The tough guy with nothing to prove is a classic trope. He might be silent, he might talk a lot, but he will never give away his real feelings. These one-man armies are are able to take on swarms of enemies and walk away without a scratch. Two modern examples of these champions, Deacon St. John in Days Gone and John Marston in Red Dead Redemption, are both proud husbands devoted to providing a better life for their families. However, their own dour outlook of the world that has continuously let them down is also a big part of the overarching character appeal.
In both John and Deacon's case, they are the subject of childhood tragedy that sets them up for a life of violence and criminal exploits. They get taken advantage of by organizations when they're at their weakest, and are further pushed down a dark road where they witness even more violent events. This is until they feel a sense of love and become redeemed in that they decide to give up the life of crime. From that point on, they didn't expect their lives to change, but a cataclysmic event spurred them. While they end up in different places at the end of their stories, it's clear that Deacon St. John from Days Gone is the worse of the two.
Origins
Both Deacon and John were born into families that were destroyed by tragedy. John's parents were dead at a young age, and so was Deacon's mom, but his dad was busy teaching him how to clear rat nests by drowning them with water. From the beginning, Deek had people teaching him how to be the cruelest version of himself. When he went into the army, and then later joined a biker gang as an enforcer, this was only doubled. When John Marston was orphaned, he escaped the orphanage and joined up with Dutch van der Linde's gang to spend his adolescence and young adult life robbing and killing others.
They both meet women, and John has a child, that make them realize there is more to life than the all the hate and pain that they had been through. Abigail traveled with the gang, also an orphan, and eventually fell in love with Marston. They both did sketchy things, but were united in their love for each other and especially in their love for their son Jack. Deacon happens upon a scientist with a broken down car and almost gets hit by a pickup truck while taking her for a lift. After having to calm Sarah down when she fires his gun to scare off scrappers, they date over the shared trauma that serves as the precursor to Days Gone.
No Resignations Accepted
Deacon and John may have had plans to leave the hard life behind, but when fate takes their families away from them, they are thrown into the fray. Deacon spends two years searching for his thought-to-be-dead wife in the apocalypse. Turns out, she is doing just as much good without him, while John's wife and son, Abigail and Jack Marston, were kidnapped in order to get him to hunt down his ex gang members. Deacon murders other humans of his own free will, and does so often, whereas the player can choose to play John Marston as a protagonist who will only murder when he is forced to.
John is driven by his love for his family, while Deacon is driven by hatred of the world that has taken so much from him. Deacon St. John doesn't seem to entirely care about the people he interacts with when it interferes with his goals, as shown by his willingness to take a survivor to a well known slave camp. The difference between these two men, despite their overwhelming similarities, is that John has a reason for the way he acts, whereas Deacon consistently makes the events he's involved in worse because of his vengeful and reckless spirit.
Different Endings
Fortunately for both men, they are eventually reunited with their families. Deacon is beyond surprised when he finds Sarah still alive and looking to end the pandemic at a militia camp, as she is surprised he wasn't killed when the first survivor camp was overrun. By the time they're riding off together into the sunset, Sarah has almost developed a weapon against the zombie hordes, and Deacon is still really good at supply runs. John and his family don't fare so well. After finally completing his tasks set out to him by the men who had his wife and child, John Marston is taken out by the people he helped rid the west of criminals.
This is integral to John Marston's redemption because throughout the Red Dead Redemption games he is driven to kill and swindle, in some way, by Abigail and Jack. He's willing to take it to the point where he dies so they have the chance to get away safely. John Marston finds redemption in his sacrificial death through Jack and Abigail being able to live better lives. Deacon St. John has no such redemption, instead having his worse impulses rewarded by finding his wife in the end and potentially an end to the apocalypse itself. If Deacon had faced any sort of redemption, it might be easier to think of him in a better light.
There is a reason that media keeps going back to the tough guy for protagonists. It's a popular trope to use because it can draw some kind of appeal from wide groups of people. That being said, there has to be enough to balance out the bad in a character to keep them from coming off as an insensitive jerk. John Marston is a great example of a character who can be seen as a bad guy that gets redeemed, while Deacon just had to keep being his bad self until he lucked into finding Sarah again.
Days Gone is available now on the PS4, and releases May 18, 2021 on PC.