Is Arthur Morgan or Red Dead Redemption’s John Marston Better

Both John Marston and Arthur Morgan are great characters, but Arthur is much more effective at fulfilling a variety of cowboy archetypes

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Rockstar has always had a knack for creating loveable, interesting protagonists for their games. The Red Dead Redemption series is no exception, and with two amazingly crafted main characters, it’s not easy to choose a favorite between the two.

The main problem with selecting the superior Red Dead protagonist is that both of them share similar values as characters while serving similar roles within their stories. Both John and Arthur are motivated by their sense of loyalty and responsibility to a family, and as rough-cut, grit-lined cowboys it’s their job to use whatever means necessary to secure their family’s well being. They’re cut from the same cloth, and it’s pretty clear that this was an intentional decision from Rockstar, as John Marston and Arthur Morgan each serve as members of the same family for much of their lives. As such, they even influence each others’ characterization throughout the games. In the end, if a person likes one of them, there’s a good chance they’ll feel a similar way about the other.

Even if someone did have a preference for one, a major barrier in justifying that preference comes in subjectivity. Both characters are extremely well written, so the choice between the two may have more to do with personal preference than objectivity. A close approximation to an objective indicator, however, is how a given character is designed to fulfill their purpose. In the case of Red Dead Redemption, that purpose is to allow the player to live out the fantasy of a spaghetti-western cowboy character. So, whichever character in Red Dead Redemption allows the player to fulfill that fantasy more effectively could be deemed better than the other.

The Pros and Cons of John Marston

Iconography is John’s biggest ally when measured up against his successor. He was designed specifically to resemble Clint Eastwood’s character, “The Man With No Name” from famous movies such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Everything from John’s outfit to the gun on his belt is a screaming homage meant to please fans of old Western movies. These fans will also find themselves performing the same tasks as that archetypal character. Bounty hunting and gunfighting are at the crux of Red Dead Redemption’s setting and story, so there are plenty of opportunities for players to step in the shoes of Eastwood. If players are looking to replicate that character and his style, then John is a good choice.

John is not without his downsides, however. Because the sequel is much larger and robust than its predecessor, John has less to do in his own game. This is completely remedied in Red Dead Redemption 2 once the player takes control of John, but for the majority of a player’s time with the character they just have less options. In a series made to display every aspect of a cowboy’s life, John’s game fails to deliver in the more mundanely detailed challenges of the Old West.

John’s story also provides less incentive for the player to do some of these activities. In both games, John is trying his best to be a reformed outlaw-turned-family-man. Assuming the player is in a mood to have a conscience, robbing strangers and heisting the local bank is less attractive of an activity. They become especially unattractive when both games track the player’s honor level. It’s harder to be no-good when you can see just how bad you really are.

The Pros And Cons of Arthur Morgan

Arthur’s character is a bit more original when it comes to his design, but he still feels like he belongs in the homage-riddled world of Red Dead Redemption. His design is more suited to a variety of cowboy activities, and his story in Red Dead Redemption 2 provides more room for a player to feel morally safe when doing dirty deeds. Player’s have more control over his appearance, what he does, and what he says to other characters, so outside of roleplaying Clint Eastwood, Arthur is a more effective avatar than John ever was.

This is also fairly evident in his gameplay. Arthur can do all the same activities available to John in the first Red Dead Redemption plus more. Furthermore, many of the activities included in both games are much more realistically detailed in the sequel. In Red Dead Redemption 2, players have to clean their guns, feed their horse, and keep in mind whether they are downwind from any prey they are hunting. Assuming the player wants to fulfill a semi-accurate fantasy about the trials of being an Old West outlaw, then playing as Arthur Morgan is definitely the way to go.

The downside to being Arthur, however, is that those minute details are only fun to play through if the player wants a realistic depiction of the Old West. If they just want to cheat at poker, break horses, and put holes in people then they’ll have to trudge through 10-15 minutes of excess time before anything interesting happens. Other systems, like Arthur’s various cores, make it difficult to maintain these activities for extended periods of time. Keeping Arthur’s cores up means participating in other, much slower activities (like hunting and crafting) that detract from the intense, cinematic violence many cowboy fans crave. Ironically in this case, more content means less fun for some players.

Which Red Dead Redemption Character is Better?

In the end, Arthur has a wider variety of Old West activities for the player to engage in when living out that cowboy fantasy. He isn’t pigeon-holed by the narrative into being a morally justified character, and the player has more ability to customize him to fulfill any Old West fantasy they choose. They can be heroic gunman or a mountain-dwelling survivalist like Jeremiah Johnson. He is simply more versatile.

John, however, is much more effective at fulfilling one specific archetypal role within Western fiction, meaning that though Arthur serves a wider variety of purposes, John Marston is still superior depending on who is making the decision. Subjectivity, then, cannot be entirely excluded from the situation. However, if one had to recommend one of Red Dead Redemption’s two protagonists under the pretense that they might fulfill a particular fantasy, then the safest recommendation would be for Arthur. His versatility means that even if a player wants to be a good cowboy or The Man With No Name, then Arthur can still fill that role for them. He may not be able to do it as well as John, but the player will still leave the game feeling as if their Western fantasies had been fulfilled.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/rdr2-arthur-morgan-red-dead-redemption-john-marston/