YMMV / Red Dead Redemption

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Captain DeSanta. Is he a pure Jerkass or just a coward who has some redeeming qualities, but lacks the courage to defy Allende's orders? The latter would be supported by the beginning of the mission "Cowards Die Many Times", where he is shown hesitating at first when Allende orders him to go with Marston (with the intent to have DeSanta betray him). Also, his earlier comments on Abraham Reyes turns out to be completely true and not just some mean spirited insults that Allende's words on the rebels lean more towards. Though considering that said reluctance DeSanta shows when being told to betray Marston would indeed indicate that a part of him did like the guy, but in the end his blind admiration for Allende outweighed any hesitation. Interestingly, John's own opinion of DeSanta that he mentions after his death is that DeSanta was "Dumb and loyal to his awful master, but that's all he was." apparently not holding any resentful feelings for him himself.
  • Javier Escuella is supposedly an amoral mercenary who commits war crimes for the Mexican goverment just because they pay him. However, all of his alleged acts of villainy happen off-screen and John only hears of them from the rebels - who would naturally be against Allende's corrupt regime. When finally confronted he chooses to run away instead of just shooting John^note although he does open fire once John makes it clear he's going not going to stop chasing him, suggesting he isn't quite as malicious as he's made to be. This theory is made more plausible by the prequel, where he is depicted as a homesick Nice Guy who is on the Mexican goverment's hit-list - so his work for them may just be an attempt to keep himself alive.
  • Is Uncle genuinely feeling his age, but all the years of complaining about his lumbago have made John and the others numb to it? In II his excuses are obvious Blatant Lies but here he seems to be genuinely grouchy.
  • When John said he'd kill Ross before he'd kill Dutch if he had the option, did he say that because Ross is arguably just as bad or worse than Dutch, and John is simply angry at him for kidnapping his family (something not even Dutch ever did)? Or does he simply miss his old gang life and still carry a resentment for the law? His inability to shoot Dutch before the latter commits suicide strongly suggests the former.
  • The differences between John's stories here and the events of II raise the question of whether he is an Unreliable Narrator; He constantly downplays the "better" aspects of his former lifestyle^note Claiming he had no friends and that he was lonely, also downplays his own crimes (By focusing on Dutch's better aspects and the smaller-scale robberies), claims Javier and Bill were worse than they really were, and overall seems to be trying to paint himself as a victim to get some sympathy points from those around him. This also raises the question of whether or not he's actively choosing to alter the truth and whether or not he's actually in denial, trying to convince himself that he doesn't really miss that lifestyle by focusing only on the negative aspects.
  • The prequel has one for Dutch, as noted on his Ambiguously Evil character trope: is he suffering Sanity Slippage as his dreams fall apart, or was he always insane and just not able to keep up the mask under pressure?
  • Who or what is the Strange Man? John doesn't know and neither do the players. Is he God Was My Copilot, Louis Cypher, or a Grim Reaper? All we and John know is that he's something otherworldly, though, since he seems to show up before people die, he might the last one, if he's not a combo of all three.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Dutch, and really, The Big Three all qualify. Bill is handed over to you by the resident Evil General in Mexico, and Escuella only manages to flee for a few minutes before you catch or kill him. Even Dutch throws himself off a cliff after a brief chase sequence. If you discount Ross' final duel, the game doesn't have any bosses at all, really.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Far Away" by Jose Gonzalez is an amazing song that plays during John's ride into Mexico.
  • "Deadman's Gun" A haunting and beautiful song that plays during the credits. With lyrics that read like a typical hot-blooded Revenge Ballad, but performed in a tragic and mournful manner; essentially Vengeance Feels Empty in song form, and serves as the perfect encapsulation of Jack getting his revenge on Ross, becoming the man John didn't want him to become; and retroactively, serves as the perfect closing song of the Van Der Linde Gang story in the Red Dead Redemption duology.
  • "Compass" playing as John makes his way back to his family. It perfectly captures the sense the story could but doesn't have a Earn Your Happy Ending moment.
  • "Triggernometry" Which plays as John and Uncle fight off the U.S. Army in a last stand.
  • William Elliott Whitmore's rendition of the famous cowboy folk song Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. No instruments, no fancy audio tricks, just Whitmore singing. And that's all it needs to tug at your heartstrings.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • It's Herbert MOOOOOON, the Armadillo store owner who, when he is not busy getting robbed or playing poker, only sells 100% American produced wares, free of the Jewish/foreign conspiracy known as the "South Western Railroads". While many consider Herbert Moon interesting, others hate him. He is truly the love him or hate him character of Red Dead Redemption. He makes a return in Undead Nightmare to show us more of what we love about him, his homophobic, antisemetic, xenophobic, sexist and racist attitudes. Then you get to see zombies eat him.
  • Jack Marston, to an extent. To many he is a Replacement Scrappy, but some feel that since John is/was such a Nice Guy, Jack's existence as a playable character finally explains the existence of the Karma Meter, and that he allows players to go full Desperado since unlike with John, shootouts with the law aren't Out of Character for him.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The squicky yet funny sex scene with Reyes and a peasant girl in "The Gates of El Presidio", which bears little relevance to the plot, with Reyes telling her in Spanish that she's "the best bitch [he's] ever fucked", and the lady moaning, "VIVA MEXICOOOOOO!" Even John seems so confused about this when he catches them in the act and Reyes dismisses her.
• Broken Aesop: While not exactly a heavy focus, the game does have some anti-racism messages here and there, such as Abraham Reyes showing an ugly anti-Chinese mindset to emphasize he's a Jerkass, Edgar Ross showing a similar anti-Indian streak to make it clear he's an utter Hate Sink, an Easter Egg mixed couple household hidden in New Austin, and the general use of Deliberate Values Dissonance in the random dialogue sprouted by the various NPCs. Then once you reach West Elizabeth, you're suddenly treated to an over-the-top racist doctor who's intented to be Plucky Comic Relief, you meet the only Native American in the entire game who doesn't try to shoot you on sight (and is gunned down by other natives in his third mission partially thanks to the aforementioned doctor who becomes a Karma Houdini), before the missions make you slaughter countless more natives to finally reach the Man Behind the Man Mighty Whitey who's given more sympathy than the dozens of now-dead mooks who've explicitly said to be misguided young men looking for a purpose. In short, any anti-racism messages the game may have are unfortunately buried under the Always Chaotic Evil Indians who'll happily kill their own and obey a white guy without question as long as he lets them cause mayhem, without any indication it's meant to be commentary on the Cowboys and Indians theme common in old westerns.
• Broken Base: The Nuevo Paraiso arc. The storyline is either as good as the rest of the game, or a distracting derailment. As a location it's either extremely memorable or it's too much brown desert.
• Common Knowledge:
  • There's a surprising amount of people who believe the Jack v Ross plotline is still open, despite the game ending with Jack killing him in Mexico. Granted, this plot thread is resolved in a stranger mission unlocked after the game seems to end, so it's at least understandable.
  • Nothing in the game ever states Landon Ricketts trained Jack after John's death. This idea seems to stem from his combat lines, where he compares himself to Landon - but none of his lines ever claims he knows him personally, and is likely meant to be just generic boasting any 19-year old would say.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: It's rare to see someone actively playing in low honor unless they're A) on a second playthrough, B) on a challenge run, or C) roleplaying, usually as Jack. Not only is John's characterization closer to high honor than the opposite, Being Evil Sucks; a high-honor player gets a Badass Longcoat, a trinket that lowers enemy accuracy, and discounts everywhere but Thieves Landing, while a low-honor player gets... a horse that - while not slowed down by rough terrain - is slower than the best ones and constantly replaces your current one, and discounts solely in Thieves Landing, which doesn't sell end-game equipment.^note Both sides also eventually get a perk that stops NPCs from reporting low level crimes for different reasons. Note that it doesn't apply to lawmen. And just to rub salt in the wound, trying to pull a Heel–Face Turn after obtaining the high-honor perks won't work either, as the trinket will despawn and the event won't play again until you rise your honor back up. Having low-honor is also discouraged by the game itself, since most activities give you high honor.
• Complete Monster: Colonel Agustin Allende is the cruel and corrupt governor of Nuevo Paraiso. Though Allende comes from peasant stock himself, once in power he becomes an oppressive dictator who brutalizes the common people he rules over, keeping them poor, starving and without hope. One of Allende's darker pleasures is frequently having women abducted and sent to his villa so that he can rape them. After John Marston arrives in Mexico while trying to hunt down two members of his old gang, Allende promises to help him in return for his services. Allende uses Marston as a tool in his war against the rebels opposing his rule, regularly sending a reluctant Marston out to kill them, including one instance where Marston has to burn down their village of Tesoro Azul. Unfortunately for John, Allende had not only never planned on upholding his end of the bargain, he had actually been harboring the outlaws John was hunting, and tries to have John executed once he's outlived his usefulness.
• Critical Backlash: As years have passed, more and more have expressed confusion over the once-intense hatred for Jack, feeling that even if his writing and playable version are a bit awkward at points, he's also not necessary a reason to stop playing either.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Cougars. One-Hit Kill in multiplayer. Virtually silent in the snow. Not fun.
  • The cougars in particular get an excellent Establishing Character Moment highlighting their deadly stealth in one of the late-game story missions (see Shmuck Bait on the main work page).
  • Both cougars and bears each have a certain tiny area on the map where multiple copies of the animal spawn until a "legendary" version of it pops up. This means you may be forced into running laps around a cabin with a dozen hungry pumas behind you.
  • Packs of wolves aren't exactly easy, especially since three or four of them attack at once.
    • Given the way the spawning mechanism for animals works in this game, you can be swarmed by nearly a dozen of them in some areas. Don't get too cozy wandering the desert outside Chuparosa.
  • Generally speaking, when it comes to bears and wolves, the game makes sure you're on edge fighting either, or especially both at the same time because killing any of the two always results in more coming straight for you in waves. Before you know it, what was one wolf pack becomes a small army and what was one bear becomes the entire forests worth of grizzlies coming down upon you.
  • For a human example, those guys with shotguns who always seem to be at such an angle that you can't shoot them from outside the room they're in.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: The reason for Jack Marston's melancholic mood, especially as an adult, is never spelled out explicitly in the game itself (no-one in the setting would understand mental illness anyhow), but it's near-universally attributed to severe depression (over something more mundane like grieving for his family) due to his apparent Death Seeker mindset.^note He also never really gets over his loss, but that could fall under a combination of Gameplay and Story Segregation and Take Your Time instead of being an intentional Despair Event Horizon.
• Difficulty Spike: Mexico. From that point on, enemies start becoming better armed and missions steadily increase in difficulty compared to the relative ease of the New Austin portion of the game.
  • West Elizabeth takes it even further, with higher spawn rates of lethal animals and generally much harder missions that have you dealing with swarms of enemies. The final mission ups it even more, which is a Marathon Level with only one other person to help you (who quickly gets killed) while being surrounded on all sides with little cover by many heavily armed enemies.
• Disappointing Last Level: Or well, disappointing last missions. Once John's reunited with his family, the game continues as the only missions left are just John helping out around the farm and going on hunts with Jack, which had many players bored. Then it's defied again as the very last mission turns out to be John having to defend his family against the army sent by Ross to kill them, with John sacrificing himself while Abigail and Jack escape.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • John, while certainly likable and quite noble by Rockstar protagonist standards, isn't exactly who you'd call a good person. He has a tendency to threaten those who annoy him with violence^note Some have it coming, but some don't and as Jack can attest, John has been a pretty terrible dad, good intentions or not. It's also implied that John's desire to spend time with his family is a relatively recent thing, as he is repeatedly stated to have been absent from Jack's life. However, these small gripes tend to be ignored by fans, who like to paint John as Sacred Cow whose son is the ungrateful one for daring to complain about anything. The honor meter also makes more sense if you consider the idea that even the writers see John this way, and that he was not supposed to be as likeable as he is.
  • To a lesser extent, Archer Fordham. Sure, he thanks John for a job-well done and doesn't participate in the shootout at Beecher's Hope, and is generally much less of a Slime Ball than Ross. but for the most part, he's just as snarky towards John as Ross, with some particularly mean-spirited comments being directed towards his wife. Regardless, many fans seem to ignore these remarks entirely and see him as a perfectly Reasonable Authority Figure who had nothing but respect for John.
• Ending Fatigue: The last third of the game builds up to a final climatic showdown with Dutch and after which John is finally set free from his work with the government and allowed to return to his family. After a quiet and sorrowful send off to Dutch, John rides back home to his wife and son while Compass by Jamie Lidell plays like a scene reminiscent from an old Western to give a cinematic and bittersweet note to go out on. Instead, the story keeps going for several more missions of doing less exciting ranch work which left many players wondering where the story was even going at that point since it seemed like everything had played out already. Then after the final shoot out with the army and John dies it seems like the story is once again ready to close, only for there now to be a timeskip and another mission to track down Edgar Ross to avenge John as Jack. Only then does the game finally end.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Landon Ricketts is very popular, especially considering he's only featured in four missions. Rockstar received a large amount of complaints for not including him as an online playable character.
    • The developer must have taken note because the Myths and Mavericks DLC pack allows the player to select Landon Ricketts as a playable character in the multiplayer.
    • Mount Hagen is also named after his late voice actor, Ross Hagen.
  • Seth is also a very popular character for his generally hilarious demeanour.
  • While Agent Archer Fordham was initially just as much of a jerk to John as Ross was, he ultimately gained appreciation from fans for genuinely thanking John for his service in the end, his absence during the assault on Beecher's Hope, and generally coming off as a better and less underhanded person than his superior.
  • The Strange Man is only featured in one mission, but he's widely considered to be the single most memorable character in the game—largely because he managed to drive fans crazy speculating about just who (or what) he actually is. While he didn't return for the sequel, many fans were overjoyed to find a handful of enigmatic references to him sprinkled throughout the game. His house is a secret location, which can be found in Bayall Edge.
• Epileptic Trees: The Strange Man is pretty much the biggest magnet for fan speculation in the game.
• Ethnic Scrappy:
  • Irish, who is so stereotypical and useless that many players hate him.
  • Averted with French (well, what little we see of him.) His nationality is only known by his nickname and him being said to be French by others; he lacks an accent. John even comments on this when talking to Irish later on.
• Even Better Sequel: Red Dead Revolver had a great soundtrack and atmosphere, with gameplay that was considered to be arcadey fun. Red Dead Redemption, however, features a beautiful and wide-open world to explore, much more to do, and an arguably better storyline, while losing none of its predecessor's strengths.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Grand Theft Horse," oddly, to fans and detractors alike. Depends on how much you like Grand Theft Auto.
  • Thanks to Yahtzee's review, a few fans have opted for "Green Spleen Submarine" or "Purple Monkey Dishwasher."
  • "Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy Shootin'" is another popular nickname for the game, in the same vein as the above two.
• Fanon:
  • Many, if not most, fans cling to a Grand Theft Auto V Easter Egg heavily implying that Jack somehow manages to subvert his Downer Ending after all.
  • Due to Archer Fordham's absence during the government's killing of John Marston and the fact that he seemed to genuinely respect John by the end, many fans believe that he wasn't there simply because he refused to participate. In Fix Fics where John lives, it's not uncommon for Fordham to show up as an ally who helps the Marstons out.
  • If you ask the fans, they'll tell you Landon Ricketts trained Jack after John dies. The newspapers do mention Landon moved back to America after the final mission and Jack occasionally mentions Landon in his dialogue, but the lines don't clarify if he actually knows Landon or if he just compares himself to the legendary shooter, and the game doesn't establish any links between the two.
  • Some have come to the conclusion that after killing Ross, Jack stayed in Mexico to avoid being arrested for his crime.
  • John is more or less universally considered to have good honor throughout his story, since it better matches his characterization in cutscenes and dialogue.
• Franchise Original Sin: This game was Rockstar's first game with proper mid-level checkpoints^note The Ballad of Gay Tony had an awkward system where the player wasn't forced to replay the entire mission if they failed, but it's really primitive when compared to their later games, which meant missions could be longer, more complex and allowed for better story-telling in the process. While this game is still fairly open in terms of mission design, Grand Theft Auto V's missions were later noted to have more Railroading than Rockstar's earlier titles, and finally 8 years later Red Dead Redemption II would be criticized for it's very restrictive mission design that some players and reviewers even considered immersion-breaking at points.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In one of the side missions, you are asked to play Liar's Dice against a man in Thieves' Landing, in order to get the deed to a property. The collateral on the deed is $200, so technically he puts down $200 every time he plays (even after you get the deed). Also, this guy is TERRIBLE and never runs out of money, so a half-hour to an hour and a three year-old's skill at Liar's Dice is all that's required for all the money you could ever want.
  • You can buy +100 units of Fame and +200 units of Honor for the low low price of $10 a pop as many times as you want, all you need is a few hundred dollars to get started. Go to Thieves Landing and buy the Elegant Suit for $75. Now, return to MacFarlane's Ranch, change outfit to the Elegant Suit and save. Head to the poker game and buy in for $10, skip to your turn, get caught cheating immediately and win the resulting duel by shooting the gun out of your opponent's hand. Repeat until there are no opponents left, save the game and they will all respawn. As the MacFarlane's Ranch poker table almost always has four players at all times of day and the cheapest buy in, you can rinse and repeat this process to get your Honor/Fame to Hero/Legendary status with all the benefits that brings (i.e. half price in all shops that aren't at Thieves Landing) very early in the game. If you run out of money, simply do the night watchman mission (also nearby) which can usually earn $40-90.
  • A smaller example in the side mission where a guy challenges you to a race to see who can gather herbs the fastest. Nothing's stopping you from getting on your horse to find these herbs while the guy will run on his feet. Even if you play fair and use your legs, jabbing the run button will make John run faster than the herb guy anyhow.
  • The Expert Hunter outfit (which is either a free download or included in certain versions of the game) doubles the amount of certain animal parts you get from hunting. And given that West Elizabeth has fairly high spawn rate for bears, you can easily build up a hefty pile of bear parts, then sell them in Mexico for more money than you know what to do with. Combine this with a glitch to get you into West Elizabeth early, and you're set for the rest of the game.
• Genius Bonus: When West Dickens is listing off impressive places he's traveled like London and Paris he sneaks in Waverly NY. It's actually a completely inconsequential village... but it was a major railway hub during the period of the game and he would have had a stop there traveling from New York City by train.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game sold surprisingly well in Japan for an American-made game, which are typically non-entities there. The Americans Are Cowboys stereotype probably helped. This prompted Rockstar to double down on the advertising for the prequel in that country.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Behold, the mutant freak people, caused by the game mistakingly spawning human character models with the behavior and animations of animals.
  • And on the flip side, a talking dog (complete with a Mexican Accent) that hands you a shotgun upon meeting it, and that's also strong enough to give you an ally-oop up the wall and into the enemy gang's hideout. Oh, and it levitates too.
  • And although this technically isn't a bug, you can use two horse deeds to quicksave your game if you don't feel like spending time sitting through the campsite animations. This can also be abused for quick cash-call horse, kill horse, skin horse, sell horse parts, repeat.
  • The game actually spawns two Herbert Moons during the day, one in the Armadillo general store and one playing poker in the back of the saloon. There are a couple of ways to get them to meet, such as successfully dueling Saloon!Moon and getting Store!Moon to cry over the corpse of his copy.
  • Shopkeepers are unusually resistant to gunfire by NPCs. You can also provoke them into shooting you first, which gets the law on them. A combination of the two leads to a never-ending gunfight where the shopkeepers can kill dozens of lawmen while riddled with too many bullets to count.
  • After the mission in Mexico where you must board and stop a moving train before it goes across a boobytrapped railroad bridge one can still hop on a train and ride, without stopping, across the gap where the destroyed bridge was. It's surreal, to say the least.
  • And now you can kiss fair competition in multiplayer goodbye.
  • Ah, the Handheld Self-Propelled Homing Dynamite Grenade! The weapon of the discerning cowboy!
  • With the release of the DLC, free roam games would not spawn any Non Player Characters anywhere, which meant that merely approaching a gang hideout would cause it to instantly complete. Replay ad nauseum for infinite XP.
  • A nice time saving bug is that you can skip the skinning animation by having your horse stand on top of the animal carcass.
  • It's possible to travel to West Elizabeth in the main story before you've progressed that far. Become Wanted by the police and let them chase you to the river behind MacFarlane's ranch (usually by the waterfall works best) and surrender at the cliffs there. Behold: you will be put in the Blackwater jail! Enjoy catching the black stallion and gathering valuable pelts you'll need for certain side missions or 'Challenges' long before you're supposed to be able to. (Note that the only way to get back is by using a stagecoach, and 'skipping' the trip.)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The prequel shows just how dangerous the gang was in the day, and as a result some of Edgar Ross's hatred towards John goes from "Irrational and dickish" to "Actually somewhat justified, but still dickish".
  • The prequel also shows the sheer amount of shit the Marstons went through to get where they are at the start of I, to the point where John's descriptions of the gang and his personal history are really underselling the actual events that happened.
  • In the original, the Stranger rebukes John for not remembering Heidi McCourt; a woman that Dutch shot in Blackwater. The Stranger uses her as an example to mock John's statement that he's "good at remembering faces", and that if John can't remember her, why would he remember him? In fact, John has forgotten far more important people than the Stranger, or so he claims. In light of the prequel, and how important Arthur Morgan is to John's story in retrospect, the Stranger's criticism takes on a harsher light. How much you want to chalk this up to retcons not accounting for Arthur's existence in the original, or if it's because John is trying to ignore the past, we'll leave that up to you.
  • Abigail wanting Jack to not take vengeance against Ross for killing John and him ignoring her advice after her death becomes even more harsher with the reveal of the epilogue of II: John similarly wanted to avenge Arthur's death by killing Micah, succeeding which, Ross found about John's feats and tracked his family in order to blackmail him, leading to this game's events.
  • Javier and Bill's cold disregard for Dutch in this game is significantly more heartbreaking after II reveals just how much Undying Loyalty and admiration they had for the man, especially when it comes to how he changed their lives for the better. Javier offering to betray Dutch to John to save himself and Bill being openly proud that he doesn't answer to him anymore indicates that something really horrible must have happened to cause both men to turn their backs on them so harshly.
  • Jack's angst over John's constant absence from his life gets a bit of backstory in the sequel. Supposedly he abandoned Abigail and Jack for an entire year, and once the Marstons settle down in West Elizabeth, the player no doubt participates in John's disappearings by simply playing the game. No wonder the kid is so bitter.
  • The fact that II portrays the Van der Linde gang as a tightly-knit group that you work, fight and celebrate together with makes its depiction here as a shell of its former self who live wasted lives in the outskirts of America quite painful to see. This is quite so for Dutch himself; the charismatic and well-dressed leader of his gang now reduced to a shriveled wreck.
  • Marston's interactions with Javier and Bill in this game acting all chummy with each other becomes this for those familiar with what happens between them in the first game. One conversation between John and Javier particularly stands out, where John wishes to one day visit Mexico and Javier hopes that he will. Years later, John will visit Mexico, only that he would be there to hunt down Javier dead or alive.
  • The epilogue of the second game showing how hard John worked to build the ranch for his family, as well as his and Abigail's heartwarming moments as a couple including John's marriage proposal and their subsequent wedding hurts even more knowing how it all turns out for them here.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Once he becomes playable, Jack wears some of John's old clothes and a beige jacket. For years the beige jacket was just a random piece of clothing, but nowadays it seems like Jack wears it out of respect for his fallen Uncle Arthur. It may not be the same jacket, but retroactively it's clearly inspired by Arthur.
  • Throughout the end of RDR 2 John held the belief that Dutch never really cared about him and was always a monster all along. While chasing Dutch in this game however, John says he'd "kill [Ross] a hundred times before I'd kill Dutch, if it was an option" and "When the time comes, I'll put a bullet in [Dutch]. I won't like myself for doing it, but I'll do it". It seems Dutch saving John and Sadie from Micah changed John's mind about him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Sequel Displacement between Redemption and its less known predecessor Revolver. It became somewhat of a Fandom-Enraging Misconception whenever someone called a possible sequel Red Dead Redemption 2 instead of something like Red Dead 3 or Red Dead (Insert entirely new word here) but but come the official announcement of a new game in the series...
  • Just like his character, Rob Wiethoff is a laid back, down-to-earth family man who doesn't prioritize (acting) work as he will rather stay at home and support his wife and sons.
  • Nate Johns, a man running for governor of the state of New Austin, is known to come from a wealthy family, runs on a platform promising to cut down crime, and is accused by many of corruption. His campaign slogan? Make The West Fair Again.
  • During John's last meeting with Dutch, Dutch says "I got a plan, John" to which John replies "You always got a plan, Dutch." After the release of Red Dead Redemption II, Dutch's oft-repeated claim that he had a plan became his memetic Catchphrase in that game, which makes John's weariness upon hearing it here all the more funny.
  • The fact that West Dickens' tonic upgraded your Deadeye here meant that his potions were actually good for something after all; But since John can use Deadeye level 5 in ''II'', it now seems that Marston was just rusty^note Especially since the Level 1 of the first game's deadeye is a part of this game's max level, meaning John remembered some of the skill and that Mr. Dickens' poison completely reset his Deadeye skills, giving John a very good reason to be angry with him.
• Ho Yay: However brief their on-screen interactions are, there appears to have been some of this between John and Javier Escuella. John will tell Abraham Reyes that he and Javier were close, and apart from Bill or Dutch who does little more but belittle John, he and Javier will chew each other out as if they're unhappy about how things turned out between them. In an attempt to make John drop his guard, Javier will even say "I've always loved you".
  • Near the end of "The Gates of El Presidio", Reyes will see both John and Javier close to each other and make a quip about them as they are exiting the prison, with John either leading his handcuffed former friend out (if Javier is captured) or carrying his lifeless corpse over the shoulder (if killed):
    Reyes: Two old friends reunited. It is a beautiful thing.
  • If you choose to kill Javier, John will also shed a tear before spitting on his corpse.
  • With the inclusion of Red Dead Redemption 2, there now seems to be a deeper meaning of this between John and Javier, as the latter was the one who had saved the former's life from a wolf attack, and there's some subtext in one of the camp interactions in that game when John says he owes Javier for life.
• Idiot Programming: Rockstar's reason for there not being a PC version in a nutshell; the game's code is a jumbled, crazed mess, and they didn't want a repeat of the GTA4 fiasco.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The 2023 port to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch was criticized upon its reveal for having minimal graphical and framerate improvements over the original, as well as still having no PC port.
• It Was His Sled: John Marston dies.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: Some speculate that the story is the story Jack writes about his father, as seen in the WMG section.
• Love to Hate: Edgar Ross has earned praise for being a well-written and interesting character who makes some actual good points on top of really getting under your skin.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Herbert Moon, the general store owner in Armadillo, has become a minor one on GameFAQs.
  • Cougars are the Velociraptors of the Old West. This is, however, entirely justified.
  • So is Herbert Moon's badassedry.
  • Also John Marston. He's practically a One-Man Army.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • PS3 has NOGRASS
  • Over on GameFAQs they seem to have this nasty habit of interrupting people mid-sent* COUGAR'D*
  • "And thus John Marston, one of the great legends of the West, drowned in five inches of water."
  • "Work ya darn nag!" ^{Explanation (spoilers)}One of Jack's lines on horseback, remembered for being much louder than his other lines. It's something of a Never Live It Down moment as well, since it summarizes his Vocal Dissonance and dislike of horses in one line.
• Misaimed Fandom: Many players seem to have missed that John wasn't trying to kill the remaining attackers in the barn scene. He knew that the peaceful life he wanted his family to have wouldn't just be possible with people after them, and that killing everyone who came close would just dig them deeper. It wasn't a case of John failing, he just realized that he couldn't be part of the future he wanted his family to have. This didn't stop people from posting Fix Fics where John kills every attacker and lives happily with his family.
  Landon Ricketts " If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin."
• Mis-blamed:
  • When R* announced that Xbox One now supports RDR through its backwards compatibility, hordes of people started demanding a PlayStation 4 port/remaster "as well". Never mind the fact that it was not a port nor a remaster, and that the PS4 has no backwards compability. The only way to rerelease the game would have required porting the game over. Speaking of which...
  • While the lack of major visual updates (outside of resolution and performance) wasn't the only contoversial thing about the PS4/Switch announcement ^note the hefty price tag and removal of multiplayer were part of it as well, Rockstar never marketed the rerelease as anything else than a "conversion", aka a port. But due to the rerelease having become an Open Secret around a month earlier, the internet had had a lot of time to make wild speculation over the exact nature of the game, ranging from a simple port (which it eventually was), to a remaster, to even an entire remake with the sequel's engine. While the rerelease's quality can be debated, claiming that Rockstar overhyped it isn't really accurate.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • For most of his screentime in the game, Edgar Ross merely seems to be a snide asshole of a Knight Templar who is holding John's family hostage to force him into hunting down his former gang members. He's definitely unlikable (if well-intentioned for the most part), but after John has lived up to his end of the bargain, Ross finally allows him to return to his family. However, he's not quite done yet, and after leaving the Marstons alone for some time, he goes back on his word and sends the Army to kill John. And they do. As John takes his last, ragged breaths, Ross just lights a cigar and watches, with a smug grin on his face. Of course, this despicable act made Ross become a massive Hate Sink.
  • Colonel Agustin Allende crosses the line between keeping his regime and outright sadism. However, his most depraved act is frequently having women abducted and sent to his villa so that he can rape them.
• Narm:
  • At the end of the game, there's a timeskip of three years, making Jack older as he goes to revenge his father. Because of giving him the same character model as John Marston, however, added with a bearded face, Jack looks like he's aged about 15 years instead of only three.
  • When you unlock the Bandito outfit, it enables you to wear a large sombrero which can be rather comical looking, especially if you have John wear it during missions with serious discussions.
  • While the game understandably only has so many NPCs with distinct appearances the creators bothered to make, in Mexico there is one particular rebel NPC (specifically the bald man with broad shoulders and a green scarf) that you will see over and over and over again, whether he's the random rebel you kill, the rebel holding a man hostage in Tesoro Azul, the rebel helping you save Abraham Reyes and later help you look for Escuella, chances are you will eventually get tired of seeing and/or killing this guy over and over again.
• One-Scene Wonder: Javier seems to have become one after the prequel's release. In his one scene, the game portrays Javier as another member of the gang who didn't really care for John while lying about it to his face, but the prequel turns this around and shows that Javier's life before Dutch was terrible, that he once saved John's life, that he was a skillful musician and fisherman, and how despite his Undying Loyalty to Dutch he was conflicted about turning on John. Now his scene shows how far the previously well-dressed and somewhat good-natured Javier has fallen. His two fates—he's either captured by his former friend and Killed Offscreen or just shot In the Back while running away—are also much sadder now that we know him better.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Cougars, the ninjas of the west.
  • Which leads to Properly Paranoid, as you'd be looking at your back more often than you would think.
• Player Punch: The main character dies.
  • Dutch, Bill, and Javier's deaths can count if you played RDR2. Javier's especially if you act like a bastard and decide to kill him rather than capture him.
  • Uncle's death as well.
  • The fact that by having Jack kill Ross you basically had John and Arthur both die for nothing.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Rather famously averted, as the game is commonly felt to have the best gameplay/story balance of any Rockstar game, even when compared to it's own sequel (which many feel falls to the Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game side of the spectrum).
  • A side effect of this though is that not many would say it has the best Rockstar gameplay or story.
• Polished Port:
  • The backwards compatible version released for Xbox One, while keeping the visuals mostly the same, greatly improves the game's framerate, which could dip pretty low on the original hardware. This is especially impressive because the compatibility is achieved via emulation, and the fact many other backwards compatible 360 games actually run worse on the One. On One X it's even better, as the game actually runs in full 4K resolution with a stable 30 frames per second. The draw distance and anti-aliasing also see a notable improvement.
  • While the pricing at launch is questionable, the PS4 release still leans towards this over the alternative; it definitely improves on the PS3 version, visually it's pretty much on par with the Xbox One version mentioned above (when played on PS4 Pro or PS5, it can actually look better than the Xbox version due to new anti-aliasing settings) and as of october 2023 supports 60fps on the PS5. But while it doesn't introduce any new gameplay-related problems, it does suffer from some presentation issues (such as issues with camera smoothness during cutscenes^note Curiously, the same issue could also be found in the 9th fen ports of Grand Theft Auto V, a good amount of pause menu textures haven't been upscaled or redrawn, making them blurry as a result^note Which is also the case on Xbox, although a bit more justifiable there due to it's nature as a backwards compatible title), and until patch 1.03 the game was capped at 30fps which was considered a major sticking point. Digital Foundry's review concludes that while it's a nice upgrade, it could have used some more work and that the end result is a bit barebones.
  • The Switch release has been more warmly received; while it shares some of the issues the PS4 version has, it still manages to port the game over without making too many sacrifices, managing to look and perform more or less on par^note The framerate isn't quite as stable, but still an upgrade over the 7th gen versions with the other 9th gen versions despite the weaker hardware (regardless of whether or not the console is docked or undocked). Making the game portable is also seen as a major plus.
• Power-Up Letdown: Deadeye V2. See Scrappy Mechanic for the exact details.
• Replacement Scrappy: Jack Marston. Quite a few players see him as completely lacking his father's gritty charisma, especially in his One Liners, and therefore find him annoying to play.
• Ron the Death Eater: Jack is sometimes suspected to a Downplayed version - his tendency to insult his horses is sometimes turned up to eleven, and he's depicted as being outright abusive towards them.
• The Scrappy: Harold MacDougal, easily the most annoying character in the game, mostly because of the sneaking suspicion that we're actually meant to find him funny. This idea that his racism is a quaint old ineffectual footnote in history that we can all laugh at doesn't quite gel with the broader subtext of the story at that point and your role in it (i.e. helping the army force its way into a Native American settlement and slaughter everyone inside). There's also they way he treated Nastas. However, they seem to have realised this and in Undead Nightmare, he's killed by an Undead Nastas. There's also a very Fridge Horror moment when you complete the mission chain and realize Harold is actually less racist than most of the cast, wanting to find a peaceful solution with the Native Americans and, despite his treatment, he also seems genuinely saddened by Nastas' death, to the point where he posts a paragraph in the Blackwater Ledger paying his respects.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Super Drowning Skills. To clarify, if Marston's nose goes under water, it's game over immediately. No struggling, no drowning animation, just the "DEAD" screen.
  • While not as scrappy, pulling out your weapon will freak the entire town out, even if it was accidental.
  • Shooting at certain Non Player Characters will make them hostile. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, try averting a bandit raid on Armadillo and not deal with the angry NPCs you might have accidentally shot at during the gunfight. It gets really annoying when the enemies seem to purposefully situate themselves in front of the NPCs.
  • Sometimes, the navigational pathing for your horse can leave you locked on certain patches of terrain and even send you off a steep cliff to your deaths, no matter how much you try to steer.
  • Deadeye level 2 is almost universally disliked by players, since it not only removes the Bullet Time-style slow-motion shooting (Now one shot disables deadeye) and the automatic marker placement does way more harm than good. Fortunately, max level is unlocked one-thirds into the game. The sequel/prequel made it your starting level of deadeye presumably for this reason.
  • Marston will automatically holster his weapon after a few seconds if you aren't in combat, which becomes an annoyance during random events and hunting. Thankfully, this was removed in Undead Nightmare.
• Sequel Displacement: By the time of October 2016, some didn't even know there even was a previous game, and reporting news of a sequel as "Red Dead Redemption II" became a minor Fandom-Enraging Misconception. That is, of course, until it was actually called that.
• Signature Scene:
  • John's arrival to Mexico, as "Far Away" plays on the background.
  • Dutch's suicide and John returning to his family as "Compass" plays on the background.
  • John's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • And finally, Jack duels Edgar Ross at a riverbank in Mexico, and wins.
• Spiritual Successor: While not quite canon to Red Dead Revolver, the game is much closer mechanically to the Activision-produced Gun, an earlier open-world wild west game released during the previous console generation. It also takes many, many things from Grand Theft Auto IV, enough to make it feel like it's an expansion of that game (albeit set inside a San Andreas style countryside.)
• Tainted by the Preview: The announcement of the PS4 and Switch ports were panned by fans. Due to using the exact same game instead of a remaster which many thought Rockstar was building up to, and leaving the visuals and framerate untouched and still no PC port. Also the price? 49.99.
• That One Level:
  • The early mission where Bonnie challenges you to a horse race is genuinely hard to win as most players are still learning the controls at this point and Bonnie's horse goes quite fast. Weirdly enough, the two races you join later on against several competitors, (one on horseback, another in a carriage) are a lot easier to win as the competitors, in difference to Bonnie, don't spur their horses, meaning it barely takes any effort to outrun them.
  • The horse wrangling mission. Big time. The regular horses are handleable, but the stallion... well, lets just say it makes you learn the ropes the hard way.
  • The cow herding missions, full stop.
  • While fighting off hundreds of crows, you will very probably destroy your corn as one errant shot is all it takes.
  • Any hostage level where you need to save someone who is being held by the gunman a point blank range and you only have a split-second to save them.
• That One Sidequest: There are a couple Hunter challenges that can fall into this.
  • One is to kill two cougars with your knife. The cougar is a Glass Cannon without a lot of health, but it hits hard enough that if you don't have a completely full health bar, it will one-shot you. Add to that its stealthy hit-and-run tactics and this can be an exercise in frustration. Cougar comes out of nowhere and pounces, killing your horse and knocking you down, sometimes damaging you as well. It runs off and hides in the bushes, and you get up just in time for it to pounce again and finish you off. Better master that dive-roll.
  • Another requires you to kill a bear with your knife. Unlike the cougar, it doesn't run off after attacking, and it has a lot more health.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jack Marston wouldn't necessarily be quite as disliked if he had been a more heavy focus. Not only does he only appear in the final 10 missions of the game, he only has one quest unique to him. In every other stranger mission he has almost exactly the same lines as John. As a result, he comes as a less cool and interesting version of the man who we've gotten used to and been through the story with. Had Jack had a larger role before the epilogue and had his own missions, character development and unique lines, the switch from John to him wouldn't be nearly as jarring.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Newspapers in the epilogue confirm that Reyes became a tyrant after gaining power, but he also never physically appears after John leaves Mexico. Even if creating an entire questline about Jack taking him down would have been too much for the epilogue, a simple stranger mission where Reyes invites Jack to his villa to talk about John would have been nice.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Some feel this way about the Racing Minigame; there's a total of three races in the entire single-player experience. While PvP racing is an option in the game's multiplayer mode, the noticeable absence of racing side missions is seen as a wasted opportunity by some, especially since the game clearly has racing A.I coded into it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Quite a few players feel this way toward Ross during the epilogue mission "Remember My Family." It tries to convey a similar side to him via his wife and brother. But if anything, it only makes said players hate him even more, feeling like it only gives him extra Hypocrite points regarding all of his horrible treatment toward John's own innocent family, not to mention the unrepentant smugness he displays when Jack finally confronts him — Of course, killing him is even more satisfying as a result.
• Vindicated by History: Jack Marston seems to be getting this treatment. In 2010, he was hated by many players for being a Replacement Scrappy after John's death, and many players simply found him to be extremely annoying. Over the years players started warming up to him, and by the time the sequel/prequel was released most of the hatred had moved from Jack himself to the poor handling and writing of his character and many felt They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character. His characterization in the sequel - an adorable kid who slowly becomes shy and distant as the story progressed - gave players an entirely different view of the character. When a glitch in II gave the player what sounded like Jack's adult voice, many players expressed excitement for it since it suggested Rockstar had plans for him, although the voice turned to be that of a gambler NPC who just happened to sound very similar.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Nastas is treated badly by everyone but John.
  • The entire Marston family. And the only surviving member, Jack, is a depressed loner whose dialogue expresses that he doesn't have much to live for and rarely says anything optimistic. His act of revenge towards Edgar Ross puts him on the path towards being an outlaw that his father died trying to ensure wouldn't happen. The only satisfaction is that Jack could finally have become a writer, as indicated an Easter Egg by Grand Theft Auto V.

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