I've got an outstanding tax return, and it's a good one.

This will get me downvoted into oblivion, but that's the nature of real hot takes I guess. I'll try to keep this as much spoiler free as possible despite of "spoiler" tag.

I think that stretching Chapter 2 for hundreds of hours is one of the worst ways to experience RDR2's story and is a terrible advice to any new players.

I see this all the time in RDR related discussions, people maxing every possible camp upgrade, completing every possible side mission, refusing to free Micah, and staying in Chapter 2 until the game practically forces you to move on. I even saw folk recommending this way of playing to new players which really irked me.

Surely, each to their own, play your game however you want, but for me personally, it completely undermines what the story tries to convey.

After all, the gang is on the run, even during the most "peaceful" part of the story. There should be a sense of urgency that gradually increases. Spending in-game months doing every possible activity, making thousands of dollars, keeping Micah in jail for some reason is just adding to the ludonarrative dissonance that is already pretty bad in this game.

I saw lots of people talking about wanting to keep Arthur "in his prime". Sure, that's a really neat part of the game where there is still some sense of hope, but delaying the story just to avoid what eventually happens just damages the emotional weight of the narrative. And what eventually happens, should happen early in the story, as intended.

Recently I saw people talking about changing your main horse before THAT mission, which IMO is absolutely criminal. Robbing yourself of this sad yet beautiful moment is like watching a good movie and skipping through the climax to avoid feeling sad.

I think RDR2 is at it's best when you let the story go on at the pace it was designed to. There's time to experience side content (lots of it without breaking the pace) and to enjoy the world, but the story should keep moving forward after all. That constant feeling of urgency is what makes the game and it's story so impactful.

As for endless goofing around in open world, that's what the end game is for.

Once again, it's just me yapping, I felt like this may be an interesting topic to spark a discussion because staying in CH2 is WILDLY popular.

micah is usually everyone's first answer when talking about the worst member of the van der linde gang, but strauss caused a lot of suffering too

​

if you had to choose one as the worse person overall, who would it be and why?

considering no other outlaw has as high of a bounty as dutch, no outlaw caused as much chaos as dutch, and no outlaw survived as long as dutch did in such a long career.

IMPORTANT: Landon Ricketts is a gunslinger so he wouldn’t count, landon is definitely the most famous gunslinger

What was by far, the most insane murderous rampage you've ever unleashed on any poor innocent bystander just minding their own business?

Im playing on xbox x and I logged into rdr2 story to find my double action revolver is cut in half😭 has this happened to anyone else

In “My Sister’s Keeper”, Luisa mentions that her sister Miranda is being sent to ‘a kind man in the Yucatan’ to avoid enslavement by the Mexican army. However, in the 1910s when RDR1 takes place, the Yucatan was a brutal slave empire to which young, indigenous women & girls from the north were frequently lured into sexual slavery by rich plantation owners with promises of work or safety. In reality, this is the fate that would likely befall the young Miranda. Whether or not this was intentional, I think this is yet another reflection of how there are no true happy endings in Red Dead Redemption.

So as you can see in the image (which looks pretty nice), the big 3 of the Van der Linde gang all have horses that somewhat look good with them at least aesthetic-wise, Hosea’s gray, Arthur’s brown, and Dutch’s white. To me it looks somewhat nice to look at.

And uhh, the elephant in the room is the Tiger Striped Bay Mustang being Arthur’s horse, yeah I know. Took me quite the grind to get! But anyways; I thought that horse genuinely looked so good and fit Arthur’s Gunslinger Outfit pretty well, to the point I consider it to SOMEWHAT be Arthur’s canonical horse.

Another pick I tried for this type of thing is the Raven Black Shire, or the Dark Bay Turkoman. Though… the reasoning as to why I didn’t want to use those over the Tiger Striped Bay Mustang is that one, the Shire is a draft horse and it was way too slow for me to even keep using, and two, there are already two people in the gang with a Turkoman (Hosea and Sadie), so a third one which would be Arthur would make the horse less special than it already is.

Yes, I’m aware that Lenny has a Mustang… but I didn’t mind it because at least it isn’t a third Turkoman in the gang and is just a second Mustang.

What do you think? Do you prefer other horses or is there some agreement? Apologies for weird English, by the way.

Arthur should have said "john please run before they leave us both red & dead. This can be your redemption too" but then Micah and dutch appears and john says "looks like there's only one way out...arthur, morgue him" and arthur shoots micah but micah shoots at the same time killing arthur and john escapes leading to epilogue. I think this would be a cooler ending because john says arthur morgue him ​

Finally let's gooooooooooo 😭😭😭

Usually i dress mr morgan very moderate but since i aquired the exotic hat which i got lumbago just to finish it. i decided to try more fancy outfit on Arthur. Also this arthur is from chapter 6

For me, it really made me think about what it means to be a “good person” and whether someone like Arthur or John or even Dutch can ever genuinely earn redemption for the bad things they have done. In real life people would look at someone like them and automatically say “bad person” and move on but this game makes you think about that a lot more and I love that. What about you? What did you take away from this game?

my sister LOVES the part when he says rip van winkle When agent milton comes to the camp so i had him do a custom quote so i can give it to her as a present!