere. Good people. Or are they?
Once again we've moved up the ladder of civilization, and the Blackwater chapter deconstructs the "progress" made so far. The government men act just the Mexicans did in the previous act — they are thugs who will do whatever they have to do to achieve power while putting an even prettier facade over the top of it. No matter how noble their words may be, you still end up in the back of a U.S. Army truck mowing down wave after wave of Native Americans with a machine gun while the feds yell, "We should have done this a long time ago!" (to which you may think to yourself, "you already did, at Wounded Knee"). Even without rubbing it in your face like this, the question of what progress has done for the Native Americans is one the game doesn't even try to disguise.
At this point Redemption asks an interesting aside: "Well, perhaps we don't need civilization — shall we throw it down?" Dutch plays this role, and I think the answer here is that this won't work either. First, the price in blood is too high, and second, civilization is an even more powerful monster than Dutch. The boss fight is deliberately anticlimactic, partly because he's not the real final boss.
Marston finally returns to his farm for some of my favorite scenes of the game. You played the game, you beat it, and now you're allowed to use your skills for good, providing for your family. The scenes with John and Jack were far more successful for me than what Heavy Rain attempted because of the extensive hard-won game context and the heavy foreshadowing of the next events. John Marston just wants to be left alone with his family, but of course we can't allow that — he can't escape his past and he can't escape progress. The only real redemption comes in death.
After that Old Yeller moment, you take control of Jack and the game goes really freeform. Now theoretically you can play Jack as a good guy, but almost everyone I know who played virtuously as John (including myself) took Jack on a countywide crime spree when faced with the futility of what happened to John. Since I'd beaten the ambient challenges during the course of the normal game, there was nothing left for poor Jack to do but cut loose, and I'd like to think the game sets you up for this since the rest is so well planned.
So what do we have? Red Dead Redemption's subtext is that civilization is how violent evil thugs step up their game by becoming genteel evil thugs. You can't resist it (as we saw with John). You can't bring it down (as Dutch showed us). You can't beat the final boss, which is heresy for a game. All you can do is opt out (Jack).
Now, you may disagree with the game's conclusions. But the important thing here is that it has this relatively complex progression throughout. It mostly refrains from spelling it out for you, instead spelling out an easier theme for people who need one, but it gives the game a huge amount of depth that even great dialogue couldn't do on its own. And the game mechanics feed into it naturally. If you just skipped all the shooting and riding and just played the plot bits, there'd be very little impact.
As we fret about what makes this or that art, this attempt at craft is a big part of it. Redemption has more depth than many books I've read or movies I've watched, managed a coherent narrative, and I actually got to play it at my own pace. How great is that?
If there is a downside, it's that some of the people who need a boss fight to finish a game felt somewhat let down by the deliberately anticlimactic fight with Dutch, the denouement on the farm, and John's final fate. I certainly don't have an answer for them, but I do feel Redemption is a step in the right direction for more ambitious games.