John Marston Vs. Arthur Morgan - Who Is The Better Hero?

Yet it is John Marston's evolution from Red Dead 2 to Red Dead Redemption that truly earns him the winning spot. After the overwhelming success of the first title, it would have been easy to make John the protagonist again in Red Dead 2. To paint him as the sympathetic hero in a gang full of killers.

Rockstar took the beloved hero and turned him into a selfish, immature lout, concerned more with having a good time with Bill Williamson than he was the upbringing of his child. Throughout the game and its epilogue, Rockstar highlights that the Marston family’s predicament was not just the fault of duplicitous bureau agents, but also John’s hopeless failings as a Father and Husband in the formative years of the family unit.

What could have been a bland and vaguely heroic backstory transformed into even more depth for Marston, with his youthful arrogance and misplaced sense of self-righteousness clashing beautifully with the older, more temperate version of himself.

Not to mention putting him in the revolver sights of Red Dead 2’s protagonist.

While we're only given a snapshot of Arthur's life, the player is with John through two whole games. We see the arrogance and folly of his late teens and twenties, and we see how he learns and grows from these experiences in the original Red Dead.

John Marston has the better motivations, and in Red Dead 2 he EARNS those motivations, with his wayward laziness almost costing him his son's life at the hands of an Italian gangster. Arthur may shepherd John on his journey for a time, but it is John who has to learn the true value of what it means to be a man and a Father, and how to deal with the consequences of his old misadventures.