Red Dead Redemption 2's brutal opening was supposed to be worse, but Arthur Morgan was "very, very nasty," so Rockstar Games "ended up cutting it"

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"I think the games ended up the way they were supposed to be."

Red Dead Redemption 2
(Image credit: Rockstar)

Red Dead Redemption 2's opening act was already pretty tough - sludging through knee-high snow for hours is always brutal - but the game's introduction was originally going to put players, and more so protagonist Arthur Morgan, through even worse.

Rockstar Games co-founder and frequent Grand Theft Auto lead writer Dan Houser recently revealed an alternative beginning for the open-world cowboy sequel where Arthur Morgan acts "very, very nasty," but it was scrapped so as to not make the game's leading man immediately hateable.

"And he was not very sympathetic to his occasional girlfriend who’d had the baby. So, it made him very, very nasty at the start, which I thought would be interesting to play around with because then it would make his redemptive arc even more interesting," Houser added, while explaining that the final version of Arthur was "still sort of tough and nasty, but he’s slightly more likable early on. That was the right decision commercially. It’s better that way."

Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.

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