Red Dead Redemption 2is a game about a lot of things - horses, guns, the old west, the wilderness, and so much more. In its huge western open world, there are many enemies that the player, as protagonist Arthur Morgan, must deal with. Arthur comes across several different families, rival gangs, and Pinkerton agents, but the one threat that tops them all is the element of time.
Throughout the entirety ofRed Dead Redemption 2,Arthur has to deal with the pressure of evading time in multiple ways. He has to deal with Dutch, the leader of the Van der Linde gang, who constantly delays the crew’s retirement from gang life with the promise of “one last job.” As in, if the gang is successful in one last major heist, they will never have to return to the grind of gang warfare, which appears to be a fading lifestyle.
In the latter half of the game, Arthur also has to personally deal with a sudden outbreak of symptoms caused by tuberculosis. Whether idle or on the move, Arthur gets no rest under the watch of time inRed Dead Redemption 2.
Death of the Old West
To get a sense of where Arthur was at in the timeline of the American old west era, one can look at one of the central game mechanics inRed Dead Redemption 2Â - stagecoach robbing. There are numerous stagecoaches, and most are connected to both main and side mission in RDR2. Arthur can even get tips as to where certain stagecoaches will be so that the player can set out to rob them. Clearly, stagecoach robbery was a favored pastime of the old west.
In the real world, an event known as the Jarbidge Stage Robbery of 1916 took place in Nevada and is notable for being the last recorded stagecoach robbery in American history. If this event were to mark the end of the old west, then that would mean Arthur and his crew would only be 17 years away from seeing the end of their nomadic outlaw lifestyle. Throughout the game, Arthur has many experiences that make him realize how close the end really is.
There is a scene in the game where Dutch disturbs Arthur by feeding Angelo Bronte to an alligator. This scene makes Arthur begin to question Dutch’s sanity and authority. Afterward, Dutch convinces the gang to do “one last job” in Saint Denis where they attempt to rob the local bank only to be intercepted by the Pinkertons which results in the arrest of John Marston and thus forces the crew to drastically shift plans. More importantly, Arthur witnesses something that changes him forever in the span of just a few seconds.
As the player attempts to escape the Pinkertons via the rooftops of the buildings, Arthur comes across Lenny’s bullet filled corpse. With no time to mourn, Arthur and the rest of the present crew escape via ship and inadvertently wash up on the island of Guarma, thus beginning a new chapter in the story.
The death of Lenny by the hands of the Pinkertons is significant for Arthur. Lenny didn’t get killed by a rival gang nor a rich land-owner; he got shot by the very force that is out to eradicate their way of life. The goal of the agents at Pinkerton is to flush out Dutch and his gang from the lawless wilderness of the old west and show people that the only way forward is to assimilate to the modern era of oligarchical city life, which is everything Dutch initially stood against. When Arthur sees Lenny on the ground, he is basically observing the death of the old west.
TB Takes Arthur's Future Away
The final nail in the coffin for Arthur’s way of life came when he was diagnosed with consumption, the bacterial infection formally called tuberculosis. With a cure for such a disease not being available for another 40 years or so, Arthur had no chance of avoiding it and started to slowly succumb to the symptoms of the disease. This changed the way he thought about everything, as he quickly went to John to advise him to run away with Abigail and Jack. He knew that the gang’s lifestyle was no longer sustainable, especially after the fractures caused by Dutch and Micah.
In the good ending, as Arthur stares off into the sun, he dies from both his fight wounds and his illness, marking the beginning of the end for the age of the outlaw.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
