Red Dead 3/Red Dead Redemption 2 - IT'S HAPPENING.gif

[Agarathium1066]

Sadly I am not here to suggest a mod, but I just thought to me - would a mod to turn Sadie Adler into a man (and Jacob Adler into a woman) make her less unrealistic?

No. The game already has a lot of unrealistic premises so Sadie suddenly being a man wouldn't be a huge change to me. The gang is already the Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy Shootin' Diversity Crew.

Thanks for the mod recc on that, interesting to have those Online style weathers.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

No. The game already has a lot of unrealistic premises so Sadie suddenly being a man wouldn't be a huge change to me. The gang is already the Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy Shootin' Diversity Crew.

Thanks for the mod recc on that, interesting to have those Online style weathers.

Your question prompted me to have a further look, and I am stunned to find more things: such as a populated Colter, Nuevo Paradíso (which seems to be almost done, or in polishing stages, at least) and a few nice stuff. Check out:

EDIT: One more video, where the fellow lost the list of the mods, but they seem to be found at Nexus (hopefully). Unless someone compiled a list at the comments:

 

[Rick The Stick]

Unfortunately, that would only reveal how poorly written she is with the coom shield taken away

Bout as poorly written as everyone not named Dutch, Hosea, Arthur or John. "Bad men killed someone I loved, now I want vengeance". Micha is a more interesting character for the simple fact he's a bastard and enjoys it.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Bout as poorly written as everyone not named Dutch, Hosea, Arthur or John. "Bad men killed someone I loved, now I want vengeance". Micha is a more interesting character for the simple fact he's a bastard and enjoys it.

I think Bill and Javier are somewhat in the middle, but all thanks if you played RDR1 before RDR2.
I think Charles is the most middle-written without gary stu crap like Sadie with his mary sue prominence.

 

[Joshua Cohen Mohnstein]

I think Charles is the most middle-written without gary stu crap like Sadie with his mary sue prominence.

He's essentially Sadie but swapping out the personality node of "badass pants-wearing girlboss" for "noble nature-communing native (also half nig for bonus oppression points)"
- Always on the good side of the gang alongside Arthur, John, Uncle, etc.
- Written to be likeable with justifiable motivations
- Extreme competency
- Consistently impresses and upstages the hyper-competent Arthur
- Survives into the epilogue no worse for wear
- No indication that of hiding or in danger of being hunted by anyone despite being a member of an infamous criminal gang and killing numerous people, including Pinkertons, local police, and US army soldiers

The worst of it is the bison hunting mission. Charles lectures Arthur on the sanctity of the bison and how indigenous folx use every part, only to then incidentally find a half dozen slaughtered bison, untouched. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be white poachers paid on behalf of the US government to make natives look bad, just like IRL. Never mind how valuable their hide or meat. Never mind how bison were so dumb they'd just stand still as men would shoot them from the windows of slow-moving trains. Nope, they were only killed en masse for the reasons of white supremacy and settler-colonization. Charles then kills one of the poachers out of righteous indignation because whitoids don't respect nature. As we all know, natives have never taken more than they needed.

(ignore this)

But he's just a reflection of the RDR2's depiction of the Native Americans in the mid to late-19th century, which just a recitation of nearly every trope of liberal academia on the subject

Spoiler: Here's a refresher on the plotline

- The tribe ingame is the Wapiti Tribe, essentially a mish-mash of different native tribes of the Plains and the Rocky Mountains
- Three treaties were signed with US after years of fighting after encroachment on their land
- Two of the treaties were broken (by the US gov of course because you can't trust yt devils) and the third one sent them to the desolate reservation they're on when the game starts
- Leviticus Cornwall (greedy old white capitalist robber baron) wants them off their land for oil (for a trifecta of US bad/fossil fuels bad/capitalism bad), so he collaborates with US army Colonel Favours (old white man; Obviously racist, greedy, prideful yet cowardly) to push them out
- Arthur first encounters the tribe during the Saint Denis chapter, helping recover incriminating documents on Cornwall for Eagle Flies, son of the Wapiti chief
- During the Beaver Hollow chapter, Dutch wants to use the Indians as a distraction to help the gang's escape
- Arthur befriends noble chief Rains Fall as well as fellow white savior ally Captain Monroe of the US army, who's also wholesome and not racist
- US army soldiers desecrate the sacred sites of the Wapiti people, cue:

- Arthur discovers the army is preventing the Wapiti from getting the smallpox vaccines (evil whitoid disease) they were promised which is bad news because the tribe is experiencing an outbreak (likely caused by infected blankets). Arthur, recovers the vaccines for the tribe with the help of Fauci's blessing
- Colonel Favours sets up a meeting to broker a deal with the tribe and through contrived bullshit Arthur finds out that actually there will be no concessions. Further, Monroe is going to be hanged for not being an evil white man! Arthur saves him and they flee. They then wipe out an entire army fort to save a captured Eagle Flies.
- The plotline concludes with the epic battle of the noble natives, fighting futilely on behalf of Mother Gaia, against the evil racist USA and the capitalist oil baron's goons. They assault and destroy Cornwall oilfields, valiantly slaughtering dozens of farmers' sons who were just serving their country
- In the end, the tragedy is not in the needless loss of life on both sides, but rather that Eagle Flies and his warriors were once again manipulated by the white man in Dutch
- The Wapiti flee to Canada, losing many of their own along the way (just like the Trail of Tears minus all of the Cherokees' black slaves) where nuns will presumably kill their daughters in boarding schools and bury the bodies in mass graves. Cornwall dies and tragically, there turns out there's no oil on the reservation. If only they had just gone green...

I struggle to think of why there needed to be this much of a focus on any of this in the game aside from the writers desire to virtue-signal about the treatment of Native Americans as part of their "de-mystifying" of the old west (i.e. looking at it through a progressive, post-modern lens and condemning people from centuries ago because theydidn't act like modern day Californians).

In RDR1, Dutch's gang was made up of natives too, but the game didn't spend multiple hours essentially whining about how badly they were treated. They were dejected young men from warrior cultures feeling out of place in rapidly changing world that didn't have a place for them. It at least made sense why they'd fall for Dutch's words, yet it never casts them as anything except white-hating murderers and criminals.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The problem is its presented as a binary choice for the player. Arthur is either good or evil, no inbetween, and you're gonna go all the way left or all the right on the ingame morality scale, because you get nothing for keeping it near the middle. The story presents Arthur as a grey character, good and bad in many ways, but the gameplay forces you to make him absolutely good or evil, because otherwise you're missing the buffs and flavour content specific to the 2 extremes of that scale.

I think some hidden benefit to keeping Arthur's morality in the middle would have been a cool bonus. Maybe that's how you get the best ending, because he was still enough of a bad dude to do something evil, but it was for an honourable reason like saving the rest of the gang or something, IDK. Presenting morality as a binary choice in games is getting tiresome though.

Morality in games is almost always badly done. 99.99% of people aren't good or bad, but on different levels of how much they will do for other people when it costs their own personal/group, as well as intelligence and emotional intelligence to understand the effects of their actions.

Arthur doing good things as a person doesn't remove the fact that in the story he commits atrocities for his gang, making him objectively evil.

 

[WonderWino]

I beg to differ, Dutch was also in it for bloodshed, he just gaslit himself and everyone else in to thinking it was something greater before RDR1. He admits this to John at the end of RDR1, fighting is in his nature and the new world has no room for him. Micah is just self aware Dutch, without the charisma and delusions of grandeur, he made peace with the fact he's a bloodthirsty criminal early instead of getting all poetic about it. It was Hosea's influence that made the gang (relatively) honourable.

I'm not sure i'd go quite so far as to compare dutch to micah. Michah is a legit psychopath who not only likes harming people he goes out of his way to do it and gets off on it. In another time michah would absolutely have been a death camp guard or part of one of those SS extermination units. He's that type of person would jump at the chance to kill people with the backing of the state. Dutch kills people, sometimes fairly unnecessarily but even then there was always a reason for it and it wasn't because he got off on killing them. Dutch is definitely a manipulator and is at least partially talking bullshit as a means to keep the gang together for his own purposes but it isn't entirely nonsense. He does believe what he claims to, at least to a point. He recognizes that the world is changing and doesn't like where its headed. He's telling the truth that he does believe that people should be free to live the way they want to, as he and the gang does. But part of that is as a means to an end on his part to justify the things he wants to do. Namely getting rich quick through criminal behavior. He does help people as does the gang at times. None of them aside from michah make a point of going out of their way to harm people

I suspect a big part of why dutch is the way he is at the point the game starts is a combination of the stress finally starting to get to him as the reality of the situation started to become more and more impossible to ignore - not too unlike how hitler started getting progressively worse on a personal level as the situation did, and a (probably subconscious) desire to be one of those types of people who goes down fighting and becomes a martyr for his own cause, even if that meant taking everybody around him with him. He knows he can't win on some level and on the rare occasion where they actually have a potential out that they could use to fuck off and disappear he makes a point of ignoring it and choosing the path that will inevitably lead to his own downfall. Similar to the attitude some native tribes had in the 1870s that it was better to die fighting than to give up and go to the reserves, even if they eventually got their asses kicked and did so anyway. But yeah, he wants to go down actually fighting, which is also why he didn't take miltons offer of surrendering himself in exchange for letting everybody else fuck off and disappear. He knows its all over its just a matter of time. Now its not overtly malicious on his part but he definitely has a fair bit of narcissism and delusions of grandeur, as well as a probably not caring too much what happens to everybody else when hes gone so they may as well go down with him attitude. Hosea did care about everybody and was probably the main factor in keeping dutch in check for as long as he was, but even he wasn't doing too good of a job at it by the time the game starts and when he got killed there was nobody else dutch would even consider listening to

That said michah absolutely recognized dutch for what he was, as did uncle and toward the end so did john and arthur which is why dutch tried to fuck them both over before they started putting ideas in peoples heads

 

[Snekposter]

I suspect a big part of why dutch is the way he is at the point the game starts is a combination of the stress finally starting to get to him as the reality of the situation started to become more and more impossible to ignore - not too unlike how hitler started getting progressively worse on a personal level as the situation did, and a (probably subconscious) desire to be one of those types of people who goes down fighting and becomes a martyr for his own cause, even if that meant taking everybody around him with him. He knows he can't win on some level and on the rare occasion where they actually have a potential out that they could use to fuck off and disappear he makes a point of ignoring it and choosing the path that will inevitably lead to his own downfall. Similar to the attitude some native tribes had in the 1870s that it was better to die fighting than to give up and go to the reserves, even if they eventually got their asses kicked and did so anyway. But yeah, he wants to go down actually fighting, which is also why he didn't take miltons offer of surrendering himself in exchange for letting everybody else fuck off and disappear. He knows its all over its just a matter of time. Now its not overtly malicious on his part but he definitely has a fair bit of narcissism and delusions of grandeur, as well as a probably not caring too much what happens to everybody else when hes gone so they may as well go down with him attitude. Hosea did care about everybody and was probably the main factor in keeping dutch in check for as long as he was, but even he wasn't doing too good of a job at it by the time the game starts and when he got killed there was nobody else dutch would even consider listening to

Guarma really changed him, or rather, just let out everything he had been keeping bottled up. Its a shame so much got cut there because it could have been an excellent way to have him finally snap. In the mission where you defend the rebel fortress you can see the true Dutch emerge on the beach, where he tells the gang he'll hold it all by himself, and he says to nobody in particular how much he's enjoying this.

 

[William Murderface]

I think Guarma had three things going for it that really let the "real" Dutch come out:

1) No Hosea. Hosea was the brake for Dutch in the first half of the game. He might not have listened to Hosea's advice much, but Hosea seemed to keep some of Dutch's qualities in check. By the time they get to Guarma, Hosea is dead.

2) Dutch and the crew are desperate. They are on a Cuban island, are being hunted by the Cuban army, have no money, and no way to either go to ground or get off the island without fighting the Cuban army. Not to mention that Javier is wounded and captured, John and Charles are back in Saint Denis, and Hosea and Lenny are dead. The numbers of gang gunslingers are severely shortened.

3) Dutch is starting to realize that he's losing control. He's seeing Arthur and John not only say his plans are not working out and he's wrong, but they are openly criticizing Dutch by this point. Even his most loyal men like Bill are questioning Dutch by this point in the game. (e.g. during the mission to hit Bronte, Bill is stating Dutch doesn't really know what was going on in the west with regards to the Indians and Dutch just tells Bill he's too stupid to understand what he saw with his own eyes). While they're on Guarma, the gang is more or less only thinking about getting off the island, but even so you have moments where Arthur is questioning Dutch such as when Dutch is all but accusing John of being the rat or when Dutch kills the old crone.

 

[Snekposter]

1) No Hosea. Hosea was the brake for Dutch in the first half of the game. He might not have listened to Hosea's advice much, but Hosea seemed to keep some of Dutch's qualities in check. By the time they get to Guarma, Hosea is dead.

Seeing Dutch recite chess moves to himself at Lakay because he couldn't cope with Hosea's death was pretty heart-wrenching to see. The two of them were brothers in the same way John and Arthur were, they squabbled and had their differences, but even so, one of them would have gladly died for the other. Hosea was probably the only person Dutch would have laid down his life for, certainly not anyone else in the gang, and he probably seriously regretted not being able to trade his life to Milton for Hosea's, nobody expecting the man to just execute him in cold blood like that.

 

[Green Man]

There was some interesting ground to be tread in possibly having Bill disabuse Dutch of his 'noble savage' notions given his former military career, but the writers were obviously quite terrified to go there. Presumably when Bill was out west with the Army, even if only for a short time, he would have been fighting the Indians, and probably finding piles of scalped white kids, women raped to death, or at best, women and children forcibly assimilated into the culture. But instead we just got more of the noble savage shit that has plagued western writing for over a century now. The man was a good read, undoubtedly, but I think some of this might be Zane Grey's fault. Though he didn't go as hard as many mid-to-late 20th century anthropologists and such, mostly because he actually fucking lived during that time and while he likely had no direct encounters with native violence/hostilities, he couldn't have avoided seeing contemporary articles, photographs, etc. There's a lot of interesting ground to be tread even still in western fiction, it just seems that the majority of modern authors and such are too bitch-made to really go there.

It could have even been interesting given Bill Williamson's general characterization as the 'big dumb oaf' or 'workhorse' character archetype, it could have been one of the few complex topics he was capable of articulating himself about, having seen it with his own two eyes, but instead he's basically just made to be the boring 'oaf' archetype that everyone shits on and makes fun of. By the time of RDR1 he's leading a gang and apparently doing so quite successfully considering he's entrenched himself in Fort Mercer and it takes essentially a fucking army of misfits and U.S Marshals to dislodge him, after which he successfully flees to Mexico, so maybe he wasn't as dumb as everyone thought. He gives John the slip enough times that he must not be all that fucking stupid. John walking up to the front gate of Fort Mercer and basically going "now be a good boy and come along with me, Bill" was pretty fucking stupid, on the other hand, and had a predictable result.

 

[Nameless One]

I had a native friend who unironically preferred the RDR1 depiction of them. Anyone who likes history would as well. They're murderous savages, and they took up arms under Dutch. The way 2 handles it is too fantastical, and by the books. You don't even get to see their really murderous side compared to 1. They kill their own in this cutscene. The comic relief in 1 was the professor who acts as you'd expect in the era. But it still had the darkness and the natives really were on their wits ends in 1. Not the very noble people you're told about, and it's a shame we don't have more of that in 2 given their higher importance. I remember being hyped and people speculating on their role in 2 when the teasers and trailers were coming out.

I think overall, after finishing rdr1 last year the characters are a lot stronger. Even Jack who's last part is basically rushed.

Rdr2 has the benefit of having a lot more time to flesh out it's characters but it fucked itself over by being a prequel to 1, having to return to the status quo or the precursor to 1 by the end. They could've just ended with Arthur and leave that gap. I don't mind the epilogue but it doesn't hit as hard as 1's did. I'm still glad RDR2 exists though, it's very well made. It's Rockstar's last swan song even with all the flaws.

Despite 1 having some scenes that feel like they just fly on by compared to 2, there's so much more potency and the feeling of depth within it's character writing that 2 doesn't deliver. Rdr1 is a true spaghetti western, and RDR2 is the typical Wild West fantasy, just without all the crazier elements like Red Dead Revolver had.

John Marston is a stone cold badass in 1, and I don't think he's the same man at all in 2. And if I never played rdr1 for a bit as a kid before 2 I wouldn't even believe the man from 2 is the same character who's a lot darker and wiser than most of his gang in 2.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

I had a native friend who unironically preferred the RDR1 depiction of them. Anyone who likes history would as well. They're murderous savages, and they took up arms under Dutch. The way 2 handles it is too fantastical, and by the books. You don't even get to see their really murderous side compared to 1. They kill their own in this cutscene. The comic relief in 1 was the professor who acts as you'd expect in the era. But it still had the darkness and the natives really were on their wits ends in 1. Not the very noble people you're told about, and it's a shame we don't have more of that in 2 given their higher importance. I remember being hyped and people speculating on their role in 2 when the teasers and trailers were coming out.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pPnqOmIVCS4
I think overall, after finishing rdr1 last year the characters are a lot stronger. Even Jack who's last part is basically rushed.

Rdr2 has the benefit of having a lot more time to flesh out it's characters but it fucked itself over by being a prequel to 1, having to return to the status quo or the precursor to 1 by the end. They could've just ended with Arthur and leave that gap. I don't mind the epilogue but it doesn't hit as hard as 1's did. I'm still glad RDR2 exists though, it's very well made. It's Rockstar's last swan song even with all the flaws.

Despite 1 having some scenes that feel like they just fly on by compared to 2, there's so much more potency and the feeling of depth within it's character writing that 2 doesn't deliver. Rdr1 is a true spaghetti western, and RDR2 is the typical Wild West fantasy, just without all the crazier elements like Red Dead Revolver had.

John Marston is a stone cold badass in 1, and I don't think he's the same man at all in 2. And if I never played rdr1 for a bit as a kid before 2 I wouldn't even believe the man from 2 is the same character who's a lot darker and wiser than most of his gang in 2.

This is a good point. I would wager even in RDR 1, there was an edge to the characters, you could see why they did the things they did - the natives had a reason for acting as they did. Was it excusable? Maybe. Maybe not. But it was what it was doing. Was Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham excusable with killing the members of Dutch Van Der Linde's gang? Perhaps. They were criminals, after all. Ross even says it during the game:

"Sure, civilization may be dull, but the alternative, Mr. Marston, is hell."

I wouldn't say the nuance is gone, but it seems to have been diminished in the sequel-prequel. A character we are meant to hate - Micah Bell, has interesting layers, while (at least to me) Sadie Adler just seems like a version of Micah that is "morally justified to do what she does". I would say that it could have been better written, rather than it was "badly written". One criticism I will say is: Arthur is way too modern for the setting. I wouldn't mind him slighting Lenny for being a nigger and favouring Sean, for example.

 

[Snekposter]

I wouldn't mind him slighting Lenny for being a nigger and favouring Sean, for example.

Yeah, except Lenny is competent and level-headed whereas Sean is an Irishman.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

Yeah, except Lenny is competent and level-headed whereas Sean is an Irishman.

Well, that's a funny point, but also interesting. Perhaps being more trustworthy towards Kieran. Also Bill Williamson not being such a dumb, aloof character. I wouldn't say a scholar; but @Green Man mentioned above some interesting depth he could have received, and we would see his descent into getting more unhinged perhaps.

 

[Snekposter]

Well, that's a funny point, but also interesting. Perhaps being more trustworthy towards Kieran. Also Bill Williamson not being such a dumb, aloof character. I wouldn't say a scholar; but @Green Man mentioned above some interesting depth he could have received, and we would see his descent into getting more unhinged perhaps.

Well, one thing I thought of a bit after I posted was Arthur trash-talking Sean and Molly at some point for how loud and obnoxious they are and contrasting them with Kieran.

"We got us an O'Driscoll who just minds his business and looks after our horses, but we also got us Sean and Molly, who won't shut up and seem to enjoy being a pain in the ass. I think we should maybe ask Colm to take a couple of his former associates off our hands in exchange for letting Kieran stay with us. He has to be the least Irish Irishman I've ever met."

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

Well, one thing I thought of a bit after I posted was Arthur trash-talking Sean and Molly at some point for how loud and obnoxious they are and contrasting them with Kieran.

"We got us an O'Driscoll who just minds his business and looks after our horses, but we also got us Sean and Molly, who won't shut up and seem to enjoy being a pain in the ass. I think we should maybe ask Colm to take a couple of his former associates off our hands in exchange for letting Kieran stay with us. He has to be the least Irish Irishman I've ever met."

That would make up for an interesting interethnic discrimination. You could see Arthur perhaps giving the "Irishmen and Irishwomen are the White Niggers" thought of the era, while not quite favoring niggers themselves, or at the very least keeping distance - while preferring to be among his own ethnicity (let's say French, for example). But alas, this is more of an "how could this be improved" and not exactly "THE STORY SUCKS AND IT SHOULD BE CHANGED".

 

[Snekposter]

That would make up for an interesting interethnic discrimination. You could see Arthur perhaps giving the "Irishmen and Irishwomen are the White Niggers" thought of the era, while not quite favoring niggers themselves, or at the very least keeping distance - while preferring to be among his own ethnicity (let's say French, for example). But alas, this is more of an "how could this be improved" and not exactly "THE STORY SUCKS AND IT SHOULD BE CHANGED".

I mean, the story is generally speaking, pretty solid. Its got issues, but nothing that really demands a full rewrite. But Arthur having issues with some more of the gang members other than Micah would be an interesting dynamic, like backing up Bill with regard to the Indians by telling Dutch about the Night Folk in the swamps. "Some people is just plain savage Dutch, no getting around that."