Welcome friends!

Here it is: the blog post I’ve been wanting to write for months. The one I think a whole two people will care about. In April 2019, I played a video game that changed the entire way I thought about writing characters. Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 is incredible for a number of reasons. It offers almost-total immersion (and can be played as a farm simulator, a hunting simulator, a fashion simulator, you name it), a six-part plot with a lengthy epilogue, characters in major roles from diverse backgrounds, graphics to die for, killer voice acting, etc. WARNING – this post is going to include copious spoilers for RDR2. For those of you haven’t played and don’t plan to, here’s a quick recap:

The Red Dead franchise is a series of games that takes place in a re-imagined American West between 1890-1915. The thesis of all three games is that the Wild West era is coming to an end, and the time of outlaws is almost over. I’ve never played Red Dead Revolver, so I’m going to skip right to Red Dead Redemption 1, which takes place in 1911 following a man named John Marston. Marston has been forced by government agents to hunt down the old members of his outlaw gang – the Van der Linde gang - in order to gain his family’s freedom. Along the way, John is redeeming himself for the things he’s done in the past and trying to make a world his son can grow up in.

I love when titles make sense.

Red Dead Redemption 2, the game I’ve been talking about obsessively, has a similar theme. Since it’s a prequel, we start in 1899 following the Van der Linde gang as they retreat from Pinkertons after a failed ferry heist. We follow them through what feels like a thousand jobs gone wrong. John Marston, RDR1’s protagonist, is in the gang but he’s a younger, wilder John. This John isn’t on his redemption track yet. Instead of seeing the world through John’s eyes, we follow the gang’s enforcer and sole-provider, Arthur Morgan.

Arthur, like John, has a lot to atone for. And Arthur, like John, is approaching a world that doesn’t want outlaws anymore. But unlike John, Arthur wonders if there’s a place for him in the new world at all. Due to some unforeseen circumstances (contracting tuberculosis, a terminal illness that gives him a time-limit) he wonders if he can redeem himself. Arthur’s found family is falling apart as they run from the law and from their fate, and Arthur’s only got a few months to do something good that will outlast him.

Redemption is something John hoped he could earn; it’s something Arthur hopes to give to someone else.

But this post isn’t about the plot of Red Dead (even though I could talk about the brilliance of the plot all day). It’s about the characters, and especially Arthur Morgan himself. It’s about what Arthur taught me about protagonist writing, empathy, and the tough nuance of redemption.

When I play video games, I generally enjoy my protagonists. I love Bioware games because the characters can be whoever I want them to be. It’s my story and the protagonists are a vehicle for me to explore the world. On the other hand, I loved John Marston because he was a character with a ton of personality built in – often, it felt like I was watching a movie, just maneuvering John from scene to scene.

But Arthur was different. Arthur had personality, but the way he’s written encourages the player to sink into his mind. His fears are your fears, his anger your anger, his joy your joy. The gang matters to you as a player because they matter to Arthur. I found myself completely engrossed with Arthur’s worldview, and when I looked online, I saw that others who played the game felt the same way. Seasoned gamers said they’d never felt so deeply for a protagonist in their lives. They said Arthur changed them – made them more empathetic, made them think about the footprint they’ll leave when they’re gone, made them think about what their actions mean to their legacy and the world around them – and I wanted to understand how Rockstar did this.

I know all writers start at different places with character. I’ll be the first to admit that character doesn’t come naturally to me. This is something that used to make me feel like a failure as a writer; other writers talked constantly about how their characters came to them fully formed, speaking at length in voice-perfect dialogue about their motivations and goals and fears. And I was embarrassed, because that’s not me at all. Because of this, I’m always looking for characters that are done well to reference when I’m thinking about character construction.

So, here’s what I’ve got.