Tear Jerker / Red Dead Redemption 2

Given that it's a story focused on drama, Red Dead Redemption 2 could compete with Grand Theft Auto IV and even with the first game in terms of depressing moments.

Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

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Pre-release info & Foregone Conclusion

• The fact that, by its nature as a prequel, anyone who's played Red Dead Redemption knows how this ends: Dutch becomes a maniac eventually driven to suicide, the gang itself splits up and is partially hunted down by John Marston and the US Government, and Arthur Morgan, since he's never mentioned in Red Dead Redemption, either dies or disappears in the end.
  • The gameplay trailer shows John, Abigail and 3 or 4 year old Jack happy around a campfire. 15 years later, the former two are dead and Jack roams the countryside without a purpose.
  • As the previews have shown us, the gang here consists of over a dozen members. What happened to all of them?
• The third trailer. Among other things:
  • Very somber music.
  • "We're more ghosts than people."
  • Arthur walking away from two graves.
    • Even sadder in context because the graves he's walking away from are likely those the of his son and the kid's mom. The exact shot is never shown in the game and his kid and babymama are only brought up very briefly twice. One time explaining how he went to visit them once only to find their graves and that they had been killed over $10 and the other time just saying he had a son who passed away. There’s nothing else the shot really could have been of.
  • John is taken hostage at knifepoint.
  • Shot of a burned-down town and constant references to fire.
  • And a bank robbery. Probably the one where John was left to die.
• Given how much more realistic and impressive the horse physics will be, it will probably be very easy to feel saddened if your horse dies. One of the game's creators himself experienced distress when his horse got wounded and by the time he got back with medicine, it was too late and it had died. Furthermore, he tried whistling and because the game wasn't fully finished and had some bugs, the same horse appeared alive and well, which he realized really undercut the moment of his horse's death and thus the old feature of whistling for a new horse at any time has been removed for this game. This also means that if your horse dies, you have to walk (or fast travel) into the nearest town, presumably thinking about the horse's death all the way there.
• Animals here, unlike Red Dead Redemption, actually feel pain if shot. It is possible to kill them in one hit to make their death swift, but you'll have to know their weak spots. Shot an animal in the leg with your bow? They'll likely fall over and start screaming until you put them out of their misery.
• The previous game told us that John also had a daughter, who died before the events of the game. This game is set before the previous game. Even if we don't see her death directly, knowing that she dies young is still a hard thing to think about.

Chapter 1: Colter

• Dutch van der Linde’s first few moments on screen are both heartwarming and heartwrenching, demonstrating exactly why his gang would be so willing to follow him anywhere before his Start of Darkness. Through his charisma alone, Dutch gets the rest of his gang to set up camp in a rickety shelter during a blizzard, having just lost two of their number to exposure minutes earlier. You can tell that this younger Dutch cares for his gang; his voice cracks as he insists to Morgan that they won’t be losing anyone else again.
• We see how Sadie joins the gang. Arthur, Dutch and Micah ask for help from a group of people in the middle of a snowstorm. Those people are quickly revealed to be a bunch of gangsters after Micah discovers a corpse near the house. After dispatching the gang, the trio finds a hysterical Sadie hiding in the cellar. It turns out that the gangsters have killed Sadie's husband and done god-knows-what to her for days. The corpse Micah discovered earlier is Sadie's husband, and the poor woman could do nothing but watch as his killers let him rot outside.

Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook

• While Arthur is fishing with young Jack, an intimidating duo of Pinkerton agents show up. A younger Edgar Ross is one of those agents. The three-year-old Jack obviously doesn't realize it, but the boy has just met the man who is going to take everything he has from him and ruin his life in the future, and whose murder will accomplish nothing but turn him into an cynical outlaw. A very sad reminder of the original game's Downer Ending.
  Ross: Enjoy your fishing, kid. While you still can.
  • If you stick around fishing with Jack long enough, Arthur will tell him a story about teaching another boy to fish. Jack asks if it's Lenny and Arthur tells him no and that it was a long time before he met Lenny and before Jack was born. He's probably talking about his son, Isaac who died. It's one of three times he's ever even brought up in the game.
• John’s a pretty deadbeat dad at this point and treats Abigail like crap.
  • One of the random camp events is Jack crying outside John’s tent and Abigail comforting him and telling him something to the effect of, “Don’t worry about people who don’t care about you.” To drive the point home that it’s John he’s upset about, Abigail tells Jack that the rest of the camp cares about him. She specifically points out Arthur (meaning as a father figure) too.
  • There's something depressing about this part.
    John: I'm not the one taking Jack on fishing trips.
    Arthur: That's right. You're not.
  • There’s an item request for Jack, he misplaced one of Abigail’s thimbles. When you give it to him, he gives you a family picture he drew of him, Abigail, and Arthur. Not John.
  • There’s an encounter at camp where Abigail is trying to get John to open up to her about being attacked by the wolves. She tries to stroke his back and he just brushes her off completely.
• After Arthur saves Reverend Swanson from nearly being hit by a train, the good Reverend has a rare moment of clarity and breaks down sobbing for forgiveness. When Arthur tells him they should get home, he calms down for a moment, thinking he's going home to have tea with his long lost wife. It's a good, hard look into just how broken and alone the poor man is.
• Although the mission is pure humor, there is one part of the bar mission with Lenny which is especially depressing. When Lenny asks Arthur why he never married, Arthur suddenly turns somber and, his voice cracking, responds that "no one would have me." Becomes very depressing on a replay because there’s more context; Mary left him due to familial pressure and his first lover, who he had a child with, was murdered in cold blood.
• Witnessing the moment in which Arthur is infected with tuberculosis by Thomas Downes can be a particularly heartbreaking moment. Arthur pulls the sickly farmer to his feet after severely beating him, yelling and getting in Downes' face about paying back the debt to Strauss...and then Downes coughs violently right in Arthur's face, sending infected blood right in his eyes, which Arthur quickly wipes away in disgust before resuming his demanding of the money from Downes. The fact that it's played off so quickly is the true gut punch, particularly for first-time players, and the cutscene of Arthur riding back to camp while a low, ominous melody plays takes on an entirely newer, tragic sight for returning players. Arthur didn't know it at the time, but he had just become a dead man walking.
  • Arthur's offhand comment "Then sell your wife, or your family, or something!" becomes Harsher in Hindsight when you meet Edith later on in Saint Denis where you learn she has, indeed, resorted to selling herself to survive. Archie has also started working in the coal mines, which in all likelihood would kill him prematurely, and in a cruel twist of fate due to a respiratory disease like his father.

Chapter 3: Clemens Point

• A small one that happens when little Jack Marston and Dutch discover Cain the dog. While the interaction is meant to be heartwarming, it holds very depressing foreshadowing. Dutch’s reasoning for Cain being there? He’s a wanderer who did something bad like Cain did. Fifteen years later and all but one of the Marston family dead, Jack becomes EXACTLY like Cain. A wanderer who did something bad.
• Sean's sudden death is pretty hard to swallow. Arthur tries his best to hide it, but he feels genuine remorse. Even admitting in his journal that he loved Sean like a little brother.
  • The shot of a dead Sean laying on the ground.
• In a way, Archibald MacGregor's death as well. Even if he was a little annoying and liked to take moonshine for himself, he was only doing his duty in protecting the town from a murderous outlaw gang.
• If you hang around camp, one of the interactions you can hear is Tilly asking Grimshaw if she believes in heaven. Susan says she use to be married and believes he's probably in heaven, the the implication obviously being that the man is dead. Susan then says "excuse me", sounding like she's on the verge of tears.
• The part where Bill is petting the dog Jack found, and Micah decides to be a dick like usual and scare it away. Bill himself seems saddened by this, and you would expect Arthur to say something comforting, but he just gives Bill the usual greet.
• Arthur's brutal treatment at the hands of the O'Driscolls can be hard to watch, particularly his cries of pain when Colm savagely beats him and the pitiful expression he makes while removing a shotgun shell from his shoulder.
  • If you think Arthur being shot, kidnapped and tortured by the O'Driscolls is bad enough, you can recall that with his tuberculosis that he got from Thomas Downes (which has a latency period that could have stayed for years if allowed), coupled with his smoking cigarettes and his alcoholism from drinking beer (which are potent risk factors), this brutal treatment of his is described as a major risk factor and "one big fat event that happens in Arthur Morgan's life that utterly and completely dooms him", as pointed out by Austin Hourigan of The SCIENCE!:
    "Being shot with a gun and not being properly fed for days means he's going to be suffering from physical trauma and malnutrition, both of which increase the likelihood that his tuberculosis will progress. Malnutrition suppresses the immune system, and physical trauma, even medical trauma from surgery, greatly increases your chance of getting all kinds of secondary infections, what's known as the 'two-hit response'. It's here, at this moment, that Arthur Morgan's fate is solidified; and it's telling that the first real cough that you see from him is after this point in the game."
  • If you speak with Dutch right after the O'Driscoll encounter, Arthur quietly asks him if Dutch was planning to rescue him as if he's desperate for reassurance. It's left ambiguous as to whether Dutch even bothered looking for him or realized he was in danger.

Chapter 4: Shady Belle

• After the gang rescues Jack Marston and returns to the camp for a celebration, you get to hear Javier doing a rendition of "Cielito Lindo". And yet, despite the song's chorus telling you to sing and not be sad ("canta y no llores"), there's something in that angelic, breathy, charming tone of his that will make you regret the day you would forever silence his once handsome voice in RDR1. Additionally, on a second playthrough, players will realise this was the last moment in the entire story when everyone in the camp was happy, singing together and having fun. Those who know what happens next will struggle to hold back tears…
• In spite of being held hostage, Jack was actually taken care of by Angelo Bronte. The tearjerker comes from the ride back to camp where Jack explains how much fun he had and how well he was treated by Bronte, who he calls "Papa Bronte". You can hear the heartbreak and Heel Realization in John's voice as he has to listen to Jack basically admit to how being kidnapped was a far more wholesome childhood experience than being his son.
  Jack: Papa Bronte teached me lots of Italian words.
  John: Don't call him that, please...
• Micah keeps to himself during Jack's party, but will eventually seat himself beside a fire and rant about there being no salvation. He ends it saying that he believes that he's damned, but he believes that he knows how it's like and that he'll feel right at home there. He's still a bastard, it makes you wonder Micah ever tried or considered goodness before it was fully stamped out of him.
• The final time Arthur and Mary Linton meet in person, if you take every optional part of the mission: Arthur goes out of his way to help retrieve an heirloom for Mary (her late mom's brooch), and the two of them enjoy an evening watching a Vaudeville show afterwards. They seem very close to truly mending their relationship - with Mary truly alienated from her father, she's lost the biggest thing that kept the two of them apart. She even asks Arthur to run away with her, then and there, but he insists he has to take care of the gang, and make one more big score to have the money to take care of themselves, before he can. Mary realizes he'll never be able to free himself from the outlaw life, and bids him goodbye for the final time.
• The cruel and utterly horrible death of Kieran Duffy.
  • If you wander around the camp before doing that mission, you will see Mary-Beth asking around, if anyone has seen Kieran. She sounds genuinely concerned, even gets a little upset when people say "You mean the O'Driscoll?" Of course, if you do the mission, then only a couple minutes after, she does indeed find him "carrying his own severed head on his lap". If you speak to her after the mission, the poor girl sounds so heartbroken.
  • After the mission, almost every member of the gang laments how poorly they treated Kieran, with the women sounding like they're in tears and the gunmen, particularly Charles and Bill confessing how they were starting to like Kieran before his untimely murder. The most they could do is give him a burial not too far away from Shady Belle and Arthur himself chastises how Kieran once saved his life, but he couldn't repay the favour, further adding up to his self-loathing and introspective nature.
    • And by almost, the only person to not grieve for Kieran is, obviously enough, Micah, who instead makes the insulting speculation that he decided to leave and sell the gang out by telling the O'Driscolls about them hiding out in Shady Belle. Naturally, Arthur is incensed by Micah's thoughtless and remorseless approach to the matter.
  • Really, Kieran's role in the whole story is heartbreaking. Though you're initially led to believe he's part of the O'Driscolls, he proves himself to not just hate his former gang, but he's closer to a meek, insecure lad who is nicer than most of the cast. The fact that his favourite hobby is tending to the horses emphasizes how he's a nice guy, but unfortunately, almost none of the gang members seem to trust or like him, only merely tolerating his presence while also taking potshots at Kieran simply for being a former O'Driscoll. And just when he's starting to be liked and seen in equal measure by everyone else, he gets captured, tortured, and decapitated, with everyone unaware of his presence until it's too late. It becomes clear that the outlaw life was just not cut out for Kieran and given what happens, he's the last person you want to see with a fate as horrible as the one he got.
• The deaths of Hosea and Lenny in the botched Saint Denis bank heist.
  • Hosea was Dutch's right hand man and formed the core of the gang alongside him, often becoming the Team Dad in Dutch's absence. He also served as the voice of reason, reining in Dutch's more violent tendencies, and his death cements Dutch's downward spiral into insanity. Arthur refers to Hosea as "his dead pa" in his journal.
  • Lenny was one of the newest and more idealistic gang members, effectively making him the Token Good Teammate. Arthur had always liked Lenny, almost treating him as a surrogate son, and Lenny's death hits him extremely hard. What adds to it even more is that unlike Hosea, Kieran, or Sean he doesn't even get an actual death scene... just ambushed and shot in the head by random Pinkerton goons before he knew what was happening, and he's gone. And out of everyone in the gang, Arthur, Hosea and even Dutch wanted him to eventually move on with his life from the gang and not let his intelligence go to waste.
• When Agent Milton shoots and kills Hosea in the streets of Saint Denis, the gang's reactions are very, very heartbreaking: Dutch’s initial shout of “No!” followed by Arthur’s rage filled “Goddammit!" to Lenny yelling "Hosea! They killed Hosea!" to Javier's soulcrushing "Hosea! He isn't moving!" and even Micah, seemingly unfazed as if he doesn't care about it, saying "Of course he ain't! He's dead!", capped off with Bill’s volatile scream of “Those sons of bitches!” along with the general screaming and demanding of Milton’s head, it's clear how hard they all take it. By far the hardest to see, though, is Dutch's reaction. What does Dutch do? He stares blankly at nothing for a moment, whispers Hosea's name, then goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge with the rest of the gang.
  Dutch: (very softly) Hosea...Hosea! Goddamnit! KILL THOSE BASTARDS!!

Chapter 5: Guarma

• Arthur’s return to the mainland and riding back to Shady Belle. During his ride back, “Unshaken” starts playing and it sounds so somber. It’s like it’s communicating Arthur’s changed perspective on Dutch and the life he’s been living his whole life.
• Molly's death becomes sad and tragic after we discover she wasn't the traitor. Her death was just the result of being drunk and broken-hearted over Dutch. Her apparent admittance of guilt can be even be interpreted as a suicide since she knew the rules meant that any traitor would die. She doesn't even get a grave or any kind of memorial.
• When Arthur Morgan receives the diagnosis that he has tuberculosis. The look of pure horror and grief on his face says it all; he knows that this is the end for him.
  • The lead-up to the reveal about the diagnosis is just as hard to watch. A watchful eye will notice how Arthur's coughing has become more and more frequent, and how his pallor has made him look rather haggard, even after a long night's sleep and a bath.
  • After the diagnosis, it becomes immediately apparent to everyone around Arthur that his health is declining. People who want to fight Arthur start calling him sickly and weak-looking, and even the people at camp (or at least, the ones who genuinely care about Arthur at that point of the game) are walking on eggshells about Arthur's condition. No one wants to say Arthur's as good as dead as long as he stays in Dutch's gang, but by the way they show their thinly-veiled concern, it's all but implied.
• In the two instances where Dutch openly mourns Hosea's death, he sounds on the verge of tears, particularly in the second instance.
  Dutch (to Arthur): You sound like Hosea. I miss... him.

Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow

• The first thing you see during Chapter 6 is Karen chewing out Grimshaw for murdering Molly. This can hit hard, especially for people after their first play through, as Molly was innocent. It also sets the tone for the mood of Beaver Hollow.
  • Poor Karen's fallen into the bottle by Beaver Hollow and the once bubbly and adventurous young woman spends the rest of her time there drunkenly shambling around camp and arguing with Miss Grimshaw.
• At the end of the loan sharking missions, Arthur is given two especially appalling jobs; harassing a former soldier and his pregnant, Native American wife while they’re trying to flee a group of bigots, and shaking down a widow whose deceased husband literally worked himself to death trying to pay back the money Strauss lent him. Arthur is so disgusted (even if you have low honor) that he storms back to camp and kicks Strauss out of the gang. As he does so, Strauss is left racked with sorrow, wondering why a man he thought of as a friend is suddenly turning on him and forcing him to leave the only home he’s got. And not a single member of the gang intervenes in the whole mess. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s made worse in the epilogue when it’s revealed after Arthur kicked him out, Strauss got caught by the Pinkertons, who brutally interrogated him. He refused to give the gang up, even as he was killed and even after they treated him with scorn for doing his job.
  • In partial mitigation, the lieutenant is a deserter from the Army (a firing-squad offense), so "bigotry" isn't the only reason he's being pursued. That being said, his sympathy for and association with the Natives would at the very least have alienated him from an army regiment like Colonel Favours' had he not left, and in similar vein he wouldn't have been willing to take part in their scheme to harass the Wapiti in the hope of provoking a needless war especially since he had been culturally assimilated (even introducing himself to Arthur by his First Nation name when confronted.) So it's not as if he didn't have very compelling reasons to abandon his post.
  • What hurts even more is the final debtor's family situation. Not only is his name also Arthur (which also foreshadows Morgan's own fate), he also has a young son around Jack's age. This is a tragic reminder to Arthur Morgan of the fate of his son, Isaac, who was killed a long time ago all for ten dollars and that Arthur is now no better than the people who killed his son.
  • Mrs. Londonderry's first line alone serves as one:
    Mrs. Londonderry : Arthur's dead.
  • Even with all the misery he's caused, Strauss' ousting is pitiful, the poor old bastard completely confused and hurt by his friend throwing him to the wolves. Worse, not a single gang member stands up for him, either being too afraid of Arthur or not caring enough about him to save him.
• The abrupt and tragic death of balloon aviator Mr. Bullard who was only assisting with Arthur in rescuing Sadie only to get shot multiple times before falling off his balloon to his death. Arthur even stated that he kinda liked the guy while reprimanding Sadie for her actions that led to the man's demise.
  • Even worse? It seems like Sadie doesn't give a damn about it due to being consumed by revenge.
• Even though his actions in game prove him to be a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling, some players still felt a little sorry for Colm O'Driscoll at his hanging. When he realizes that his rescue plan has already been sunk, you can see the fear in his eyes when he realizes he's about to die. The level of total panic relayed by a his thousand yard stare and rapid breathing is enough to give pause to some. A clear case of sympathy for the devil, however.
• If you join Sadie in driving out the last of the O'Driscoll gang from their hideout after Colm's death, you find her at the end of a long battle brutally stabbing an overweight member with a beard she previously claimed was hers. When it's over, Sadie, soaked in blood, sits down in a chair and starts to break down about her husband and where her life has led her, saying "[the O'Driscolls] turned me into a monster." All this killing, all this revenge, it hasn't brought her an ounce of closure or catharsis, and she knows it.
• The death of Eagle Flies. It's heartbreaking enough watching Rains Fall beg his last remaining son not to get himself killed by fighting a hopeless war against the army, but then watching him slowly dying from his wounds at the camp and gripping his father's hands with his last dying breath really makes one misty-eyed.
  • How coldly his pleas are ignored by Eagle Flies, and Rains Fall sounds almost pathetic when quietly pleading them to stop when they all ride away from him. Not to mention, Rains Fall revealing the death of most of his family.
  • This is followed by Arthur once again going into a coughing fit and passing out, just as a final gut punch. It's a painful reminder that Arthur is slowly dying, so more tears are still to come.
  • This is also where Charles sadly has to abandon Arthur to his fate to help the devastated Wapiti tribe. Charles has been a constant source of support for Arthur, comforting him after he reveals his diagnosis and letting him talk about his fears, and now he has to confront Dutch at Beaver Hollow and save the Marston family alone. Keep in mind the next time Charles sees Arthur is as a corpse left to rot in the wilderness.
• While riding with Rains Fall, Arthur winds up talking about an aspect of his life that hasn't been touched on before. Mainly the fact that he once had a son. He says that he couldn't be the dad he wanted to be and his son's mom knew who he was but that he helped support them and visited them every few months. He says one day he stopped by to see them and found two crosses outside. Some bastards had robbed and murdered them, for a paltry ten dollars. A blow like that hardened Arthur against the world, and he sounds genuinely nostalgic speaking about them.
  • Rains Fall coming back to find the U.S. Army has destroyed his camp. His reaction feels genuine.
• As Dutch slides further and further into madness, many of the gang members, particularly the camp followers, start to quietly leave and cut ties with the gang. It's quite heartwrenching since Arthur has lived among them for years as part of one big, surrogate family, and Arthur can't even blame them for leaving, instead encouraging them to do so. By the end of the game, out of a gang of over a dozen people, the only members still alive and willing to follow Dutch are Javier, Bill, and Micah.
  • Dutch, Javier and Bill all start turning against Arthur relatively early in Chapter 6, particularly after Strauss is gone. All three are openly hostile regardless of how you talk to them, and Dutch will tend to tell you to leave or will outright shove you away. There's no getting through to them, and all the while Micah either stands back silently watching or goads you as often as possible. At this point you just know the gang is near its end.
• Abigail dissolving into tears and sobbing her heart out first when Arthur tells her John is dead, and then when she realizes Arthur is riding off to his death. You can tell by the way Arthur's voice shakes the reality is now setting in and he's feeling the full force of his grief. Even Sadie looks like she's barely holding it together.
  Abigail: *(barely able to get the words out)* Oh, Arthur...
  Arthur: Don't you "Oh, Arthur" me! Neither of you two, not now.
• Whilst initially it starts off as a funny Mythology Gag, Dutch giving his "You can't fight gravity" speech before he and Arthur leap off a cliff to escape the Army becomes Harsher in Hindsight when you think about it. When Dutch says those lines to John in Red Dead Redemption I, just before he kills himself, it's quite likely he might've been thinking of the last time he said those words, with the most loyal of his lieutenants beside him. Only now he's alone, with another of his proteges pointing a gun at his head.
  • Even worse when you realize that both times he made the speech, his intention was to escape. First from the law, and 12 years later, from everything.
• During the battle at the refinery Dutch and Arthur raid the offices for money and bonds. As they make their escape Arthur (who by this point is getting progressively weaker from his tuberculosis) is jumped by a guard. Arthur calls out to Dutch for help, and the camera pans low to Dutch's boots. He takes a few steps forward... then simply walks away. If Eagle Flies hadn't intervened Arthur would have died, left for dead by his sole surviving father figure. And what's worse? Arthur tries to rationalize it later, thinking maybe he saw it differently, maybe Dutch didn't leave him. But as the player, we see the sad truth: the old Dutch is gone.
  • Not only that, but if Dutch had stayed, Eagle Flies likely wouldn't have gotten shot and killed by Colonel Favours. All that death and pain could have a (slightly) happier outcome, if Dutch had actually been the man Arthur believed him to be.
  • What makes this even more poignant is that Dutch running away when one of his 'own' was in deep trouble was all foreshadowed, back when Sadie and Arthur saved John. According to John, there was a moment during the bank robbery at Saint Denis when Dutch did see John when the Pinkertons had him surrounded, but he didn't do anything to save John and left him. If Sadie and Arthur hadn't broken John out of prison behind Dutch's back, there was a very high chance that John would've hung.
• Arthur looking worse and worse after we learn of his illness. By the end, his eyes are blood shot and he's pale as a ghost. Even worse, he's bone-thin and looks pitifully frail.
• In the penultimate mission’s opening cutscene, seeing John, Sadie, Micah, Cleet, Joe, Javier and Bill quietly sitting with each other around the fire one last time.
• Arthur's death at the end of chapter six and the events leading up to it are so gut-punching for many players that they've reported crying.
  • According to cast interviews, Dutch's actor Benjamin Byron Davis was holding back tears while filming the scene, and some takes would end with him losing his composure as soon as Dutch leaves the scene.
  • John pleading with Arthur to keep going, so that they could both get away, and Arthur quietly letting him know that this is the end of the line for him.
    John: You're my brother.
    Arthur: I know... I know.
    • Arthur's final battle with Micah can be equal parts awesome and tearjerker, whether it be a fistfight on the mountains if you go with John, or a knife fight in a blazing inferno of a camp if you go for the loot. From the moment the Sad Battle Music starts, you know that Arthur may not survive even though he's holding on to what little time he has left, and it gets even sadder from here while his lungs are failing him due to TB. Then it gets to the saddest part of Playing the Heart Strings in the final segment, with Micah either going into Advancing Boss of Doom mode while Arthur is crawling for the revolver ("Go with John"), or pinning Arthur to the ground for a Coup de Grâce he must avoid ("Go for the loot"; though the relief appears for a brief moment beforehand when high-honor Arthur slashes Micah in the eye with his knife, but still...). After all the emotional turmoil Arthur's been going through, especially when his voice is choked up and he can barely talk or quip in the mountain segment, you feel like you needed to reach out and hug him so badly for one more time before he dies in either way possible.
• Arthur Morgan succumbing to tuberculosis. Unlike prior Rockstar protagonists that are killed, Morgan is slowly dying from a disease and has to push himself until his last moment. While he ultimately dies content with what he accomplished, hearing him cough and struggle to breathe until then is pretty heartwrenching.
  • Not only that, but the fact that it completely sneaks up on you on the first playthrough.^note If you didn't read about it beforehand. Sure, Arthur's got a cough; you smoke like a chimney to keep his deadeye meter up or chew tobacco, that's natural. But after Arthur returns to Saint Denis upon getting back from Guarma, he has a coughing fit that does. Not. Stop. He coughs and coughs as the perspective shifts to first person and he passes out in the street. A kindly stranger takes him to the doctor and he's informed that his life is effectively over. Arthur walks down the street completely stunned, with bits of dialogue about his life and choices drifting into his reverie until he's brought up short by a vision of either a buck (high honor) or a coyote (low honor). From that moment, Arthur knows he's living on borrowed time, and while as a player you might've thought he'd die in a shootout or be betrayed^note It was a foregone conclusion that Arthur would die, since this is a prequel to the original RDR in which Arthur's protégé is the protagonist. And since said protégé dies via both betrayal and a shootout, Arthur meeting a similar fate would've been entirely expected., the truth is just so much worse.
  • In relation to this, the ending of the mission " The Fine Art of Conversation". After helping out Monroe, Arthur sits down next to Sister Calderon and talks with her about life after death. The whole conversation is the most powerful scene in the entire game, but the part at the end where Arthur admits that after years of being The Fatalist, he's finally become afraid to die, is particularly heartwrenching. If you don't do the optional mission with Rains Fall this is also the only time Arthur ever mentions he had a son who died.
    Arthur: (with a slight crack in his voice) ...I'm afraid.
  • Arthur's confession is also so... sudden. One minute he's getting into shootouts with the army, the next he's spilling his guts out to a near stranger. This tough guy, this old school western gunslinger, our hero, is suddenly revealing his deepest regrets and fears, things he hasn't even hinted at to his closest friends, and you see just how broken a man he truly is.
  • The whole context here is also saddening. Arthur previously mentioned he wasn't religious, and yet this scene plays out almost like a confession, with Arthur having what might be his first and only spiritual experience in his entire life, and it centers around his own impending mortality.
  • Not only is Arthur's death sad; the circumstances around it may be even more so. He was only 36 and in top shape when he contracted the disease that cut his life short; even John was older than him (38) when Ross betrayed him. It's a painful reminder that even those on their prime can be cut down by something entirely random and unforeseeable.
• On the "Help John Escape" playthrough, Arthur's final words to Dutch hit harder than any bullet ever could. Barely able to breathe, beaten and broken by Micah, he looks up at the man who helped raise him and in a voice barely above a whisper: "I gave you all I had. I did." Then to twist the knife further, when Micah claims that he and Dutch have made it, that they've won and can escape from this mess, Arthur mocks the idea with what little breath he has left. "John made it. He's the only one. Rest of us... no." Even Micah, the scumbag that he is, is briefly taken aback by this statement. Arthur is basically saying John was the only one of them that had a strong enough sense of love and integrity to leave this game behind before it killed him, while the rest of them, including Javier and Bill, were too stubborn to do so, and they've all paid for it in one way or another.
  • There is also Arthur's last words: "But... I tried. In the end, I did." Arthur had, for nearly his entire life, lived badly, robbing, stealing, and killing for Dutch. He was too deep into the life of an outlaw to ever have any hope of getting out, at least alive. With what little time he had, however, he made up for his sins by giving John a new lease on life, even at the cost of his own. In the end, John wasn't the only one who made it: although it took tuberculosis to do so, Arthur also made it, though it may or may not be enough depending on his honor.
  • The other quote from Arthur that echoes this mindset is when he crawls for the gun to finish off Micah. Micah mocks Arthur saying "Oh Black Lung... you ain't gonna reach that gun. You lost, my sick friend. You lost." to which Arthur replies "In the end, Micah, despite my best efforts to the contrary, it turns out I've won." Despite the bad life Arthur lived, all the bad things he justified for the greater good of his family of outlaws, Arthur came around and realized he could change the direction of his life. Arthur had a chance to do at least some good before his time was up. Arthur had done many things contrary to the good nature buried deep inside, but finally at the end he let that good side win. Alternatively, if for all the mistakes Arthur has made in his life, he can make sure that John makes it out of this mess and can live a good life, then he's won. Micah and Dutch can't undo what he's accomplished, even if Micah kills him here and now he's made sure that John at the very least will make it. For Arthur winning the fight against Micah and reaching that gun would have just been the cherry on top of his victory. Arthur won a moral victory, and one he had been denying himself for far too long. But at least he tried in the end, and that's what matters.
  • Just the way Dutch reacts to it. He doesn’t get angry at Micah, nor does he apologize to Arthur, nor does he even convey a really strong emotion. He’s angry, internally and at himself, more angry at himself than Arthur or even Micah. He can’t even formulate a proper sentence, and just looks at both Arthur and Micah with a dejected expression and leaves, disappointed with himself and his actions. Unlike before, where he demands faith, or says he has a plan, here he has neither at all. After being on the verge of the Despair Event Horizon for so long, he finally crosses it, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
  • Even Micah appears to be moved by Arthur's statement. One might think that underneath his bravado, he too wanted a life away from robbing and killing. That may have been why he betrayed the gang; the Pinkertons promised him amnesty, only to betray him in turn. He may have empathised with John on that note.
• Near the end of the final mission in the chapter, it's not hard to feel sad about the death of Arthur's horse. To top it is Arthur giving up valuable escape time, and his quickly decreasing time left alive, to comfort his dying horse, as he kneels by it, pets it and whispers, "Thank you".
  • Even after Arthur has killed the Pinkertons and has to say goodbye to his horse in front of John, John will ask him what the hell he's doing while Arthur replies to just give him a minute to be with his dying horse. Hearing John's voice grow impatient while Arthur's doing the mourning, he sounds like he's pretty much afraid that his "brother" will die of TB at any minute before he could get him out. Kind of a bit of a mood-wrecker breaking the silence.
  • It can be all the worse if it's Buell, the horse that the dying Hamish gave you, or the very first Tennessee Walker you found on Colter.
  • Even worse when you consider that Arthur's old beloved horse, Boadicea, was implied to have died during the escape from Blackwater. So it makes sense that he gives up a few seconds of what precious little time he has left to comfort his current horse in their last moments. Because, whether by choice or not, he didn't do the same for his Boadicea.
• Arthur's death is bad enough by itself, but he at least attains a measure of peace in his final moment. The Playable Epilogue and ending with John is even worse for anyone who has played the first game because you know that he's destined to never get the life he wants or to keep Jack from turning out like him.
  • The montage and somber song that plays during Arthur's final ride to camp. All throughout the ride, you know what's coming next. Especially so if the player took honorable actions throughout the game, as Arthur's mind turns back to the words of encouragement he received from others convincing him that he is more than just a heartless criminal.
  • It's arguably worse when Arthur has low Honor. The song sounds different, giving the scene a more somber and hopeless vibe overall, and the accompanying quotes reinforce just how much of a bastard Arthur has been and how things didn't have to turn out this way. Other quotes include Arthur trying to justify... pretty much everything to himself and people begging him for mercy.
    Arthur: You speak as if killing is something I cared about.
    • Thomas Downes' words to Arthur come back to haunt him in his final ride. If his honor is low, Thomas' words will be, "Please... I have a family, sir... please", indicating that Arthur has been a monster who deserves his own fate. However, if his honor is high, he will recall Thomas' final words, "We already owe more than it's worth...", and there's a bit of sadness in our hero, indicating that he wishes he could have absolved Thomas' debt while he was still alive. But with his assurance that he has helped Thomas' remaining family, at least Arthur has made atonement for his mistake, knowing that if he does one more good act of redemption (i.e., helping John), he will be confident that when his time approaches for him to die, he will be absolved from sin and be in heaven not just with his deceased family and friends, but with Thomas as well.
• "We're more ghosts than people". This line takes on a truly gut-wrenching meaning, when you realize it's being said by a man dying of an incurable, progressive, painful disease, but its wider implications are just as sad. Arthur is referring to himself, Sadie, Dutch, Micah... basically people who are so far down the outlaw path, they know deep down that there's only two ways it can end: death in a gunfight, or at the end of a rope. The law won't ever stop chasing them, and they're too damned hardheaded and set in their ways to change. Arthur knows this, and accepts it, but doesn't want to inflict that fate on those that still have a slim chance to live differently, like the Marstons.
  • Sadie readily acknowledging that she, like Arthur, is more ghost than person.
• Susan Grimshaw's death, by Micah's hand. When the gang splits between Dutch's followers and opposing, Grimshaw joins the latter, shotgun at hand ready to defend Arthur and John. Then Javier runs in and tells everyone the Pinkertons are coming, distracting her and allowing Micah time to shoot her in the stomach, and she spends her last moments clutching it, bowling over in pain and agony until her death. Sure, she was harsh, but she cared for everyone and to see her die like that is distressing.
  • The fact her death mirrors the way she killed Molly, only this time she was killed by the rat.
• Among Arthur's final journal entries if he's high honor is this:
  John, protect Abigail and Jack.
  Rains Fall - save your son as you could not save your people.
  Dutch, start listening to them as really loved you.
  • It's even worse when you realize that they all fail to carry out these wishes one way or another.
• Bill and Javier wordlessly joining Dutch and Micah. By this point of the game you would have grown very attached to the two. But the game gives a painful reminder of what became of them by the time we get to the first game. Especially Bill. To know that he was actually a deeply troubled war veteran who did his best to remain loyal despite feeling like the No-Respect Guy, and was a decent enough man, can really make it heartbreaking to see the monster he had turned into. No better than Micah.
  • It's even worse for Javier. Bill aims his gun at Arthur and John with less hesitation than Javier, who appears to have second thoughts about the latter two while becoming reluctant to aim his gun against his own "brothers", showing that he still cares about Arthur and John. When the Pinkertons arrive and force Javier and the others to retreat, he eventually returns to Mexico as a broken, jaded guy who now works for the government he once fought to overthrow, a bit depressed and almost as suicidal. When John arrives in El Presidio in the first game, Javier is surprised to see him, unaware that his "brother" is being used by the U.S. government to hunt him down. Although it's very sad to witness either of his two impending fates (either death by John or state-sponsored death by the government), at the very least Javier is very glad (if only for a short moment) to see his "brother" again for one more time, even before he is fated to die.
• In general, playing with High Honor all the way from moment one can honestly make Arthur's suffering and eventual death all the more of a Player Punch, as despite all the good you've tried to do, or all the people you saved, confronting Thomas Downes is unavoidable. No matter what, Arthur will still get infected, and will have to slowly suffer an at the time untreatable illness. It can truly feel like something Arthur doesn't deserve, whereas with Low Honor he probably did.
• At one point you hear Jack calling out to Cain, the dog he and Dutch found in Chapter 3. And Micah coldly tells him Cain's gone. Even worse is that it’s implied that he had something to do with the dog’s disappearance, given how cruelly he treated Cain.

Epilogue (Both parts)

• After finishing the main game, take a trip to Tumbleweed and visit the stables. The horses you can buy there are lookalikes of the horses the members of the gang rode, specifically Kieran, Sean, Hosea, Trelawny, and Javier. If you've finished the epilogue, you have more than enough money to buy them, and there is something unspeakably bittersweet about riding Branwen, Ennis, and Silver Dollar- or at least, horses that look exactly like them- to Kieran, Sean, and Hosea's graves as John to pay your respects.
• During the Epilogue, John, Abigail, and Jack find work as ranch hands. It goes reasonably well for a time, and while the family isn't prosperous they've got a roof over their heads and are content at least (apart from John's occasional grumbling). Then the ranch is attacked by rustlers and their cattle stolen. John employs his outlaw skillset to get the cattle back, shooting up the rival ranch in the process. This is great, right? Not at all, as Abigail points out that every time they build a reasonable level of comfort somewhere, John inevitably has to get involved in things and they have to leave after he draws far too much attention to himself. He comes home one day to find Abigail and Jack gone, with a letter explaining to him while she loves him, she can't put Jack at risk. The forlorn expression on John's face after he finishes reading is heartbreaking.
• Learning Strauss' fate from Charles. He was caught by the Pinkertons shortly after being banished and implied to have been tortured to death. Despite this (and despite having every reason to), he did not give up any information on the gang, leading John to comment:
  John: I guess some folk is strong in ways you can't see.
• The death of Willard Wayne, one of the two hired guns. He is the only one who communicates with one of the Norwegian toolmakers at the Manzanita Post, and he thinks that his presence as a hired gun (along with Mr. Devon) will scare any outlaws away, though John points out that the protection of the wagons may be a sign that they're carrying something valuable and might attract outlaws instead. Mr. Wayne is soon proven wrong (arriving at the wrong place at the wrong time), as he is struck by an arrow in the right shoulder by the Skinner Brothers. To make matters worse, Mr. Wayne is kidnapped and his toolbox stolen by the Skinners. You may think that John and Charles would come to his rescue, but by the time they arrive at the Skinners' hiding spot, they find that he has already been killed by the Skinners as a Player Punch, no matter how fast they get to him. You can't help but feel sorry for him as Charles unties Mr. Wayne's body and carries it home for burial. So heartbreaking.
• For dog-lovers, seeing Rufus getting bit by a snake can be very distressing, even if we can still save him. The fact that Jack is scared to the point of sobbing doesn’t help matters. Although, this scene has a bit of Narm when a panicked Jack starts yelling "Suck it, dad!"
• Dutch shooting Micah is, on the surface, a Moment of Awesome, as the man who destroyed the gang is finally dead. However, one interpretation is that Dutch shot him because he realized that Micah was trying to get his remaining son killed; something he himself had done to Rains Fall and Eagle Flies years earlier. Upon realizing that he wasn't so different from Micah, he realized that he was not the outlaw hero he believed himself to be; no, he was a manipulating murderer who pretended to be something he wasn't. Realizing his true nature, he realized that despite his best attempts, in the end he couldn't fight his own nature, and stopped pretending that he was anything else than a murderer, resulting in the monster we see in I.
  • It’s also suggested by fans that Dutch might have felt some measure of remorse for allowing his gang to fall like it did — regret that he didn’t listen to Arthur when he had the chance. The fact he gives John one somber, silent look before just walking away says it all.
  • Dutch may also have just enough sanity left for John's appearance to make him realize that listening to Micah has led him to a literal dead end: a wretched cabin on an icebound cliff at the ass end of the world. He's sitting on a pile of money, but it's no good to him; Micah is a "survivor," but mere survival is a pretty miserable existence. Dutch's life has no meaning any more; free of Micah he can at least attempt to give it a twisted "meaning" by forming a new gang of rebels without a cause, a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against "civilization."
• There's a scene in the epilogue, directly after Abigail and Jack come back, when Sadie comes to Beecher's Hope. Abigail asks: "How many times do I have to bury you, John Marston?", and he responds: "You ain't never burying me, woman", yet another dark foreshadowing of his fate just a mere four years later.
• The entire house building montage takes a sadder turn once you realize that the eventual inheritor of the place, Jack Marston, will all but abandon it. The ranch can be seen as a testament to redemption itself, being built by former outlaws using funds they accrue legally to make an honest living. The place being abandoned darkly mirrors Jack abandoning the peaceful life everyone had set out for him.
• Finding Uncle burnt to a crisp by the Skinners can be quite heartwrenching. While Uncle may be a bit of a Jerkass, he does provide much of the comic relief by always being so joyful and happy. But not here. Here, the poor old man is sobbing.
• For a bittersweet example, John proposes to Abigail with a wedding ring. Said wedding ring (including the hat John wears in the epilogue) belonged to Arthur Morgan.
• This is bittersweet, but the end of the epilogue when Charles and Sadie leave for Canada and South America, respectively. It's for the best, so that they can escape the events of the first game, but it is still sad to have to say your farewells, when they were such an important part of John's life at that point, and it is clear that he'll miss them.
• The very final shot of the game is chief Rains Fall standing at a cliff and seeing the namesake of his late son - an eagle - flying by.
• If you want to earn 100% completion of the game but haven't completed the Stranger Missions as Arthur in the main story, instead doing them as John, this of course takes you from Beecher's Hope and all over the map, and while a good-hearted player may return often, they're not there every day. John becomes at best a well-intentioned but largely absent father and husband, and at worst he's out there hell-raising, robbing and murdering without remorse or regret. And why? Because as the player it's highly, highly unlikely you want to spend the remainder of the game working on the ranch. The game's creative team gives John, Abigail, Jack and Uncle their happy ending... and we as players can ruin it. And while Ross and Fordham found John in the credits, it's entirely possible they may have left him alone... if John didn't keep getting into trouble.
• Reaching 100%. When you do, the game triggers a cutscene of John at Arthur's grave. He says, "Guess we're just about done, my friend", while a much more soothing reprise of "Unshaken" (here called "Crash of Worlds") plays in the background. The sensation of having completely finished the game and concluded Arthur's legacy is unrivaled.
  • Even just finishing the epilogue and watching the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue interspersed in the credits is momentous. After all the dozens upon dozens of hours of time that you've spent with these characters, it feels like the end of an era.
• At the end of the game, John and Abigail are shown to be a very cute couple. Of course, this makes the ending of the first game even more heartbreaking.
• It’s easy to miss, but during one of the newspapers that can be bought in the Epilogue, it’s revealed that there was no oil underneath the Wapiti Indian Reservation. This means that the war between the Army and the Indians are entirely pointless, and all of them died and suffered for nothing. All the suffering Favours and Cornwall put the Indians through just so they can drill their land for oil was pointless, and so were the deaths of the many soldiers (some of whom were just teens) that Favours sicced into war who died for nothing. Worst of all, that means that Rains Fall's family (especially Eagle Flies) had died for nothing.
• You can find Pearson as the clerk in Rhodes's general store and occasionally, you can rob him. As expected, he'll be pretty disappointed at John if he does such thing and gives the player a good dose of possible regret.
• In an otherwise cheerful letter to John and Abigail, Tilly speculates that Karen likely drunk herself to death and mourns her, stating that she saw her as a sister and misses her every day.
• After the shine of killing Micah wears off, the realization of what you ruined sets in. John had everything he needed; Abigail, Jack, Uncle, a simple, honest living and a home for all of them to grow old in. Arthur's sacrifice had paid off. Then John had to let his pride and misplaced sense of honor step in and give it all up, something his own son would end up doing many years later. But while Jack was rendered an outlaw after killing Edgar Ross in revenge, his fate beyond that was left ambiguous. With John, we know exactly how his crusade against Micah ultimately destroyed him and his family, as while Micah got what was coming to him, John left a trail for Edgar Ross to follow, and the man would eventually entrap John into doing his dirty work, and ultimately backstab him, ensuring that he met his end by the same kind of treachery he'd killed Micah for.

Free-roam & Strangers

• One of the events you can discover in the game is the gunsmith in Rhodes is keeping a man prisoner in the basement, he's under the illusion that the man is his son and forces him to dress like him. If you free the prisoner, the gunsmith breaks down and reveals that his real son died in a tragic accident when he was showing him to shoot a rifle (the blowback from the rifle caused his son to get thrown into the river where he was washed away) and he was keeping the man prisoner and having him dress as his son out of guilt for his son's accidental death.
  • After the prisoner leaves, the poor man is left a broken mess, if you want to be a jerk you can rob the place. He won't bother trying to stop you, he's too upset.
• Late in the game, while travelling through Strawberry, you can come across a young man (who looks and sounds no more than late teens/early 20s) looking for his lost dog. An innocuous task, until you bring back the pooch to reveal the owner lives in the same house that Micah shot up. It's all but implied that Skinny and Maddy were his parents, and the dog is the only family he has left. No wonder he's bursting with joy when they're reunited!
• There's a random chance of finding a letter on a random civilian's corpse. One of those letters is this one◊. Congratulations, you just ruined someone's family!
• Not an in-story example, but one of the items you can loot from corpses is a wedding ring. Perhaps the person who you took it from took it from someone else, but the possibility remains that you just killed a married man.
  • Or possibly even worse, someone who was planning to marry some girl out there, but didn't even reach the proposal because of you.
    • Men didn't really wear wedding rings until World War 2 so it's likely that.
• If you shoot Herbert Moon and loot his body, you can find a letter from his estranged daughter, whom he disowned for daring to marry a Jewish man and do charity work.
• There's a shed you can find in Lemoyne with two corpses completely slashed to death in it. A blood trail outside leads up to a dead girl with a bullet in her head against a wagon with a revolver by her hand and a machete next to the other. If you loot her corpse, you find a letter, with details about her ex-boyfriend or crush attempting to get away from her and getting another chance at life with his wife. Clearly, she didn't take it very well.
• Visiting the graves of the fallen members of the gang scattered around the map. Each of them is buried close to the place where they died, including Arthur. To hammer it home further, there's an achievement for paying respects to all of them.
• Following random tracks in the wilderness in and around Roanoke Valley may lead you to a "feral man", a naked guy in a cave with two wolves. Stay too long, and he'll send them to attack you. Expecting the guy to attack you after you take out his wolves? No. He'll get on back in fetal position and starts crying, since you just killed his only friends. If you greet him at this point, Arthur actually apologizes for killing his canine companions.
• One of the debtors Arthur is tasked with loan sharking is Algie Davison, a gambling alcoholic who lives with his son Nate. Algie takes Arthur into his house and tries to ambush him. If Algie gets killed during the scuffle, Nate is traumatized and later ends up being just like his father years later. Even if Arthur knocks out Algie or hogties him, the latter will still be dead by 1907.
  • Even worse is that if you hogtie Algie and then kill his son Nate, the former will be heartbroken and burst into tears, as Nate is the only relative he had. If you return to the house a little later, Algie will be sitting and drinking in his chair, breaking down over how he could have prevented his son's fate, lamenting that he should have been the one to die instead of Nate. Algie will become vengeful over you and will even attempt to kill you if you return to approach him.
  • The Catfish Jacksons homestead was entirely designed around destroying the player's ego for being an asshole. After you neutralize Algie be it by killing him, knocking him out or hogtying him, you will find Nate crying under his bed in his room. If you explore the room next to Nate's, you'll find a letter from his mother that his dad has been hiding from him. You can then return to Nate's room and inform him that his father has been hiding his mother's letters from him, which leaves the kid horrified. Then, if you further wish to be a complete sociopath, you can loot the cigarette cards that are in Nate's room, which will cause him to plead you to not do so, because those cards were given to him by his mother. Holy shit.
  • If you shoot Algie after Nate runs to his room, Nate will be heard calling out for his dad and becoming further distraught as his dad doesn't respond. No matter how much you like Arthur Morgan, visiting this homestead will absolutely make you view him (and yourself) as a complete monster.
• The "The Veteran" stranger mission line involves you interacting with a grizzled Civil War veteran with an artificial leg named Hamish Sinclair. The majority of the missions are heartwarming, with Arthur and Hamish bonding over fishing and hunting, clearly becoming good friends. The fourth mission involves the two of you hunting a massive boar together, and it seems to be going as normal, until the two of you split up. You end up on a ridge and see the boar charging at Hamish, trying to land shots on it to stop it. The previous mission had the two of you fighting off an entire pack of wolves, he can handle a boar! No such luck. The boar gored him and he's bleeding out. He asks you to take care of his horse for him before he finally passes, with Arthur shaking him and trying to rouse him. Then the boar rears its ugly head over the hill next to you and charges you, forcing you to quickly gun it down. The only thing that keeps this from being a true Downer Ending? Arthur's statement after killing the boar.
  Arthur: We got him, old man.
  • If you play the final mission as John, he'll inform Hamish that he's a friend of Arthur's and tells him about his death. Hamish can only solemnly nod and remark fondly of how he and Arthur had bonded.
• On an abandoned ranch south of Armadillo you can find a woman's skeleton under some farm equipment. The thing is, she has a donkey's skull, implying that she was overworked to death for being a freak, and the body was just left there. On a more bittersweet note, the only thing reading in your journal will be confusion among the lines of "poor thing, who'd do something like this?", instead of the fearful or hateful response you'd expect from a man born in the late 1800s. Of course, this becomes less sad when you find out that the skeleton is an Easter Egg referencing the Donkey Lady, one of the more hilarious/horrifying of the first game's infamous "Manimals"
• One of the bounties you can get requires you to find the target saying his goodbyes to his family, knowing that a bounty hunter is coming. Once you get there, he asks for one final goodbye to his son which you can allow or refuse, where he tearfully tells his kid to not be like him in the future and to stay strong. Once he's done, his wife and son will be forced to watch you hogtie him, stow him on your horse and take him away to prison.
  • He shimmies his way out of the ropes during the way and tries to run back to his family. Unfortunately, you can't allow that to happen.
  • The worse part? All this is a clear allusion to John Marston who eventually will leave his gang and try to redeem himself. The only comfort extracted here is that you don’t gun him down in cold blood. This man at least gets to be alive, just in jail.
    • Actually, go to Rhodes a day or so later and you watch as Mark Johnson is placed on the scaffold. The sheriff makes a speech about how it doesn't matter if you repented your sins; they still stand in the eyes of the law and have to be accounted for. They then hang Johnson. This is especially poignant if you are playing as John Marston in the Epilogue, as it's a preview of his family's eventual fate.
  • It's much less heartbreaking when you find out that when saying his goodbyes, he tells his son to contact his gang members for a rescue attempt. So unlike John, his claim of going straight is an outright lie.
• In one random event in Rhodes, you can get to the churchyard and encounter a priest presiding over the burial of "a hero who... had been led astray by sin". The sad part is that it's a Lonely Funeral with no one around but you and the priest attending as he says a eulogy and prayer for the deceased guy.
• The Norwegian newspaper clips. Following the first one you find will lead you to Manzanita Post, the home to a group of Norwegian immigrants; searching one of the cabins there (The same one that's a safehouse in RDR) gives you two items: a picture of a couple and their child, and another Norwegian newspaper clip; and picking up the latter causes the cabin's owners to bolt. When both are translated, you'll find out that at least some of the Norwegian immigrants at Manzanita are in fact religious zealots, and murdered the couple seen in the photograph before escaping to America. The reason for their deaths? They were a mixed-race couple.
  • The journal page reveals that at least one of them feels extremely guilty for the murders.
• When you get to a cottage in Osman Grove, you find that the front door is locked. On either breaking the lock or busting down the door, you come upon a gruesome, yet sad, sight: the corpses of a small family lying next to a furnace near the kitchen table. When you look at said furnace, you find that the pipe had ruptured, emitting a deadly smoke gas that had filled the entire house when the door had been locked, killing off the entire family by smoke inhalation. What's worse is that no one in the family had noticed the pipe being broken off, and if they did notice, they would have been too poor to hire a home inspector to fix it. An unfortunate, sad fate indeed.
• Upon kicking open the locked door of a seemingly abandoned cabin in Clawson's Rest, you will discover the heavily decomposed bodies of two children. Looting the nightstand reveals a note from their mother stating not to open the door for anyone, and that there's enough food and water for four days but she should return before then. Obviously, she didn't. And since we never find her body or learn her name, this leaves her fate open to any number of horrible options.
• At several locations in the game, you’ll come across an Englishman yelling out for someone named Gavin. Talking to him, you learn that Gavin is his best friend and they somehow got separated. It’s painful to listen to, mainly because of the sheer sadness and worry in his voice.
  • Even worse, you can meet him again in the epilogue. He is still searching for Gavin all these years later, but by this point his sanity has eroded to the point where he cannot even remember what Gavin looks like anymore.
• Some of Blind Man Cassidy’s prophecies can be this.
  Be warned kind sir, surrounded by fields of fire and flesh, the devil will make his sacrifice.
  Make your final moments your best moments, sir. Know glory and forget about shame.
  Your whole life is one of regret... but it can end better than it began.
  Bad news awaits you, sir. Sadly, sooner than you think. But beyond the news, paradise awaits. Paradise...
  They will come for you, friend. And when they do, you will not have a choice. But you have lived better than most.
  I sense great confusion in you, sir. Great confusion. Not because you do not know, but because you are afraid of what you know.
  Embrace those who love you, not the memory of those who pretended to.
• If you go exploring in the snowy wilderness of Ambarino, you can come across a small camp...where two settlers, a man and a woman, are found frozen to death. They've huddled together for warmth, but it wasn't enough to keep them from slowly dying from exposure. It's a stark reminder of just how unforgiving this land truly is, and how there are likely countless people across the Old West who tried to seek their fortunes, only to end up dying in horrible ways, abandoned and forgotten by everyone else.
• The mission "A Bright Bouncing Boy" has Arthur/John assisting the quirky scientist Marko Dragic with his experiments. Along the way, Dragic admits that he's spent his whole life struggling to gain recognition for his theories, and has been dismissed as insane for decades. When he finally achieves a measure of success with rudimentary electricity, he's ecstatic at finally getting an ounce of fame and respect—but then he goes too far and tries to make a robot as part of a nutty plot to Take Over the World. The player helps activate that robot...but it kills Dragic after a few hours alive. That's not the worst part, though. After finding Dragic's body, you can discover a set of snowy footprints atop a mountain in Colter. Following them reveals the robot, sitting forlornly on a rock and quietly whispering one word over and over again: "Papa." For whatever reason, the robot genuinely does miss Marko and regrets his murder. And there's nothing you can do to help the poor automaton. He just sits there forever, mourning his "papa."
  • Dragic may have been somewhat of a Jerkass, but it's easy to feel sympathy for him—he spent so long trying to gain just a bit of recognition for his work, and he's so genuinely thrilled at seeing his creation come to life, that you can't help but feel sorry for him when he dies.
  • Making matters worse is that Dragic is clearly based on Nikola Tesla, who also struggled to gain recognition in his lifetime because of his difficulties in wooing investors and fearful corporations working to prevent his free energy projects from reaching fruition. The Reality Subtext is harsh.
• One of the points of interest is the face of a woman carved into a cliff, with the sculptor having hanged himself from the scaffolding. His suicide note says that it was to be a tribute to the woman he loved but she left him due to him being too busy with it.

Other

• That's The Way It Is, the song that plays during a high-honor Arthur's final ride. You should hear the full version of the song, because it not only has the high-honor lyrics as the first verse, but it also contains the second verse not included in the game, the verse that mentions something about John Marston.
  Blue heron leaves the northern sky,
  Trusts the journey to new heights.
  What's the meaning of the scar,
  If we don't know how to heal?
  Should we ever be apart,
  Then how does it feel?
• "Crash of Worlds", especially the high-honor version, can be heartbreaking (and/or heartwarming) to listen to: it plays as Arthur is taking his final breaths while gazing at the sun in both High Honor endings (when the song reaches the first "May I... stand unshaken..." part); and when John writes a picture of Arthur's grave in a Grave-Marking Scene after you reach 100% Completion. It can make you feel like you're "pretty much done" (in John's words).
• In the first game, Bill was just an Ax-Crazy psycho and seemingly the most evil of the gang. This game flips that on its head and makes John’s confrontation with him incredibly depressing; Bill wasn’t just some jerkass bandit, he was a Shell-Shocked Veteran who was driven mad by the horrors he saw in the Indian Wars and the dementia that he inherited from his father. To make it worse, he’s The Unfavorite of the gang and is generally treated like dirt, despite staying loyal to the very end. At one point after he makes a mistake and is chewed out, he angrily snaps about how he gets shit on for every little screw-up, while Arthur (i.e., the player) seems to do whatever he wants and get away with it. There's also the fact that Bill is heavily implied to be gay living roughly a century before it was socially acceptable. He's living his life with a big secret (which isn't healthy for anyone, let alone someone as fragile as he is) that probably causes him a great deal of shame and self-loathing.
• In one campfire event, Javier tells the story of how he came to America as a troubled immigrant who spoke no English and was starving to death due to the indifference of those around him... until he met Dutch. You can tell there's a bit of sadness in Javier's voice as he speaks, as he is trying hard not to cry.
• In one random camp event (most notably toward the end of Jack's rescue party), Pearson sings "The Old Scout's Lament", about how the old days of frontiersmen are coming to an end, which can easily foreshadow the breakup of the Van der Linde gang. It's very sad and touching, and even more so when Arthur sings along with him (though he does hum the tune for a few words he doesn't know to the song).
• Some of the Legendary Bounties in Red Dead Online are genuinely depressing.
  • Sergio Vincenza is a Rebel Leader who is liberating a guerrila against the government. Most of the people that fight for him are genuinely ordinary citizens that you find around the many towns of the game, brainwashed by Sergio into believing that following an anarchistic lifestyle running from the law while planning terrorist attacks and political assassinations is the way to go, all for the sake of getting better jobs. How many of these poor, misguided workers probably had families that were waiting for them to return until you came along and slaughtered them all just to get Sergio?
  • Cecil C. Tucker is a pyromaniac who murdered women and children in their sleep by burning their homes down. The catch? He's a poor young man who looks no older than 20, struggling with a mental illness that makes him hear voices telling him to do it. When you hogtie him, he immediately breaks down and tries to divert the blame onto his victims, only to slowly cope with his consequences and wish he could take it all back. When you finally get close to jail, he begs you to not take him in. His crimes are terrible, but one can almost feel a twinge of sympathy for Cecil Tucker when he starts crying for his mother.
• The setting as a whole shows the death of the Old West, but unlike the first game where even Dutch recognizes their time has passed, you see the shift firsthand as people fail to adapt and suffer for it — the Van der Linde gang breaks apart as Dutch's "one more big haul" mentality stops working and their position as outlaws living on the fringes of society becomes untenable.

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The many miles we walked...the many things we learned...

The building of a shrine...only just to burn...

That's the way it is...that's the way it is...