Looking in the Mirror with Arthur Morgan: A Study In Complexity
In this blog, a gameHER takes a close look at the character of Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2, examining how his complex nature draws players to him in an unforgettable gaming experience.
NOTE: This blog contains spoilers from Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2.
By Catherine Negron
Wind, frigid and sharp, cuts through their thick coats as they try to navigate the snow-covered path in front of them. It howls through the trees around them, pushing at the barren limbs until they creak and bend. Snow falls in great drifts, obscuring the way. The blizzard had settled in quickly, temperatures had dropped rapidly as they had descended the mountain. They could only hope that the ones pursuing them were equally as hindered by the freak storm. Someone calls out to them from the side of the wagon, their voice muffled by the howling winds and moaning of the trees. A member of their group is dying, they need to find shelter soon or they will all meet the same fate. A figure rides towards them from the path ahead and they can only hope for good news.
With that climatic opening, we are thrust into the world of Red Dead Redemption 2. A world as harsh and unforgiving as the blizzard that shepherded you down the path.
Back in 2016, Rockstar changed their Twitter icon to their infamous red logo and teased a picture of the silhouettes of seven men walking in front of a setting sun. It was quite clear that we would be getting another Red Dead Redemption game but many wondered who it would be following. After all, we saw the death of John Marston at the end of his story, with us taking the role of Jack in the game's epilogue. Were we getting a game that follows Jack?
Then on October 20, 2016, the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer premiered during the Video Game Awards and everyone’s jaws dropped. While the promise of release in the fall of 2017 and then spring of 2018 didn’t happen, we began to see more information come out from Rockstar.
One of the reveals was the face of the game: a new character by the name of Arthur Morgan.
This would be the part of the movie where a record would scratch and the scene would freeze.
Arthur Morgan?
Not Jack Marston?
And it’s a prequel?
On October 24, 2018, Michael Unsworth, senior creative writer on Red Dead Redemption 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2 producer, Rob Nelson, spoke with Variety about the process they went through to create not only the story but the characters and world they live in. One of their concerns? Comparison to their previous game’s protagonist, John Marston.
“We had to be careful not to John it up too much. We don’t want to disappoint people. He was a character who really resonated. It’s exciting to have him back playing as a different character. But it’s also a bit of a challenge, a good challenge to have,” Rob Nelson said. He isn’t wrong. John Marston was beloved by pretty much everyone, so creating a character that wasn’t just a carbon copy of John would have been daunting to say the least. We had spent so much time with him. We knew him or at least how he was during the events of Red Dead Redemption 1. We saw the regrets he carries, how much he struggles with his past, how he is desperately trying to live a relatively peaceful life. How could this Arthur Morgan ever hope to fill the space left behind?
Michael Unsworth tells Variety, “We were obsessive about reviewing every character’s performance throughout development and re-recording/re-writing any lines that didn’t feel right to make sure they popped and expressed their personality in an interesting way.” It took a team of almost 2,000 people working for 8 years to create a living, breathing world and characters that were believable.
Arthur Morgan, from the Red Dead Redemption 2 guidebook
And I have to say, they certainly did an excellent job in doing so.
Arthur was one of the most complex characters I had come across in a while. He was empathetic, artistic, expressive, sarcastic, charming, caring, loyal, the list goes on; but he had these darker, painful qualities to his character, things that he struggles with under the surface that you only catch glimpses of. Which could be jarring when you first encounter them.
Let me tell you about the first time I looked in a mirror with Arthur.
Something I like to do in games is see what I can and can’t interact with and the boundaries that have been put into place. So I was in the hotel in Strawberry, just trying to interact with as many things as I could and it gave me the option to look into the mirror. I thought that it was going to be like most games, that this was the place where you can change your character's clothing. But then Arthur starts speaking and he’s putting himself down. It was the first instance for me that I encountered a character that had self-esteem issues. That he thought so lowly of himself that he would take the time to insult himself and insinuate that this was the reason why people leave him. I was so surprised that I paused the game and just stared at my TV. Did that really just happen?
And it kept happening.
Arthur is capable of great violence with seemingly little regard to the victims and he knows it. If you opt to speak with one of the girls in camp, Arthur will actually talk about it. He’ll say that he’s been killing all kinds of people and he doesn’t know why. He was self-aware of what the player was doing, the choices that they were making in the game for him. And those choices if you opted to rob, antagonize or kill, not only bring your honor down but weigh heavily on him.
To get all of that from a character for their first and only game appearance was surprising. I wasn’t expecting him to be that. I wasn’t expecting to open his journal and read entries that were his innermost thoughts on everything from other camp members to different events in the game. He was real and I found myself wanting to prolong the time I had with him. Even now, two years later, we’re still talking about him.
Why?
I think it’s because we can relate to aspects of his personality and character.
I mentioned before that Arthur has low self-esteem. That when interacting with a mirror, he immediately starts putting himself down. It’s painful to hear him say those things about himself. You want to stop him from doing so because you know he isn’t any of those things. I always play my characters with high honor, so until then I had been helping everyone I could. So hearing him say so many negative things about himself, I had become upset and was in the middle of commenting on it when I remembered that I do it too. I will avoid mirrors because I know that I will end up doing the same thing. Suddenly, Arthur was me looking at my reflection, and I didn’t know what to do with that information. How could I tell someone to not put themselves down when I, myself, do it all the time? Even now, I honestly don’t know how to answer that question.
A lot of Arthur’s good traits are also traits that if left unchecked, can leave the door open for abuse. Arthur is very loyal to the gang, who are his family. He would do whatever he could to protect them, including making sure that those that could leave did so when things were falling apart. His loyalty is also something that got him killed because it blinded him to the truth of what Dutch had become; the ideals that Dutch held so dear, the plans that he spoke of with reverence, had faded into delusions. This part of the story makes me think of all the times that we have, at some point in our lives, backed someone who didn’t have us in mind. That what we thought didn’t matter, and so as long as we simply followed what they said, we would be rewarded for our loyalty.
This relationship with loyalty really plays into Arthur’s story and in the end, it changes him. At the beginning of the story, Arthur justifies his actions in earlier parts of the game as “doing what was necessary for the gang’s continued survival.” And we see that in the way that he is willing, despite his reservations, to beat or threaten people to pay back their loans. The gang loaned these people more money than they realistically would have been able to pay back. He was tasked with getting the money back. But that mentality of doing so, of completing a job despite knowing these people were lured in, proved to be his undoing. And he fell into a hole of his own making. Instead of the game making Arthur irredeemable, the game begins to show Arthur’s switch in perspective. It’s not a quick switch with him suddenly becoming good and righteous, but one that is slow and arduous. He struggles and doubts and questions himself and the actions of the gang, coming to his own conclusion that there is a better way. Not necessarily for him but for the others he can help. In doing so he finds the redemption he was looking for.
He appealed to both men and women, especially women, because he embodied all of the traits of a tough guy but he showed he was capable of being gentle, loving and kind underneath it all. He wasn’t perfect, and in many cases, not the hero. But to those he helped and to those he cared for, he was theirs. In the end, Arthur didn’t need to fill anyone’s shoes because he was a complete character by himself. Perfectly imperfect and one that would live in our hearts for years to come.
Catherine Negron, photo courtesy of the author
About the Author:
“A what now? A bio? I’m a little busy right now,” Catherine says as she opens RDR 2’s Photo Mode yet again, “I’m trying to get the angle of the sun just right on the Legendary Moose and...Yes, I know it’s not real. Listen, I-” She can also be found on Twitter, @Big_Barda, if you want to say howdy
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To read Catherine’s piece on how the marketing of video games contributed to stereotypes of gaming as a boys-only club, check out: Wait, You Play Videogames?
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