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Contrary to the Red Dead Redemption 2 song that refuses to leave my brain right now, I do not stand unshaken. In fact, I'm shaken to my very core, because I've finally finished Rockstar's Wild West action-adventure for the first time in 2025, and I'm utterly lost. The intensity of my own emotions speaks to how effectively Arthur Morgan's story took hold of my heart, and after wrapping up the epilogue, I find myself in desperate need to take some time to process. To feel my feelings. It might sound dramatic (I'm very aware this is a video game I'm talking about), but even when I feared the worst at certain points, nothing could have prepared me for how it all unfolds… and I think there's a part of me that won't ever be able to let it go completely.
While I'm absolutely starting a second playthrough to see how different my perspective is on the opening chapters, I find myself retreating to the safety of the Beecher's Hope homestead where I can live a quiet life in Rockstar's world for a little while. Here, I can retire from the life of gunslinging, train robbing, and danger in general, and trade it all in for some good old fashioned manual labor. From carrying bales of hay to milking a cow, I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 like I'm some farmhand NPC who works hard for their family, and it feels like the perfect remedy as I try to pull myself together and face Arthur's journey all over again.
Farming family
As you'll likely know if you've finished Red Dead Redemption 2, Beecher's Hope is a place you build yourself during the closing epilogue, and after some scuffles, it becomes a little pocket of land to call your own as John Marston. Not unlike life at camp as Arthur, you can perform various menial tasks to help out, and doing so will improve your honor rating.
Since Beecher's Hope is a farm, you can do everything from feeding chickens to carrying buckets of water to troughs. In fact, there's enough to do around the homestead that it's very easy for me to start sinking into a daily routine, and it's not long before I feel like I've well and truly gone into cowboy retirement.
Sure, I still have some stranger quests to complete, and there are still some legendary animals to hunt. But by staying in Beecher's Hope, which has become a cozy safe haven in the Great Plains, Red Dead Redemption 2 begins to feel like a true farming sim not unlike Stardew Valley. And after all of the pain, violence, and loss I just went through, that's exactly the kind of experience I need. Instead of starting a new day by hopping on my horse and riding into danger, I'm picking up a pitchfork to clean up manure, and swapping my pistol for an axe to chop firewood.
I love how much thought Rockstar put into life at this farmstead, too, from allowing us to sit down and have dinner with our family, to various conversations Abigail, Uncle, and Jack will have amongst themselves and with John each day. It really makes the post-game experience feel like it's still very much alive. That life continues to go on, even after so much hardship. While watching my wife play piano and listening to Jack read aloud in the living room, it feels nice that my biggest concern is finding Milkweed and a shopping list of goods for Uncle.
I know this peaceful farming life won't last forever, and eventually, John Marston's story will go on (you better believe I'll be revisiting the first Red Dead Redemption at some stage). But for now, at least, everything is just okay, and that's exactly how I need it to be. Even so, as I carry hay bales to feeding points and deposit boxes of chicken eggs in the back of the wagon, my brain starts to wonder. Slowly but surely, I begin to process everything that transpired, and I can't stop myself from reflecting back on certain story moments and conversations in a new light.
As much as my heart aches with it all, the time I've been taking to farm and slow down in the Wild West has only bolstered my resolve to face the game from start to finish all over again. I may be setting myself up here, but I know I'm going to see the opening chapters very differently. Plus, when it comes down to it, I miss Arthur, and I don't want to step away from the adventure entirely just yet.
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