That Journal Though
For my money Red Dead Redemption 2’s (RDR2) most interesting feature is Arthur Morgan’s journal. We’ve all heard how the game has been lauded for its massive and beautiful open world stuffed with more activities than a theme park, its strong narrative, and choice-based gameplay, and I’m not sure how much more we can discuss these topics without retreading over familiar ground.
I realize the journal has been mentioned by others before but I don’t feel it gets the attention it deserves when compared to the game’s flashier elements. I wanted to express my thoughts on why I feel it is so interesting and valuable.
What Others Do
Many games rely upon a simple logging or journaling system to keep track of your adventures throughout the world. Often these are in the form of small text summaries of some events that you can pull up in the game’s menus.
Reading these summaries can help you get caught up if you’ve taken a break from a game for a while, or if you’re looking to learn a little more about the world you inhabit. In most games these are emotionless impersonal entries that seem to have been made by the omnipotent force that powers the game’s world.
Very little connection is made to the characters other than describing what they’ve done and the world they inhabit. Like a sports play-by-play with the passion of and encyclopedia entry.
What RDR2 Do
Read Dead Redemption 2’s journal is different because it is not the game’s log, it is Arthur’s journal. While Arthur’s journal serves a similar practical function to other game logging systems, the highly personal nature of the writing makes the entire experience more introspective and thoughtful.
Simple things, like what you think of your friends and coworkers. Arthur remarks on such an incident, when reflecting on findings the German family while scouting for a place to make camp with Charles at the end of Act 2:
It’s not eloquent, but Arthur’s opinion of Charles is honest, almost to the point of being blunt, relfecting what we see of the protagonists personality in cutscenes, as well as offering a little insight into his true feelings. Word choice and phrasing alone do not a writer make though, and in the days before typewriting, handwriting gave us another window into the personality of the writer.
Notes are written in Arthur’s own hand, and I find when comparing his scrawl to that of others’ (particularly Dutch) it’s a bit more efficient; Lacking in Dutch’s flourish, but certainly of more practiced than John’s scratched-out mispellings.
Yes, you can read them as nicely formatted typewritten text, but I found it more rewarding to squint my way through the cowboy’s cursive scrawl (shout out to Ms. Vermillion my 3rd grade teacher for teaching me cursive). It reads like a real journal! Not that I go around reading others’ private journals…
The personal and single perspective driven nature of the entries not only make them feel more worthwhile to read, as you can get a look into Arthur’s psyche, his motivations, and how he reflects on events and himself; I also found it inspiring me to do the same.
How did I feel about a heist we pulled, or some stranger I helped, or the raiders I killed? What does that mean to me? How else will I know if I don’t spend time thinking about it and getting those ideas down, like Arthur does? Taking a step back I realized that I don’t engage in enough in self-reflection on my personal life, let alone my video game experiences.
RDR2’s Journal Inspired Me
Some video games have a quality that triggers in me a process of taking a moral and ethical invetory, and in helping me identify my lack of time spent in personal reflection, Read Dead Redeption 2 can be counted among those games which have impacted my life. The only reason I’m writing this at all is because I spent time reading Arthur’s journal entries and wanted to do the same; to learn from myself.
My life may not be as exciting as Arthur’s but it is still uniquely mine. I want to be able to review my experiences and examine my own observations and feelings outside of myself, much like I was able to do with Arthur, and I assume he was able to do with himself (as if he was some kind of real person).
Similar to how reading the in-game journal helped me learn more about Arthur and further cemented the reality of the character, I want to be able to reflect on my own feelings to learn more about myself and keep myself more grounded in my own reality.
Life is growing ever more fast paced, and it’s hard to keep up with everything and process all the inputs I receive and the feelings I may have. Read Dead Redemption 2 inspired me to slow down a bit and remember to reflect. Did it do this with direct and purposeful animations? Long distances I had to travel, or forcing me to get off my horse in camp? No, it did this with something as simple as a personalized journal.
Citations
Rockstar Studios. (2018, October 26). Read Dead Redemption 2 (Version 1.05)
[Video Game Software]. Retrieved January 19, 2019, from https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/
CINEMATIC GAMING. (2018, October 27). Red Dead Redemption 2 - Morgan Saves the German Family
[Video Upload]. Retrieved February 10, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pkp91H4a1Q