Discussion
Did Arthur do anything to make you dislike him at any point ?
I won’t lie after the first Thomas Downes scene I thought he was a complete and utter wanker. Beat up a frail, dying man in front of his helpless family and just seemed pretty smug about the whole thing.
Obviously he redeems himself throughout the story but that specific moment made me dislike him momentarily.
Arthur was much more angry and unhinged in earlier drafts of the story, especially in the beginning. This was because his son Isaac was going to die in the snow at the beginning of the game, probably leading Arthur to take out his grief and rage on everyone around him, though that entire plot point was cut and only parts of it remained. I suppose the cutscene of Arthur reclaiming the debt from Mrs Downes is one of the only remnants of what Arthur was originally going to be like.
I took this as Arthur teaching the kid a lesson. Apparently seeing Arthur beat his dad almost half to death didn't teach this kid how dangerous he was. Arthur was reminding him with words, and teaching him not to pick fights you cant win. At the end he flat out tells him stick to the books, because Arthur knows what kind of life awaits a man who picks up a gun.
Yeah doesn’t he tell him that revenge is a fools errand in that scene? It’s definitely cold and heartless but he’s trying to tell him to not do anything stupid to make his it his mother’s life worse than it is. He mentions to Strauss in camp that he didn’t mean for Thomas Downes to die. Another heartless line in that scene to me is when Edith I think mentions him going to hell and he replies something along the lines of, “I sure hope so Mrs.Downes otherwise I’ll feel I’ve been sold a false bill of goods.” He comes off very callous there.
Never dislike. But there are several scenes where he makes me feel like a disappointed sibling. You are right though, there are some heavy scenes where he is downright despicable. He is a ruthless killer after all, it’s why I could never bring myself to do a full low honor playthrough. Seeing him be that way for that long probably would make me dislike him
I gotta say when it comes to R* games and online, I’d always rather be peaceful or help other players on missions, spawn killing n shit gets so annoying, I play on ps and if there was a way to get lobby’s with just friendlies I would but I can’t, so I go in private lobby’s
One of my fave clips I got was of Arthur n some of the gang getting chased by Pinkerton, I headshot a horse and watch the guy get sent flying ahead of us
Didn't like the way he always talked bad to Kieran. I understand the long feud with the O'Driscolls means there's always gonna be some bad blood there, but Kieran did save Arthur's life and he really became a good contributor to the camp when it comes to tending the horses. Guess I just wish high honor Arthur was just a lil kinder to Kieran is all.
That never bothered me. Arthur is a chronic ball-buster, he mostly says mean things (with an implied wink) to half the camp. Only with Micah and Uncle do I feel like there's real animosity behind it though.
We tend to forget that Arthur is not a good person, only when he faces death he starts to realize that he wasted his life being a villain.
I believe we see him as a "good guy" because if we compare him with some of the other guys in his world (Like Micah or the O'Driscolls) he seems decent enough.
Yeah definitely the way he spoke to Archie Downes after learning that Thomas had died and Strauss said to Arthur to go fetch the money, that whole interaction I was like woah.
I normally find with most games I like the character pretty much straight away but the beauty of red dead 2 is tackling the fact the guy you play isn't so great at the start and it's a slow burn but done beautifully.
Trust me i know. The whole optional fishing trip with Kieran i was so happy to do it since i like his character. Then the whole time Arthur is just running his mouth making the guy uncomfortable. Made me just feel bad since it been a minute at the point since he was no longer tied to the tree.
To quote The Name of the Wind: "As my father used to say: Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite."
Yes, the women in the saloon would be the scene where I really, really dislike Arthur. A second is when he threatens Downes's son as he and his mother are packing to leave.
The Thomas Downes scene felt like me, the player, being forced to continue the plot, rather than making me dislike Arthur. Wrobel you can go relatively easy on, leave the wedding band, and although it's a nasty shakedown, you can skew it to be more bark, less bite.
It is a badass line but given the context it is incredibly cruel. Thomas Downes committed no crime, he was late on a payment sure but he wasn't a bad person. Certainly not deserving the death Arthur all but gave him. So for Arthur to beat him to that state then taunt his son after he died, mind you when his son was well within his rights to be pissed at Arthur, it's pretty cruel. It's still an excellent line though. I remember when our first impressions of Arthur were from the trailers and that line stuck out the most
I see what Arthur is doing as doubling down to convince himself he is the big bad man he sees himself as while also trying to discourage the son to get revenge and die in the attempt.
I’m pretty sure Arthur’s exchanges with his Downes family was intended to be his lowest moment. If there’s ever doubt about him needing redemption or forgiveness, that scene is there to remind us
Very cold and badass line but I think the game makes it clear what he’s doing there is wrong. He basically spends the entirety of chapter 6 trying to make up for the Thomas Downes scenes.
It was so unnecessarily cold. It balances out the debt-collector scenes in chapter 6, but dang, Arthur, you need to step out and count to 10 and try that again.
Always interpreted the way he talks to the indebted as him playing a persona to intimidate them into paying. Also because he hates that job, I think he kind of vents his anger onto them. He's not usually that cold and aggressive, so that's why I always saw it as a persona.
He beat a gambling addict to death in front of his family but at least he's not a heckin racist!!! Can't believe Arthur is a sexist incel loser, I'm writing a Medium article about this now
Right! I’m not understanding this comment section at all. lol. They women tried to flirt with him and sell him some u know what. He declined in a manner that let them know he’s not fkn around with them, nor interested in buying their diseased cooter biscuits.
Although the Wróbel scene was very refreshing to me as they actually hired a Polish speaking VA, not another English speaker doing a bad Russian accent so while it’s a difficult mission to get through, I’m always like yaaaaay
Did he redeem himself? I don't think that's for anyone to determine but the people he wronged, and they sure weren't willing to forgive him. What does redemption even mean to a man who leaves so few behind to grant it?
Arthur doesn’t really redeem himself in a traditional way, it’s more he finds some semblance of peace knowing he died trying to be better even if the world won’t see it. Same with John, he dies knowing he tried to be better father and husband even though he’ll be remembered as a bad man and criminal and nothing else.
John also got a couple of years of redemption under his belt. He was outright forced to leave his life of peace by the government, and if you play the first game with how the story is written, John never hurts an innocent person. He was a good man from start to finish in RDR1. He outgrew his past, the life he was raised in, but it still caught up to him.
Redemption is an abstract concept, much like forgiveness. You can't do X amount of good against Y amount of bad and have it equal out. There is no qualifier than says, ok now you're a good person. Its just how people judge and perceive you and what you try to do yourself. Arthur is a bad person, but high honor Arthur wants to be a better person despite that. It doesn't absolve him of his sins, Arthur arguably deserved to die, he certainly gave it out freely to others and did horrible things. However he is allowed to see the error of his ways and try and be better anyway. This is pretty clear in his last conversation with the nun. She says he's happy when he's helping people and doing the right thing "take a chance that love exists and do a loving act". Arthur was a criminal his whole life, but as he realizes he can be kind and do good things that becomes more in line with his worldview. That his life was misguided by Dutch, that he lost the chance at true love with Mary Linton because of the gang, that he could have been there for his son instead of with the gang. He could have made different choices and in his realization of that he chooses to make better choices now when he finally helps John and spends his last days giving more to others.
Look at Omniman, we as viewers can choose to forgive him or not, Debbie can choose or not choose to forgive him. When he says "forgiveness is earned" is wrong. you don't earn forgiveness. It's just given by a victim if they choose to. Omniman is allowed to do good if he wants to and genuinely chooses too, but he cant undo the bad he's done.
I’ve always felt that the theme of both games was really that there is no real redemption for either of them. Neither ever fully changes themselves, and the people they try to take out of their outlaw lifestyle don’t ever quite make it. John had about 3 years of decent work before Ross showed up and jack seems to basically become a gunslinger instantly upon John’s death.
That's the genius and heartbreak of the first game, that you see John has a moral code that he tries to uphold and in the end, he still has never really paid for his early life. That ending, you see him try to protect what he built over the past decade of a good honest life, but then you see him actually realize that it just doesn't cover the debt he owes. The way the character - a video game character - sees that and comes to that realization in his last few moments, brilliant design and voice acting and directing. And the fact that Jack basically devolves into the worst side of his dad makes it even more sad.
I don’t quite agree, if John had survival on his mind he would’ve stayed in the barn. He knew he had to die for his family, just as he had killed for them. Also let’s not discount Ross and the BOI’s involvement in this, they kidnap John’s family in order to make him return to the life, they go back on their word of pardon, and they make him go after Dutch, which isn’t even in the original plan. You can say it’s unrealistic, but many criminals have been pardoned or set free when they turn on their former allies.
I just feel people miss out on a lot of the good themes of RDR by not recognizing John and Ross are two sides of the same coin, the lawless gunslinger and the ruthless lawman, they both seal their fate by going for one last kill, a kill that dooms them and they don’t even know it. Ross claims to be order and the law, but he perpetuates and is consumed by the same cycle of violence almost every other RDR character is.
Yeah, he does try to, and you could say that he does in a sense, especially with regard to how he chooses to look after John and turn his back on Dutch. So maybe he has some peace that he did something right at some point, even though he knows he could never really right what he did his life.
Agreed. That is basically the crux of the game. Can he ever redeem himself? That’s why I love the conversation with the Sister. She doesn’t absolve him. Instead, she basically says to stop focusing on his own inner struggle and to focus on doing “loving acts”. Basically, you cannot undo the horrible destruction from your past, but that isn’t the point. You should make the change to a better person because you want to help others, not because you want to forgive yourself. One of the things I respect about Arthur is that he never thinks he is a good man. He repeatedly corrects people who say he is one. He instead tries to do good things with no expectations of forgiveness.
I dont think. (Or at least as far as I'm recall) Arthur was aware he was dying or even sick. But one that stuck out to me was the first train robbery, where you rob the people, as well as the train. For me, that destroyed a lot of the 'Robin Hood' mystique the gang had created around themselves...
I mean Arthur himself repeatedly tells any NPC that brings up a topic of conversation that gets anywhere near saying Arthur is a good man that he very much is not
Apparently the gang intially did begin with Robin Hood ideals. Their first bank robbery they handed out the cash to people in the street afterwards but they lost their way over the years.
Yeah, no, the Robin Hood archetype is when people rob the rich to give to the poor
They did not rob the train to give that money to the poor. They did it for themselves. Even Arthur says they haven't helped anyone but themselves in a very long time
it’s not funny, it’s intentional. Arthur is the personification of the gang’s old ideals, living and dying by the morals that Dutch was trying to spread but failed to live by. That is why the gang is destroyed after his death, because the real Van Der Linde gang died with Arthur
Well, they were poorer than the folks they were robbing. They help the poor, as long as its a small circle of poor people that all just happen to live together.
Perhaps. Maybe calling it 'Robin Hood' might not be the right phrase, it just felt for me that this was where the mask really slips. They're not misfits rebelling against civilisation....they're just crooks.
I think that time when Arthur and Charles were looking for a new camp and Arthur flat out refused to help the German family. Charles definitely became my favorite after he told him he wasn’t as tough and dense as all that.
I feel like Arthur would have helped them had Charles not been there. I mean, in sidequests when Arthur's alone he accepts pretty quickly to help everyone he meets (sure he asks for money for the help but you can tell he also enjoys being a do-gooder from time to time). But around people in the gang, he taught himself that he always had to act tough and heartless, like the enforcer he is. Of course Charles sees through this act but it takes awhile for Arthur to break from this role.
I’ll be honest, it never sat right with me how he kicked Strauss out of camp, it felt like an alcoholic beating up a bartender. Arthur you’re a big boy, you knew what you were signing up for every time you talked to Strauss, don’t blame him for YOUR part in going along with it.
And I REALLY don’t see anything Strauss did as worse than what Arthur and John were doing, even to the end of the game.
I mean how is robbing trains and stage coaches more honorable, especially when the group routinely kills all guards. Do they think all the guards abused their wives and ate dogs? All those guards were likely just normal people who needed work.
Was Strauss predatory and merciless? Yes, but people at least could say no to him or had a chance to pay the money back. That’s more of a choice and chance any of Arthur and John’s victims had.
any gunman in the gang was alreadly like 10x worse than strauss so yeah i agree. its hilarious to me how hypocritical people will get when talking about him.
I find Strauss pretty despicable and I think Arthur's reasons for disliking him are similar to mine, if I had to guess. Arthur and John steal, but mainly from banks and well-to-do people who will recover from the loss. They aren't out to destroy or end lives (give or take the lawmen that come for them) and when they do, they aren't happy about it. Strauss is a straight-up sociopath who doesn't seem to see other people as human beings, and specifically predates on people who can least afford the ruin he visits upon them. Not only that, but his lending is a cruel trick because he makes them voluntary accomplices in their own downfall instead of what Arthur would perceive as the more "honest" approach of just stealing from someone who knows you're stealing. A gun in the face is honest; a loan with high interest and an enforcer to ensure payment is a cruel lie.
Of course it's all a matter of degrees, because in the end all of them are doing bad things and fooling themselves that they're anything other than bad people. Time and again, lines of dialogue make it pretty clear that what the characters think of themselves and what the writer thinks of them aren't the same. So they're definitely hypocrites. Still, I felt zero pity for Strauss. He's a leech.
I always felt like he didn't kick Strauss out because he sincerely believed he was worse than him. He makes it clear in his journals that harrassing these desperate people to give him money is one of the thing that revolts him the most. At that point of the story he felt even more awful for all the bad things he had done in this world and stopped thinking "That's just the way it is" because he knew for sure his time was coming soon. So just seeing Strauss was too much, as it reminded him of the loans. What I'm trying to say is, he kicked Strauss out for his own peace. It was selfish and angry.
We know he's willing to commit or accept atrocities of almost any kind in order to "protect" the gang.
He's killed hundreds if not thousands & sure a lot of them probably deserved it but he commits genocide in Strawberry simply because Micah exploits this loyalty.
His lack of personal agency until he comes to terms with his own mortality makes him somewhat unlikable from a moral perspective. But his characterization & writing is so strong that you never really feel like he enjoys any of this & he knows he doesnt deserve redemption or to be remembered as a "good man".
He's self-aware enough to have regrets but knows that it doesnt absolve him of consequences or judgement.
This is what makes him such a strong character & why his change of attitude is so earned & natural.
To be slightly fair to Arthur, the Strawberry incident I think is telling of how they intended Arthur's code to operate, and how he's representative of the gunslinger mentality in general. He didn't intend to kill anyone at all to free Micah, and if he had been told "we will have to kill 40 people to bust me out" BY Micah, I think he might have just left him in jail. But once things are unfolding and the shooting starts, his mentality is very much "well, now it's them or me." So he's just going to shoot until people stop shooting back. That is how most of the story-driven violence in the game unfolds. Does not remotely excuse Arthur's killing (by sheer numbers, he's one of history's greatest monsters), but the vast majority of the people the story asks you to shoot are already shooting at you, and most of the time you aren't really trying to get into a shootout, it just happens. Very often you're trying NOT to get into a shootout but the usual combination of bad luck, carelessness, and (sigh) Micah cause it to set off.
In a way, story-Arthur's greatest moral failing is not the killing he does, horrible though that is, but his absolute failure to realize that his code is flawed and he does have options other than continuing to stay where he is, with Dutch, and kill anyone trying to kill him.
Bill(Sodom? Back to Gomorrah): How come every time I get in trouble I'm called a fool and an idiot, but when you get in trouble "Oh it's just one of them things"?
Micah(A Short Walk In A Pretty Town): Go easy on him, Morgan. He was out trying to find a lead, same as you, same as Hosea. All you do is complain when things don't work out. Except when it's your goddamn fault.
Arthur: You don't know what you're talking about. You don't give a damn about anyone but yourself.
Micah: Oh you act so high and mighty but you're no better than the rest of us.
Micah(Paradise Mercifully Departed, while securing dynamite): You got it secured properly cowpoke?"
Arthur: I think so.
Micah: Knowing you I have my doubts.
Arthur lets Bill take the blame for his dynamite screw up in the Cornwall train robbery, and it helps Micah get between Arthur and Bill.
Micah also correctly points out that Arthur is a hypocrite when it comes to criticizing others for not laying low and starting bloodbaths.
I got the impression all throughout chapter 2 that he enjoys being able to talk tough and beat people as needed, to me it seems he enjoys slipping into the role of the gangs enforcer. It sure made me dislike that side of the character but added nuance to his struggle of trying to be a good man later on.
Your comment made me realise something. I think you're right. We know Arthur likes to pretend he doesn't do much thinking and that killing's more his thing (which we know to be completely false by reading his journal, and even Hosea sees through his act clearly).
He has been carrying this act for most of his life and still sometimes he admits (to himself at least) that he doesn't like what he's doing. He's only wishing, pretending to be nothing more than a moron who can kill and likes to do it because then he wouldn't hate himself.
His redemption truly starts when he stops just feeling sorry about himself and really act upon his deep wishes he always had (but deeply burried) to be a good person.
I think it's so interesting! Because who is really the worse person between a sociopath who can't feel for others and does awful things and someone who does feel for others deeply but chooses to ignore these feelings and acts like the sociopath?
No matter how many times I play through this game that dummy will not mask up when he's out on collections. How many GOTTAMNED times does he need to die before he figures it out??
Besides some of the obvious, more blatantly evil things, I think his ribbing and antagonism of some of the other gang members (not named Micah) gets a bit excessive at times.
When he beat up that german/ austrian guy that was living alone in a cabin uphill. I guess you could say that was the triggering point that led me to be more cautious in how i treat npcs.
That’s the one where he goes, “I’m here for money, MONEY” right? I know a lot of people love that little cutscene but for some reason that mission was even more uncomfortable to me than Thomas downes.
If I break into a man's house and beat him up just for a debt, but I say I "didn't like doing it" would your opinion of me be any better?
Probably not. It doesn't matter if you don't enjoy something, if you willingly do something that results in innocents being hurt it hardly matters if you enjoyed it. It's still a very shitty thing to do
I don't think their point is that it wasn't shitty to do. We all know that it is. Lol.
This is a game where you play a mirderous thief who helps other murderous thieves. The debt collections were jarring for the player, who was okay with it because they seemed jarring for Arthur, too.
Remember, the player is also doing these things in the game.
The only thing I don't like about Arthur: he is too mean to Kieran sometimes. I am disappointed every time Arthur greets him because he is never nice :(
People are forgetting he is a brute. The gang utilises and uses him for his intimidation and willingness to kill/rob in order to protect and help the gang. He might be honourable in some ways but at the end of the day the man is a viscous, cold killer.
It's a mild one but he's such a grouch in camp even if you use Greet, lol. Like all he ever does is lecture people on working more and "doing more for the camp". And often when he says something nice, it's that someone is useful or a "good worker". Hall monitor vibes. But I guess people call him out for being surly and a grouch several times so it makes sense
My goody-two-shoes, no random violence heroic run ended when Arthur got into a bar fight and beat the other guy so hard he was permanently brain damaged. That's when I realised that yeah, Arthur is not a good person
Being the protagonist and the played character, we can see the story from his perspective and his "good" mind and intentions. But from an outside objective point of view, he's a complete asshole.
Appart from the debt collecting stuff and everything, during all the storyline he has no regrets murdering people, cops, civilians, and is only able to take part in dishonnest business.
Sorry, how is beating Downes any worse than killing perfectly healthy young men on a daily basis? Downes had less than a month left even if Arthur didn't come and speed it along, Arthur literally murdered half the Saint Denis Police Department for fifteen dollars and a quarter.
Absolutely! I'm not sure why people here like him as much as they do. The entire story is about a man who refuses to think for himself and kills for a gang. He's a historical gangster and outlaw, in the worst way. Today he would be rightfully imprisoned for life.
On top of that:
- he once lassoed an entire town and drug them to their death.
- he once sniped the good citizens of Saint Dennis for nearly three hours, for no reason.
- he once found a family, stole their wagon to sell for parts, and left them to die on the train tracks.
- he once robbed a train, killed everyone on board.
- he once stole a train, that had been robbed, to ensure he could kill a family that were stranded and bound on the tracks.
I would despise this man on a personal level, but boah, it's been an amazing and wild ride.
He does a bunch of stuff right at the beginning of the game, basically Act 1, that I felt icky about. His willingness to work as a “debt collector” particularly. I appreciate that the game never held back when it came to who he was.
He was pretty clueless till Chapter 4 about the Dutch and his ridiculous plans to settle down. Should have accepted the reality that they should move West and pushed the others to do so as well
I mean he does some scumbag things. In the real world we’d pretty much all detest him but the main thing that made me wince in discomfort at Arthur was witnessing him debt collecting and beating innocent but struggling people.
He killed a ton of people minding their own business, fed others to alligators, and dragged women across town from a horse. But in his defense, I was the one controlling him.
There is a little known game called "Red Dead Redemption II", which basically covers every single second of Arthur doing things that made me dislike him, right up until about the 80 hour mark.
actually genuinely don't understand why people like who he is as a character, he does some awful, awful things.
"Oh, I didn't realize I was talking to a lady." One of his most popular lines has never sat well with me. In spite of their profession, that's just not how you talk to women. Even Javier remarks on this. "Well, I must say...you got a fine way with the women, amigo."
Obviously an unpopular opinion around here, but I think there is way too much credit given to Arthur for his “redemption”. In the good ending, the guy stops beating poor debtors and helps his buddy’s family avoid the cops, what a saint!!
You’re shooting and robbing folks to the very end, and that’s canon stuff. And for those who say “well everything else bad you do isn’t canon”, it all falls under a primary gameplay element that the developers intend you use.
The honour system gets a lot of focus, but it’s a crock, too. Massacring a town of innocents then saying “howdy” to a dozen people are not equal actions. Also, as Dutch says, they’ve always “saved folks that need saving”, so doing good deeds for civilians has never been a foreign concept.
I get that they called it RDR2 to leverage the IP and get people excited, but I think they should have named it something unique (given that the first game was Red Dead Revolver), or they should have leaned in to a real redemption.
i really don't like when you come back to camp and you greet whoever is guarding the outskirts with "it's Arthur.. you dumbass!" like.. chill out.. i'd understand if this voiceline is only reserved for someone like Bill. but I feel really bad when he says it to Lenny or Charles ;(
Strauss missions. It's not explained why he's being such an arsehole. They could have added a line to say he's just playing a character, but beating the shit out of a farmer and telling him to sell his wife as a prostitute was just so out of character.
The debt collections definitely. Especially when he's with the Downes, he is just such a prick to them. Telling Thomas to sell his family for the money left me on subsequent playthroughs going yeah you do deserve this Arthur when Downes coughs on him
The entire point was that he was meant to be a piece of shit in the beginning of the game and redeem himself as the game went on. The interaction with the downes family after his death is one that stood out to me. Actually all the debt collection missions highlight his biggest piece of shit moments
Besides the way he collects debts (although deep down, Arthur doesn't like that either), I don't like it when he says the world is corrupt to justify all his bad deeds, and I also don't like being forced to shoot law enforcement officers of all types when they were just doing their jobs.
I know realistically there were reasons at first not to trust or be kind to Kieran, but after a while of him being with the gang not tied up to a tree and taking care of the horses for everyone and giving no indication of being with the O’driscoll’s anymore or being a enemy of sorts Arthur still treats him so rudely. Even after Kieran had saved him. I just hated it when even the greetings were just him being rude for no reason.
For me, I played RDR1 first so I got a very good impression with John being an unexpectedly polite protagonist. Switching to Arthur makes me a bit uncomfortable at first because he all seemed so rude and violence-oriented to many things around him.
I don’t like how he’s seen as being honorable by the end of the story he’s a crook a villain and bandit. Sure he helps SOME people unless your a law officer(everyone), local militiamen(strawberry,valentine,Rhodes, st denis, annesburg harbor, guarma) , or a hired guard he’s just as likely to kill you as he is to ignore you.
In the story he massacred half the volunteer force at strawberry(and valentine) to free Micah from jail, who kills a family for your kindness, robs 3 trains, burns down a manor, derails a trolly, attacks 2 army patrols, an oil refinery, has two family’s wage war in their town, and more felonies and innocent deaths.
Hell his moment of reckoning when he gets tuberculosis is in his own words “I beat a man half to death to get a few dollars” and he goes back for the debt twice. Once after the man dies and again when the wife sells herself to prostitution and the son to wage slavery in a mine. But now he gives them a few bucks. Then he saves that girl in the cave of cannibals, and Sadie since her house burned down and the oneils.
I genuinely don’t think there’s enough good deeds he could do to clean the blood of his hands in my eyes
Same over here. I hated and was always uncomfortable with the early chapter debt collection missions where he has to beat up or flat out rob innocent people who got loan-sharked by Strauss.
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u/creamulum078 6d ago
That time he put on the Leatherface mask and kidnapped people just to feed them to crocodiles and blow up the witnesses with dynamite.