Finally finished the epilogue (and my does it go on and on.) That final mission was just so incongruous and nonsensical. I wished they’d rolled credits after the kiss. I loved the game, but was definitely ready for it to be over. It’s still not my favorite open world game (that would be Horizon: Zero Dawn), but it’s probably number 2. I can’t help but wish that Sadie was the main character. She would have been perfect start to finish. But wow, this was an experience. Happy trails Arthur. It was real nice spending dozens of hours with you.
Yeah, I finished the epilogue but then restarted rather than try to play for 100%. I -liked- Arthur, I didn’t feel much connection to the character played in the epilogue. I think I would have preferred to play Sadie in the epilogue.
But that’s a minor complaint. This game was the most awesome thing I’ve played in a long time.
I guess I differ from just about every other opinion I’ve read in that I don’t really care all that much for Sadie. I liked her well enough and she got an interesting arc but there’s just not a lot going on in there, not the way Arthur has. She seems like the Trevor of RDR2 to me.
She’s not insane like Trevor though, she’s just traumatized and dealing with it in her own way. If she’d been the main character, she would have been much more well developed too, and her character arc would have fit the gameplay better–she starts out naive and vulnerable and gradually gains more experience and skill. Arthur is another gruff-voiced hard man protagonist. The biggest thing that distinguishes him from John in the first game is that his voice is deeper. (I mean, yeah, he’s also more contemplative and less vocal and more charmingly awkward around folks.) But they’re kind of cut from the same cloth. Sadie would have given the game better reason to explore some of the historical-social dynamics it glanced at. Imagine Arthur’s arc from her point of view–it arguably would have been more interesting to see her observing and interacting within the shifting loyalties of the group.
I also think Dutch’s arc was completely nonsensical. The characters spend quite a bit of time commenting on it as well, mostly scratching their heads, which is neat internal commentary I guess, but still doesn’t really explain it. It’s not that he’s a complex character; it’s more that he’s a MacGuffin for lazy writers, which is disappointing because I think he could have been a complex, interesting character. If Sadie, who had no history with him, had been the protagonist, there might have been opportunity to explore that more through her reactions to him and the group.
You’re assuming things that just aren’t there. If Sadie has been the protagonist she probably would have been written more interestingly, I don’t doubt. But for a significant part of the game, her only motivation is killing O’Driscolls. That makes sense given what she’s gone through, but it’s not much of an inner life. And she knows there’s more going on with Arthur, since she’s always needling him about looking in his secret journal.
I don’t know. What’s Arthur’s motivation? Do whatever Dutch says? Also, since 90% of the missions in the game boil down to “go somewhere and kill a couple of dozen dudes who come at you in waves”, an O’Driscoll motivation would have fit that too.
My favorite series of missions in the game were the Leo Strauss missions. Those were the ones where I thought the game made clear that Arthur is a bad guy doing bad things, even reluctantly and even if his motivations are loyalty to a group or person. (I think the Waipiti missions in Chapter 6 are similar, but Arthur’s motivations there are more murky. He had every reason to abandon Dutch, and Rains Fall was entirely too forgiving.) The Strauss missions, if you play them all, kind of summarize Arthur’s whole arc. Sadie totally could have had a similar arc, but with the inclusion of gaining buy-in in the beginning. Arthur was already committed to the group, but Sadie had to be given reason to be.
Anyway, I’m not really committed to the idea; I just think it would have been great, and could have corrected some of the flaws in the game as is. But I liked the game enough as is too.
I think one of the things that game does pretty well is show you how Arthur’s perspective and his motivation shifts from the beginning to the end. At the start, he believes he’s the blunt instrument to do Dutch’s dirty work - kind of like the Bond/M relationship in Casino Royale. Over time, he sees what effect their actions are having on people. The Strauss missions are a really good example of that, and how they affect people and families. You can see this building, in the story and Arthur’s mind, to a believable end. I don’t see that with Sadie - even in her last character mission right at the end, she’s asking Arthur to go with her to kill O’Driscolls. It’s all she really cares about. And again, that makes sense for who Sadie is and what’s happened to her, there’s just not much else there.
Now if Rockstar said hey, we’re going to release some DLC that tells us more about Sadie’s life, before or after Dutch’s gang, I’d be all over that. She’s fun to hang out with, and I’d definitely give them the chance to flesh out her story.
Obviously I’m not as far as you guys, but it was interesting that they essentially re-introduced Sadie to the story in Chapter 3, which was pretty late in the game. At first when I went to town with her, I was wondering, who the heck is this lady? And then RockStar seems to have also realized that the player likely doesn’t remember her, so they actually had dialog on the way back from the store to remind you that she was the lady you rescue in the snow at the beginning of the game who’s never heard from again (until Chapter 3).
I had lots of interactions with Marston and his family in Chapter 2 actually. I usually talked to Abigail every morning when I had my coffee, for instance. And I always said hi to Jack. It was only Marston himself who was missing sometimes, until later in Chapter 2 when he was around all the time, waiting for me to talk to him for missions.
I didn’t know who Sadie was until the beginning of Chapter 3 when she had her mission. So it’s possible she was there all along in Chapter 2, I just never paid attention to some random lady in camp.
I remember one instance early in chapter two where I came across Sadie breaking down in camp and being comforted by Abigail. And her usual reply whenever I greeted her was something like “How do you think I’m doing”?
I don’t think she’s a better character for the main game- Arthur’s story is well done, and the progression divedivedive is talking about is certainly there.
But in the epilogue… I just never cared about John Marston, and didn’t want to play him. I guess sort of, Arthur is a bad man, consciously chooses to be a bad man, is really competent at it, has reservations about it over the course of the game and either does or doesn’t redeem himself. By contrast, John is not as competent as Arthur and doesn’t really do anything except in the context of what he thinks Abigail wants. And he’s kinda of bad at figuring that out. It’s not clear that he’s chosen to be an outlaw in the same way that Arthur had.
I never played RDR1, so my impression may be colored by not having that context.
Ugh, really? Man, R* needs to put out another bug fix patch stat. As it stands, I haven’t been able to buy a newspaper in forever. I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be a new one available after every story mission in or near a town, especially if it leaves a lot of bodies.
Pretty sure that bug has been fixed, I was just already well into chapter three by that point and the missing characters did start showing up at their own at a certain point. You only lose them for a little while.
Yeah I’d venture to say that your opinion of John would be different if you had played the first game. The entire epilogue would take on a different meaning if you had.
When you’re following her father to his appointment with the buyer of Mary’s brooch, she says something to Arthur about “well, you could have cleaned yourself up.” Now I actually did try to take a bath before I did that mission, but it was late and I was tired and hit the “exit bath” button before I was done washing everything. I’m wondering if she says the same thing regardless, or if she didn’t say that for people who got Arthur properly washed up immediately beforehand.
But you could see how they had a rapport. The end of that mission hit me right in the feels. I know that Arthur’s supposed to be at most about 35, but he looks older due to his hard life so far, so at 57 and single (married in my early thirties for less than a year so it hardly counts, and my last relationship ended over 15 years ago) I can’t help but identify with his nostalgia over the one that got away.
