Be Excellent To Each Other

Liked the story. Liked the size of the world. HATED the integration of the two. The entire RDR world is supposed to be, what, 28 square miles or something -- it's roughly seven miles from one end of the map to the other (Blackwater to Escalara) diagonally. A few things about this bugged me.

First, why so many houses if John already has a house at Beecher's Hope? (I thought it was a new house for them to settle into, but it's implied that Uncle has been there for awhile, fucking up the farm while John was gone.) There's something like thirteen different locations for John to stay in (most of which he has to pay for, either to rent or to buy) when the entire world takes two hours to ride across. Why wouldn't he just stay in his family home instead? (Also, why was his family home always empty during the majority of the game, even when Uncle was supposed to be there?)

Second, John acts like everything he sees is some new and foreign place. I know that people were generally less mobile then, but the world is seven miles across. John was in a gang that wandered around the area committing crimes, but he's never seen McFarlane's ranch before even though it's close enough to his own farm that he can herd cattle from one to the other in a single afternoon? When he first wakes up in McFarlane's ranch, you might as well have told him that he was waking up on the moon for all the familiarity he seems to have with it. He has no idea how to get into Mexico, when he lives a mile or two from it. Thieves Landing, Blackwater, Manzanita Outpost -- none of these places are familiar to him, so where did he shop for shit when he lived at Beecher's Hope prior to the beginning of the game?

It's clunky in that regard. The story was beautiful. The world was beautiful. They didn't seamlessly mesh, however.

Grand Theft Horsey managed to go from the shittest ending ever, to the greatest ending ever, then all the way back to the shittest ending ever.

• Reunite with your wife and son: Fine.
  
• Do the most boring "work" missions this side of working at the dock in Shenmue: Fuck off.
  
• Grand shootout ending with the death of John: Brilliant excecution - OK, all those wind-down missions now make sense, etc... BEST ENDING EVER.
  
• Playing the son: Christ on a fucking unicycle... You've just made the last hour of the game making John's son a whiny little bitch and completely unrelatable, and now you want me to fucking play an older version of him with dubious facial hair? Fuck off.
  
• Finding out the real final mission is started via a stranger and ends with a piss weak duel against a pensioner on the river bank. Shoot him in the head, turn to camera, and finally the credits roll: Really? That's the best you can do, Rockstar? Cock Off.

..was energised in the extreme to avenge John and his wife. I was more upset when it showed you her grave next to John's. I blarted. Don't mind telling people that. I blarted.

:this: but I thought having his son as a playable character was a clever way to continue letting you explore the rest of the world doing stranger missions and whatever else you've missed without breaking the continuity of the main story.

I'd also started one stranger mission with John but when Jack turned up to finish it off, the dialog was different with the man remarking "You remind me of another kind soul" which I thought was a lovely touch.

I've played some multiplayer now (which, to be honest, if it'd load up a damn sight quicker I'd probably play it more than the ridiculous amount of hours I've put into MW2) which is brilliant! The stand-offs are a brilliant idea; the free roam missions; the voice over guys voice (Is that the same guy from Halo 3??); creaping around the maps with a loaded sawn off shotgun waiting to unload it into some guys face; getting shot off your horsey (rather you than me); the leveling up system, etc. It's all cracking stuff. Are bezzies still playing this or not? The only problem I ever had was the same problem in the main game. Your characters handling is piss poor.

I'll admit, it was a useful way of letting people continue to play the game after Johns death, but I honestly feel that the official ending (with credit roll) should have been shown after the gravestone scene (maybe even before with him dead on the ground and his family around him), not hidden away in a lacklustre hidden stranger quest.

The problem is not only is his son already unlikable due to his actions in the "farm work" missions just before, but it also takes the redemption theme of the whole game and pisses it down the toilet, by ending it on a fucking revenge killing. Dreadful.

The point was that not only could John Marston not escape from his past, but it would drag his son with it. In the end, you have the choice to hunt down and kill a retired pensioner, it isn't a fair fight and that is the point.

I understand your point, but I've never felt as bloody angry on seeing John Marstons fate and in that sense, the storytelling worked. It isn't Shakespeare, but no game has got remotely close to telling a story well, but RDR is as close as I've seen.

Hang on, I don't see his son being dragged into John's past. Jack doesn't have a story for a start except that one stranger mission; he just appears dressed similar but to be fair he doesn't look out of place with attire worn by everyone else. You don't learn anything about him, probably because he's just an avatar to allow you to continue in the gameworld. The last mission is an easter egg for all intents.

I don't agree that the last fight isn't a fair one. It's well established in the gameworld up until then that disagreements are settled by duel. And I don't see that you [as the player] hasa choice about the outcome of the mission once you start it. Jack never thinks "let bygones be bygones" - he wants to murder this man in cold blood for the wrongs committed to his father and mother.

Of course he's dragged in. Instead of being a farmer/rancher like his father wanted he instead murders to continue the cycle of violence.

John wanted his son to be a farmer, and worked to provide a safe environment for him to grow up. Despite his efforts, the farm getting attacked meant that his son grew up without a Dad and ended up an angry gunslinger just like his old man.

That's a lot of spoiler tags.

Want to swap a lend of this for the new Splinter Cell, Cras?

He has no story. He might be angry at the loss of his father, but we don't know that he's a murderer who runs with a gang like John did. We don't know that he doesn't farms either.

Look at the evidence: His mother was buried next to John on their farm home 4 years after John's death, you start as Jack from the farm; so it looks like Jack had been allowed to continue living with his mother on the farm since John's death, so he may well become a farmer. An angry farmer.

EDIT: And gunslinging wouldn't preclude him as a farmer either as it was obvious from playing as John that being adept with a gun was needed to fend off wild animals and poachers etc

He shoots the old man. He is a murderer. Killing people = murderer.

But it's perpetuating the cycle of violence that John was trying to break! How can that mean his son did not get caught up with his past?"

The whole point of the third section of the game is demonstrating the creeping civilisation that had turned John Marston into (supposedly) the last of a dying breed. The new world that was coming had no place for gunslingers, and hence no place for Jack Marston now that's what he's become.

Look, put it in context. He has no story except and that last redemption and his starting position. You've got nothing to base your arguments that Jack Marston was a gunslinging murderer following in his fathers footprints. You're both projecting onto him.

It's likely that he was a farmer living a sullen existance on his parents farm.

That man took him away from his father and mother and locked him and his mother up until his father had done unspeakable deeds for that man's own gain, and just when he thought that he'd got his dad back that same man sent the army to increase his father's carbon footprint 1000%

So you agree that he's been swept up in his father's decisions and life path! Excellent. I knew we'd get there.

Don't insult my intelligence. Your comments about the Old West in the last quarter are clear to anyone who played the game all the way through even if they skipped the dialogue. It was the blindly obvious the direction they were going the first time John got into the car.

Redemption as I said earlier I've taken as "atonement for guilt" in the context of the story. You can disagree all you like with my alternative interpretation of adult Jack, but you must realise that you're both projecting a story onto Jack that simply isn't told through story or otherwise.

It's not wrong (I was kidding above) but I'm proposing a different intrepretation on the character we only briefly get to see.

I'm not trying to insult anything. I can't work out where you think Jack has some guilt he needs to redeem. The one thing he has is anger. He grew up without a dad, and he grew up angry. The whole "hunt down the old man and gun him down" thing isn't redemption, it's revenge. And if you think he suddenly stopped his idyllic happy farmer life one day and rode off to kill his dad's murderer, well that's just bizarre. It may not be explicitly spelled out, but it's clear from the last 'mission', and the way Jack dresses (like a gunman, not a farmer) that he's gone down his father's path, which is exactly what John didn't want.

It's not factually stated that the death of John caused Jack to head down the path of a gunslinger, but heavily implied. What isn't implied, at least as far as I could see whilst playing the game, is that he decided to live the quiet, peaceful life of a farmer, who one day randomly flipped and decided to hunt down the man responsible for his father's death and murder him in cold blood.

It's been ages since I finished RDR so I don't remember it all exactly, but I seem to remember the suggestion somewhere in the game that Jack had been hunting the old man for a while. I could be wrong about this particular detail though.

Also, surely the 'redemption' of the title is John's? The man is a criminal and a killer, who falls in love and chooses to live an honest life with his wife and child. The whole purpose of the game is that John is forced to return to his former life in order to save his family. What this game does have more in common with westerns and gangster movies than any if the GTA games is an idea of morality. Whichever way you swing it, John is a criminal who has destroyed lives. He may 'come good', but no anti-hero can ever actually 'win' in the end.