There is a saying that all works of art borrow from one another. Whether it is themes and motifs or entire story premises, it is common for modern works to borrow, steal or re-work concepts from other places. This is equally true in video games, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Red Dead Redemption 2 is no exception.
As with its predecessor, Red Dead Redemption 2 is full to the brim with references to and themes borrowed from other works. Whether it is the way a cut scene is lit and shot or the setup to a string of missions, the game lifts frequently from classic works of the Western genre, both from those released in the past and from more contemporary releases. This list contains spoilers.
7 🎃 Rhodes: A Fistful of Dollars
One of the more notable and easy-to-spot references comes in Chapter 3. Entitled "Clemens Point", it concerns the Van Der Linde gang setting up camp at the titular locale, before planning to expand their operations to the small town of Rhodes (one of the numerous small towns that dots the state of 🅷Lemoyne). But they won't be robbing anyone or pulling any small cons; no, they will get rich by pitting two rival families against each other and profiting off of the conflict by selling their services to both sides.
If this sounds familiar, that's because this setup is very similar to the plot of the Sergio Leonne film A Fistful of Dollars (itself an adaptation of Yojimbo, directed by Akira Kurosawa), with the plot of Clemens Point following that of the film. Although a major difference between the two works is that the ending of A Fistful of Dollars is a lot happier than that of the Rhodes🥂 chapter of Red Dead Redemption 2꧂.
6 ♐ The Train Robbery And The Jump
The similarities between Red Dead Redemption 2 and movie westerns do not end with the situation in Rhodes; there are several other references to cowboy films throughout the game, most of them to classic films released in the 1960s. There is, however, a more modern reference; the mission "Pouring Forth Oil IV" is a reenactment of a train robbery in the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford - ♕at least, up until the point where 🉐the gang boards the train.
Another reference that you may have missed is one that takes place late in the game in "Favored Sons", where Dutch and Arthur escape being cornered by the US Army by jumping off the cliff they are standing on into a river. While the scene is primarily a call back to when John Marsten confronts Dutch at the end of the first game, including Dutch's speech about his belief in how you cannot fight gravity, it also serves as a shout-out to a scene in the classic Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, where the titular characters find themselves in a similar situation, having to jump off a cliff into some water to escape pursuing authorities.
5 Hats Off
This reference is a bit more obscure, but is also one that many eagle-eyed people have noticed; the color of a character's hat will signal their alignment. To put this in context, in most classical westerns the "good" or "lawful" characters (such as sheriffs, marshalls, or heroic gunfighters) would wear white hats, while "evil" outlaws would instead black or dark-colored hats.
The same is true here; most of the members of the Van Der Linde gang who wear hats all wear black ones (while Arthur's appearance can be altered by the player, his default hat is black), which signals their status as criminals.
4 🌼 Marketing Materials
Red Dead Redemption 2's references are not just limited to the game; they extend out to the marketing materials themselves. A look at the promotional materials showing the members of the Van Der Lindt gang riding together will usually show seven figures. This is a reference to the classic western The Magnificent Seven (which, funnily enough, is also a remake of a Kurosawa film, The Seven Samurai).
Meanwhile, the fact that those seven riders are shown as silhouettes is a shout-out to the 1969 western The Wild Bunch, which had similar promotional material, as well as similar th♚emes of outlaws trying to adapt to a changing and increasingly modern world🎃.
3 TB And My Darling C📖lementine:
During the closing chapters of RDR2, it is discovered that Arthur has contracted tuberculosis from a debt collection mission earlier in the game. Arthur slowly succumbs to his illness as the game progresses, eventually dying at the end of chapter 6 "Beaver Hollow", having either helped John and Abigail Marston escape the gang or returned to steal Dutch's loot once and for all.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tuberculosis, and🦹 the way it affects outlaws, has been a recurring motif in westerns, especially those that feature the real-life gunslinger Doc Holliday. Arthur's potential desire to better himself and help the Marstons despite his diagnosis, as well as his death at the hands of Micah, echoes the character arc of Doc Holliday in the 1946 film My Darling Clementine, which portrays a fictionalized picture of events leading up to the shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Interestingly, in the film, Holliday is killed during the encounter (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:similar 𒊎to if you play Ar🐲thur with low honor), whereas the real Holliday survived the shoot𓃲out and died years later from tuberculosis.
2 Themes
Red Dead Redemption 2 is what can be called a "Revisionist Western," in that it subverts a typical western story. The game is not about heroic figures striding into a town, gunning down criminals, and saving the day; the Van Der Linde gang are the criminals, even if they are initially presented as being relatively friendly and charming. What also marks RDR2 as being a revisionist piece is the lateness of the game's setting: 1899. The modern world is slowly beginning to take shape and the gang is struggling to adapt to it. This conflict between the old and new is one that is also present in the aforementioned film The Wild Bunch, which follows an outlaw gang in 1913 and has much of the same tensions.
RDR2 also explores the idea of cycles of violence, and how people who commit violence will be unable to escape it. This is most prominent with the sub-plot concerning Arthur's relationship with Mary Linton, and how they both recognize that Arthur will never be able to leave the Van Der Linde's. This is similar to the classic western Shane, and how the titular character realizes that he will not be able to ever settle down peacefully due to his violent past.
1 🃏 The Four Gunslingers 🎃
The first half of the lengthy side mission "The Noblest of Men, And a Woman" has Arthur track down and attempt to interview four old legendary gunslingers about their past lives of crime to aid an author who is writing a book about a fifth, drunken gunfighter. The four outlaws all react in different ways; one is terrified at the idea of his past having caught up with him, one is friendly towards Arthur and is willing to answer his questions, another bemoans that the book is not being written about him. At the end of almost all these conversations Arthur is forced to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:confront the gunslingers in a duel; killing them leads him to become the best gunsl🍒inger in the west.
The quest has similarities to the controversial 1970 avant-garde western El Topo, the first half of which details the titular characters' quest to learn from and defeat four master gunfighters to become the greatest gunman in the world.
