Fleeing Mortality in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077

**SPOILERS FOR BOTH GAMES MENTIONED**

The endings of Red Dead Redemption II and Cyberpunk 2077 have utterly crumbled my emotional response to such an extent that no other video game has yet done so. These games have various endings, especially Cyberpunk 2077, and to avoid any confusion, I am going to base my discussion purely on the ones I received for both first-time playthroughs. My emotional states were different for the two, yet what remained through and through was sadness. 

Red Dead Redemption II’s Arthur Morgan, an outlaw and trusted confidant to his leader, Dutch Van Der Linde, as well as Cyberpunk 2077’s V, a for-hire mercenary, both become vessels for Death itself. Slowly infected with two vastly different forms of diseases, these two soldiers-of-fortune race against their own, slipping mortal grasp. While Arthur Morgan’sdisease becomes a revelation for him to atone for his sins, and thus strive to be a better man to an also dying Wild Western civilization, the disease for V allows for them to, instead, fasttrack their trek for legend status, not just within the nooks of mercenary-work, but as the one who buried the most crooked corporation within his futuristic cityscape. It is up to the player to choose how they would like to lead Arthur Morgan through his path of redemption, as well as V’s final steps to bring down a corporation. It is we who must shape into legends reborn from the ashes of yesterday.

Arthur Morgan’s parasitic affliction is tuberculosis, with the events of Red Dead Redemption II unraveling within a period that, despite it being based within a fictionalized culmination of various American states, remains accurate enough that there was no such treatment. V’s cancerous ailment is not an entity like tuberculosis, but rather the digitalized soul of punk rocker vigilante, Johnny Silverhand. Ever-growing with the influence of their diseases, there is character development to be had, which envelopes the main characters into a stance that, by the end, would be unrecognizable to the original selves that started at the beginning of their respective games.

By the end of Red Dead Redemption II, I was one of the countless others who was a snot-filled, swollen-eyed mess of sadness who witnessed his version of a changed outlaw finally succumb to the double-edged sword that took him at an early age. This sword may have overtaken a young and morally misguided man, but it turned him into a gentleman who strived to finally reject what the Wild Western world that chewed and spat out, thus making amends with those whom he once hurt, and with those whom he once pivoted against. Despite the amazing Epilogue, it had taken a while for my emotions to subside after what played out in the otherwise final Chapter 6. Despite Rockstar clearly giving me chances to shift Arthur’s honor system way past the deep red of which I was constantly finding myself in, they gave up and let my psychosis do what it deserves. Despite the foundational narrative of Arthur becoming a better man, my constant sprees of mayhem were combating the narrative, and thus caused me to get the ending where Arthur dies on his back, looking at Micah as he is shot in the head, pretty much point-blank. I’ve since made it a point that on my second playthrough, I will give him his iconic choice of death, and this time, being able to look at the sunrise and take his last breath…

Now, with Cyberpunk 2077’s particular ending, I did not find myself crying but instead was overtaken by a prolonged sense of emptiness, a gutted feeling following V’s goodbye to Johnny Silverhand. While Johnny and V started as living annoyances and mental nuisances, the duo, by the end, are best friends and partners-in-war, aligned with respect and admiration for each other. By V’s conclusion, at least in my particular ending, Johnny Silverhand overtakes the husk of V and evolves from a kind of cancer to another, literal human being. Being able to save V’s consciousness, V is digitized and merged with the immense system, which sits master hacker Alt Cuningham. Despite living as the physical identity of his best friend, Johnny is indeed a newly personified individual. His newfound personality matches the newfound body he had once infected, like a twisted interpretation of a gift. My particular ending featured a redemption of Johnny’s persona that, to me, actually felt more reminiscent of Arthur Morgan than V’s own ending-aligned personality.

The level of writing between this narrative duo expertly demonstrates the wonderfully complex nature of what happens when a character is truly poisoned by time. Humanity’s inherent need to fill time before their mortal clock’s final strike is put into overdrive when Death’s road trip to our doorstep is speedier than what we presume is normal. Call it a gifted curse or a cursed gift, but having an especially fleeting mortality allows for humanity to reach into the ghostly center of their soul and finally uncover their truest nature. This interpretation of honesty comes at a fatal price, and it beckons the questioning of whether it is better to live a rather safe life to an elderly age, or a spectacularly risky life and most likely pass at a relatively young age. While it is certainly plausible to live fast and die old, in this particular piece, it is only possible to die young. So, should one spend living among the peacefulness of reality, or its chaotic other half?

Humanity finds itself unlocking its most sincere feelings through events of near-death experiences or witnessing the death of a beloved figure, as well as heartbreaks, scholarly failure, job termination, etc. Extreme emotions, like danger, anger, and sadness (especially when they form an impending variation), are powerful enough to awaken us to digging up and discovering what the fibers sewn into our soul, even look like. Strangely enough, I want to end this off by quoting, of all characters in media, Heath Ledger’s own Joker. The context of this quote is a grim, ice-hold handoff of words to a grieving police officer whose fellow officers were killed. Despite this darkened context, I am stubborn enough to use this as a greatly accurate summarization to my thematic fascination between Arthur Morgan and V’s fleeting mortality…

“In their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did..."

-Julian Enghauser

Guest Writer for WXOU

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