Red Dead Redemption 2: 9 Ways You're Playing It Wrong

1. You're Supposed To Play A Good Person

I've written quite a bit already on how Rockstar use Red Dead Redemption 2 to address their own history as a developer; to touch on how past Rockstar games let you indulge in violence for the sake of throwaway nihilism, and how they've matured to bring about consequence.

In short, Red Dead 2 is the first time Rockstar have given you a branching main path outside of GTA 4 and a couple of moments in GTA 5, yet here they deliver multiple endings that reflect how you controlled Arthur, rather than just made a handful of binary choices.

There's a fundamentalLY "bad" ending for RDR2, and it literally involves Arthur being executed like a rabid dog.

Again, going back to the journal, his candour when talking to the majority of the camp in cutscenes, his confessionals with Mary-Beth and - if your honour meter is high enough to trigger the scene - the interaction with Sister Calderon where he talks about being afraid of death, it plays into the idea that Arthur is a good-hearted person lead astray by Dutch.

It might be a Rockstar game with a protagonist that can indulge in wanton destruction if you like, but Arthur Morgan's violent acts are more a product of Dutch's teachings, and though that doesn't excuse responsibility on Morgan's part, the entire point of Arthur Morgan is redemption.

The very name of the game doesn't work unless you play into that arc, and to do so, you need to play with good moral fibre.