Narrative Design and Moral discussion in Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
Video games nowadays can be analyzed beyond the entertainment values, as the technology advancement allow the game developers to design games with more complex structures, narratives, and hyper-realistic visuals.
Video games portray themes and deliver certain messages to people, and morality is one example where video games can carry more arguments to evoke players’ moral thinking and responses. However moral binary system still dominates the industry as video games only portray good characters who treat everything and everyone in a fair, positive light, and bad guys do the opposite through harm and pain.
While some research articles criticize this moral binary system and deem it problematic for its inability to reflect how morality works in real life. Recent video game titles have shown the possibility for more complex nuanced moral systems that is yet to be analyzed.
This study aims to see how morality is unraveled in Red Dead Redemption 2. Read Dead was published by Rockstar Games in 2018. The ways it challenges the moral binary system include a game narrative that avoids shallow and realistic moral experiences. The game has created a compelling combination of the moral case through the protagonists’ storyline (Dutch Van Der lin de and Arthur Morgan) as well as game mechanics that help players experience the consequences of different life choices.
Red Dead Redemption 2 tells the story of Van Der Linde and Arthur Morgan’s surviving through industrialization and urban living transformation. People kill, rob, and intimidate for the sake of survival led by an idealistic and charismatic leader called Dutch Van De Linde, Dutch story is different from other outlaw gang leaders in the story. He is manipulative and unforgiving to enemies but he is generous to those who deserved it. While Dutch is seen with a humane side, his plan for the gang shows he is compromised on morality. In order to realize financial freedom, he accepts crimes commitment. Violence is justified and morally acceptable for the gang,it generates a paradox between widely accepted morals of minimizing harm and those who embrace authority and loyalty over non-violence.
Morality is defined as a code of conduct, it was created and accepted by groups of people where each group has its own belief foundations. In the game story, the narratives question moral violence and depict how violence is in fact a moral act in certain societies. Dutch’s moral belief turns questionable as the story escalates. He becomes more erratic and brutal and even some gang members are questioning his methods. As a result, he destroyed the moral foundation he and the gang uphold.
Changes in Dutch’s moral belief prominently influence the other protagonist Arthur Morgan, he sees himself as a brute who never gets bothered by killing or raiding. In the beginning, Arthur follows orders from Dutch even when the act goes against the group’s moral standards. However, as Dutch becomes more brutal and defies his precious values, changes in Arthur’s behavior start to surface. He doubted about Dutch’s actions and questions if they are still pursuing freedom. Later, Arthur is diagnosed with incurable tuberculosis, and he starts to reflect on his life meaning and save people from unnecessary loss. In the end, Arthur succumbed to his own illness and tries to save everyone that he can. He wins over himself and sticks back to the old morality.
Moral complexity is unraveled through the development of the main characters and the line is blurred through moral shifts and dilemmas, which evokes a sense of uncertainty for players whether they choose to be a hero or villain. Dutch changes from a sensible leader to an extremely brutal person, and Arthur’s moral dilemma shows how video game characters can be designed to avoid moral binary depiction. Players are able to relate themselves with the game characters when making a decision in the game quests.
Aside of the narrative, Red Dead Redemption’s mechanic design instructs the players to exercise to moral thinking during the gameplay and provides a level of realism that other games have yet to achieve.
One example is the honor system: The system grades players’ actions into positive behaviors if they are helping civilians deliver bounties and it’s tagged as negative behaviors such as shooting or robbing people. In this way, the game gives players a chance to reflect on their own actions and take responsibility for the consequence. Another highlight is Arthur’s journal which allows players to see into his unspoken thoughts. The existence of NPCs and non-playable characters also helps to deliver information or provoke considerations for players to make meaningful decisions.
While binary moral system hinders real-life experience and produces a shallow take on life decisions, Red Death Redemption 2 does a great job in emulating the pros and cons of making a meaningful decision by building high-level interactivity for players when immersed in the gameplay. We hope to see more games with an intention to create strong narrative elements in the game content, to give more thoughts on how they design the story thread of protagonists and minor interactive tasks in the game functions.
Video Author by Luthfiah Dien on Inshsharts2021
Edited by Gigi Geng
