If you play video games, you may have heard of the game “Red Dead Redemption 2” (RDR2) and its fame. Red Dead Redemption two is a game that people argue is one of the best games of all time. Although it’s not Rockstar Games’ highest selling game, it’s still definitely their highest rated game. A lot of people have only heard about its ratings and not actually on what really made it popular. But keep in mind, the game is more complex than just being in a gang in the wild west.
Quick summary
The game starts the player as the protagonist, Arthur Morgan, who’s in the Van der Linde gang. The Van der Linde gang is in a time where the era of the wild west is ending, in the year of 1899, and the government gains control over more territories.
The gang plans one last heist to live with enough money for the rest of their lives. The heist goes wrong and many of their members either die or get captured. This makes the gang go into running from the law across the country. The leader of the gang, Dutch Van der Linde, plans one more heist and plans to flee the country. Every one of his plans don’t end well and while these are happening, Arthur has to decide whether he chooses Dutch’s side as he goes crazy, going against the gang’s morals being more harmful than good, or to be a good person, saving people that the gang comes across and questioning Dutch’s choices.
The protagonists and antagonists
There are actually two protagonists you see when playing the game. The one you see first is Arthur Morgan, the one you see next is John Marston, a protagonist in Red Dead Redemption 1. Arthur and John are on the same side as each other and other gang members as Dutch loses his mind. The player has the choice to be a good or bad person as Arthur, the most common in the player base being a good person, John is made to be a good person as he goes for Dutch and Micah, the members that escaped to the mountains and are responsible for making the original gang fall apart.
Speaking of Micah, he is a later protagonist that actually turns out to be a rat after one of the chapters in the game and betrays the gang. There are also two other main antagonist groups and someone that you face throughout the game. The one you see first is the O’Driscolls, a rival gang that you get in a shootout with. They are seen many times in the game and eventually are dealt with. The other group are the Pinkertons, the group that’s chasing the Van der Linde gang and that’s been hired by Leviticus Cornwall, the man that was made to represent the end of the wild west era and the start of a new century.
Other things you can do
The game also isn’t just about the story, it’s open-world. This means that there are many activities in the game such as getting a haircut, bounty hunting, robbing people, participating in random encounters, and many more. The popular ones are bounty hunting since you can get money from it, helping people in random encounters for honor, solving puzzles for treasure, and hunting for the compendium. These are the things that you could do if you don’t want to do the story or if you’ve already finished it.
Conclusion
What the game contained made it popular because it was something that was unique for the time and did great with it as well. The player explores the world as Arthur or John does things from gun slinging, hunting, playing the story, or even figuring out the full lore of the game. This is something only a few games have since you could play for a year and still not be fully done. This is why Red Dead Redemption 2 sits as one of the greatest, if not, the greatest game of all time. But who knows, maybe the next game by Rockstar Games will surpass this masterpiece of a game.
