Red Dead Redemption II: The Eternal Summer ► Ludology Now!

It’s Chapter Four in RDR2. Micah is imprisoned in Strawberry. Leopold Strauss wants Arthur to get more money from Thomas Downes. Sean is back with the camp. All other main missions are finished. The only way to progress the game, the only way to move the story forward, is to do those missions, to free Micah and extort Downes.

But what if I don’t? Charles has a tip on a house filled with lowlifes who have been robbing villagers. I could go with him, make some money, find a new shotgun to add to my inventory. That wouldn’t hurt anything, apart from the robbers themselves.

So we do that. And afterwards, on the way back to camp, it’s not that strange that we run into a man who wants to challenge us on our marksmanship to pass the time. He has already set up bottles to shoot, so why not indulge him?

Spoilers for Red Dead Redemption II from this point forward.

Red Dead Redemption II is one of my favorite games of all time, and quite possibly one of the best games ever made. Even so, it’s painful to replay in full. RDR2 is an experience in the same sense that reading The Stand is an experience. At many times and in many ways, Red Dead Redemption II is purposefully tedious.

In my RDR2 save, this tediousness is savored. Much like how Rant would slowly tongue and chew (and therefore enjoy) his food to avoid shards of glass in his teeth in Chuck Palahniuk’s oral history book of the same name, in my world Arthur Morgan takes his time to do, well, pretty much everything. He has to, because I know what comes next.

I know what’s waiting for Arthur at that mission marker on Downes Ranch. I know what releasing Micah from prison means for the safety of the camp. In good conscious, I can’t bring myself to do either of those things. If I hold here, if I refuse to move time forward, it might all be okay.

So Arthur goes fishing, and hunting, and looks for stone carvings and cigarette cards along the way. He meets photographers, gold-panners, loners who live both high up in the mountains and deep in the southern swamps. He helps lost citizens find their way back home, and only very occasionally does he engage in abhorrent unethical murders of those deserving and not.

The first time I played through RDR2 in full I was too engrossed with the story to live in the world until it was too late. It’s a masterwork in writing, worldbuilding, one of the best combinations of game design and storytelling that exists, that you just want to keep Arthur going, keep the gang moving, until, suddenly, all you want to do is spend one more day where you are.

Red Dead Redemption II ends, ultimately, with an eternal summer for John Marston, something I’m sure many players (including myself) felt comforted by after the previous game’s epilogue. However, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to that point again. Arthur deserves this peace arguably more than John does. As long as I keep him here, he can have it.

There are some downsides. Blackwater (and therefore, more than half the map) is inaccessible to me thanks to the ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ status Arthur has had since the start of the game. My activities are only dictated by my own inspirations and the game’s random events and strangers, which all three vary in scope, complexity, and entertainment value. Many times I am quite literally wandering around lost in the woods, just looking for something interesting to interact with.

Sometimes, those are my favorite moments. Wandering around lost in the woods is where I am when I discover the reclusive old woman with multiple dogs and a shotgun, the house on stilts, the pagan rituals. It’s how you locate an enemy encampment you never discovered before, how you discover an antique rifle hidden in a burned-out ruin, how you nearly get mauled to death after accidentally trying to climb over a sleeping bear.

Six years ago, in my own Red Dead Redemption II review for Screen Rant, I called this feeling “like watching paint dry on the Mona Lisa.” It’s the most beautiful game you’ve ever seen, yes, but not something you can rush. Nor should you. Nor shall I.