Red Dead Redemption 2 stands in stark contrast to its modern-day GTA kin through more than just its setting. While Rockstar Games has always had a penchant for mature and complex storytelling, it’s through the Red Dead series that the famed developer truly flexes its writing chops. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a wealth of themes and storytelling devices, weaving a yarn that is about much more than the outlaw life that its wild-west framing suggests.
Arthur Morgan and his friends represent the various temptations, consequences, and mistakes that people can make, decisions that lead them further from a righteous path. It would be reductive to imply that Red Dead Redemption 2 endorses any particular religious denomination, but it’s hard to ignore the strong religious undercurrents that these characters, in this story, help bring to light. And while there are clear parallels between the story of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the New Testament, these are leveraged more to explore the themes present in such religious texts, rather than to promote Christianity. Needless to say, there’s a lot worth digging into.
Major spoilers ahead for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Red Dead Redemption 2 Is a Game About Secular Faith and Spiritual Hunger
The Van der Linde Gang Is Its Own Church
To say that the Van der Linde Gang believes in its leader would be a massive understatement: characters like Arthur, John, and Javier, who have been with the Gang the longest, have an almost Messiah-esque view of Dutch. They often don’t hesitate to put their lives—their children’s lives, too—squarely in Dutch’s hands, even after he makes mistake after mistake, bad call after bad call. In other words, they have an unflinching faith in Dutch and his vision.
This relationship, wherein Dutch is not only a practical leader but a spiritual one, has parallels with the stories of Jesus Christ and his apostles. Like Jesus, Dutch accepts all people—even those considered morally deficient or faulty by greater society, such as sex workers—and attempts to lead them to salvation. But while Jesus led his followers to God, with the promise of eternal peace and enlightenment, Dutch’s aims are more agnostic. He doesn’t promise his followers a literal heavenly kingdom, but a metaphorical one. He promises to free them from the economic, psychic, and emotional shackles of then-modern life.
Of course, Dutch and his crew don’t exactly act in the godly ways of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, and so on: they are guilty of murder, grand theft, usury, and much more, and they aren’t exactly ashamed of it. If anything, they feel justified in their sin, due in part to their “us versus the world” mentality. It’s this insular nature and tendency toward blind faith that leads the Van der Linde Gang to its downfall.
Nowhere is this ironic faith-Gang connection clearer than in the character of Orville Swanson: it’s no coincidence that the disgraced reverend would fall in with Dutch, trading one faith for another.
Religion in Red Dead Redemption 2’s World
Although Red Dead Redemption 2 maintains a mostly agnostic commentary on spirituality, it’s not free of more direct references to religion and organized faith. There are the appearances of the Ku Klux Klan, for one thing, which speak for themselves. A very real, very dangerous hate group, the Klan is mired in its own dogmatic, close-minded beliefs to the point of absurdity, which Red Dead 2 relishes in highlighting. In the game world, the Klan is often the butt of jokes, mocked for its lack of intellectual rigor more than feared for its wrath.
Like Jesus, Dutch accepts all people—even those considered morally deficient or faulty by greater society, such as sex workers—and attempts to lead them to salvation.
Then there are the Chelonians in Red Dead 2, the fictional, turtle-obsessed cult that Mary Linton’s little brother Jamie takes up with. Again, this cult is played up for laughs, their commitment to their frivolous ideals used as fodder for mockery and scorn. Less humorous is what happens following Arthur’s first encounter with the cult: after attempting to force Jamie and the group apart, Jamie attempts to kill himself, stopped only at the last moment by Arthur. He would rather die than be apart from his tribe.
Jamie soon comes to see the error of his ways, especially after a stern talking-to by Arthur, but Arthur’s speech makes him a hypocrite here (as his speeches often do). He chastises Jamie for his decisions, but they aren’t so different from Arthur’s own: every day, Arthur puts his life on the line for the Van der Linde Gang, and for what? His relationship with Mary suggests that he did have the chance to have a normal life, once, but he rejected this normalcy in favor of his faith—his faith in Dutch.
Sister Calderon, Micah Bell, and the Path to Redemption
Few characters in gaming are as despised as Micah Bell. His generally unpleasant demeanor doesn’t help his case, but his most despicable characteristic, in the eyes of both RDR2‘s characters and its players, is his ability to lead Dutch astray, encouraging his worst traits and temptations. Micah is the quintessential opportunist, aligning himself with the most powerful member of the Gang for his own ends.
While Dutch is being corrupted by Micah, characters like Sister Calderon (later Mother Superior Calderon) help guide Arthur Morgan to the light. Indeed, Calderon is one of Red Dead Redemption 2‘s most explicit religious references, even though she takes an unusually secular approach to her advice too. She tells Arthur that “God is people, and people are God, so we must do all we can.” She also seems to see through Arthur’s tough outlaw act and sense the goodness of his heart, refusing to let him wallow in his own self-loathing and irony. She even teases him for his steadfast belief in his own badness. Calderon may not have a lot of screentime, but her interactions with Arthur plant a seed in his mind which, especially in a high honor RDR2 playthrough, grows into the fruit of redemption.
The End of the Gang, and How Arthur Morgan Died for John Marston’s Sins
By the time players reach Red Dead Redemption 2‘s final mission, Dutch’s wise, competent facade will have fully disintegrated, his malice and incompetence exposed. The deposed Dutch, with nowhere else to turn, strengthens his allegiance with Micah and makes a full shift to the dark side, as it were. The weight of it all crashing down, Arthur steals a cache of funds for John Marston, his spritual brother. Arthur becomes more of a father in this moment, finally living up to everything faith, fate, and the frontier have driven him too, and becomes something of a Jesus-like figure. The results of it all—the faith in Dutch and spirituality; the fates of Arthur, Dutch, and the Van Der Linde gang; and the curtain closing on the American frontier, to the chagrin of every man who would call it his own—is a direct result of how Red Dead 2 gives life to faith.
Arthur sacrifices himself (though he knows his death is near regardless, due to his tuberculosis) to allow John, Abigail, and Jack a chance to escape. With the hard-earned money, John finally marries Abigail, and the Marstons build a new home at the Eden-like Beecher’s Hope. John and Abigail are given a second chance at a more righteous life, at the cost of Arthur’s own. Like Christ, or a sacrificial lamb, Arthur’s blood price brings the Marstons a modicum of dignity and peace—until the cycle of violence starts all over again, at least.
- Released
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October 26, 2018
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
