Quest to Nowhere

Playing Red Dead Redemption I found myself thinking a lot about the story, specifically within the context of the objective vs. subjective storytelling (which I discussed in a previous post.) The one thing that I kept coming back to was that within the game it seemed that there were two John Marstons, the one that Rockstar created for the game, and the one that the players create for themselves as they play the game. The players’ John Marston exists between the cut-scenes and in-game dialogues between characters, while the Rockstar John Marston exists in those scripted moments.

This seemingly creates an issue in the storytelling, which is that the players’ John Marston may in fact be very different from the John Marston of the cut-scenes. This issue is seemingly caused by the objective and subjective storytelling aspects of the game. Where you have the objective storytelling of the cut-scenes and scripted moments, where the player is not in control of Marston. And then the subjective storytelling moments which is basically ever other moment in the game where the player is in complete control over Marston’s actions.

But this issue doesn’t seem to actually occur, because while the player is seemingly given carte blanche over the game world while they playing the game between those scripted moments, they actually aren’t. In fact they are actually rather limited in what they can do, especially when you compare it to the Grand Theft Auto games (post GTA3.) Specifically on one detail, prostitutes.

In the past GTA games one was able to have sex with prostitutes, which was one way to rejuvenate the character’s health. But in Red Dead Redemption, while there seems to be no shortage of prostitutes, it is impossible to procure their services in any way. While it could have been done simply to avoid the unpleasantness that sort of thing brought to the GTA series from people looking to blame society’s ills on video games, I think that rather this was done as a conscious storytelling decision.

John Marston is a married man, one incredibly devoted to his wife. So much so that he goes around hunting his old friends to make sure she is safe. If he weren’t so devoted he would have no reason to be doing the things he is doing. Thus if the player were allowed to have him cheat on his wife, it completely ruins his motivation for what he’s doing in the first place. Thus it is removed as a choice for the player, because it is impossible for Marston as a character to do it.

This is in line with Anthony Burch’s “suspension of agency” idea that a player is willing to give up some control/choice in order to have better immersion in the game. This is arguably what they are doing by taking away that option. By removing it they are making the player more in line with Marston then having the player make Marston like themselves, but by doing so they make the player more invested/empathetic to him and thus more immersed and engaged with the game.

Now I would argue that John Marston in the game is supposed to be a good guy, by that I mean he doesn’t go around shooting everyone, robbing banks, stealing horses, etc. Well perhaps not a “good guy,” but a reformed bad guy. One wanting to leave that life behind him, and not wanting to do the bad things he did when he was younger. Which is why I think that the choices there for the player to do bad things is not about giving the player a choice between a good John Marston and a bad John Marston, but rather a John Marston who wants to be good but can easily lapse back into doing bad things. The bad choices, (the things that give you dishonor,) are there to taunt Marston to coax him back into his old outlaw/bandit way of doing things, and thus are also there to tempt the player as well.

The “morality system” supports this by being made up of honor and dishonor, and not some version good or bad. The reason this is different from saying he is good or bad is because in order to gain or lose honor one first has to have set morality to judge actions as being honorable, or dishonorable from. In the game the actions that give him honor are good deeds, rescuing people, not killing a criminal when you can capture them alive, etc. While the actions that bring dishonor are stealing horses, money, killing innocents, killing your own horse, etc.

Based on what constitutes honor and dishonor, we can deduce that Marston is neither a good or bad person, although aspiring to be good (which is supported by some of the scripted moments.) This is because if he were a bad person, then the actions of killing and stealing would possibly be considered honorable, with the good deeds might be seen as dishonorable.

What this all means is somehow this team at Rockstar has managed to tell an objective story (one without any branching or multiple endings,) while still giving the player the feeling of agency (that they can do whatever they want in the world and aren’t unnaturally restricted.) Without making any of their choices inconsistent with the character and story they are trying to tell, while also immersing the player into the role of John Marston.  This is by no means a small feat, especially in an open world/sandbox game.