Red Dead Redemption 2’s Snowy Tutorial Drives the Story Forward

A Unique Approach to Teaching in Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2’s snowy tutorial in Colter offers a distinctive way of introducing players to the game. It includes all the standard elements one would expect from an opening segment — explanations on how to use the controls, how to avoid being shot, and what most of the little icons on the screen mean. However, it also goes beyond these basics by teaching players what the game is truly about.

Whether you are familiar with the original Red Dead or not, the gang’s time in Colter makes it clear that this sequel-prequel is centered around the slow, inevitable decay of hope. Here, you find yourself in a vast wilderness filled with potential for action — yet you can’t do a single thing. You can ride a horse in a straight line, and then do it again. There’s a gunfight, but it ends too quickly. Finally, you get to be a bandit and rob a train. However, Dutch, the leader of the gang, didn’t think things through — again. Now the Pinkertons are after you.

Beyond the found family problems, there’s another issue hanging in the air. Everyone seems weary, and while part of this is due to Dutch shooting an innocent person and two members of their group being dead, the malaise goes deeper than shock and grief. It feels like apathy.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has many strengths, but one of them is how it subverts the usual storytelling formula. In a prequel to the original Red Dead Redemption, there’s only one possible outcome — things will end badly for everyone. However, rather than building toward a big climax where Dutch’s ineptitude becomes obvious, Red Dead 2 starts with the end of the dream. It’s just that no one knows it yet, or more importantly, they aren’t willing to acknowledge it.

Arthur and a few other more aware members of Dutch’s gang have a hunch that things aren’t going well. Dutch is probably aware, in some corner of his mind, that the future he promised everyone is gone, that there’s no chance of finding a utopia or any hope of making their own anymore.

So, all you and the gang are left with is the promise of a spring thaw and the illusion that things will get better. That’s a pretty grim outlook, and your misgivings are quickly proven true. Dutch steadily becomes paranoid and self-destructive when his charisma isn’t enough to keep everyone together anymore — even he can’t keep pretending a better tomorrow is just around the corner. Micah’s betrayal is the catalyst that starts the gang’s descent into destruction, but it would have happened anyway — from another botched job, maybe, or the inescapable fact that there was really nowhere to hide from the Pinkertons for long.

The wilderness is closed to you in Red Dead 2’s tutorial, and so is the promise of the Wild West itself and the future that promise held. Your path and actions are hemmed in by forces beyond your control. Things might get better for you, the player, as the world opens up with more opportunities. But Arthur and the Van Der Linde gang never really leave Colter. Their dreams, and the versions of themselves who thought those dreams could come true, die there, and the rest of the game is about making them face that fact.