Thanks for the shoutout. Your point about John unable to gain forgiveness because he can’t himself forgive is reminiscent of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount saying if you forgive, your Heavenly Father will forgive you. And after all, Jesus came to bring redemption.

Can't milk a fence, can't build a Cow ...

I like how in the epilog we go from Arthur dying to shoveling poo 30mins later

Always thought it was fitting the game starts with you, Micah, Dutch and Sadie in the snow, and ends with you, Micah, Dutch and Sadie in the snow.

Great analysis series!

One thing that I really liked about the epilogue was how Charles and Sadie acted as the angel and devil on Johns shoulders. Charles is high honor, he’s helping John move on by building the house, getting tools, saving uncle, while Sadie is the low honor encouraging John back to violence in the bounty hunting and particularly with finding Micah. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Charles is the first one down in American Venom

The pronghorn makes sense cause we know Arthur was the Whitetail buck so they are the same family just one is facing extinction and the other survived

the fact you can see the cabin from the first mission is crazy, god this game is good

I honestly really appreciate the epilogue essentially demonstrating how nearly every character's life got better as soon as they left the gang. Tilly found a husband, Pearson owns his own store, Mary Beth is a writer, Sadie's found her calling, Charles saw the kind of life he wants, and (as far as this game is concerned) the Marstons finally have everything they wanted

I'd honestly say it's somewhat comparable to leaving an abusive relationship (and take this with a grain of salt since I've never been in any relationship before) since nobody wanted the gang to end, they all wanted to see it through, but it got so bad that they had to leave, and as soon as they did they all got to see how liberating it was

I know people complain a lot about how the epilogue didn't give players time to grieve over Arthur's death, but I do feel like that's intentional. Even after 8 years, John still isn't able to move past Arthur. Suppress his grief, maybe, but his brother died from a cowardly rat and a shell of a father, and he himself is living a shell of a life. Like John said, if he didn't go after Micah now, Beecher's Hope would have been just a hollow fantasy to him. Both John and us, the players, can't follow Arthur's advice. We can't  run away from him, and we can't resist looking back. All we can do is get rid of the American Venom inside of us. And unfortunately, that's what gets John shot in the end.

The guy who figured the counter-clockwise position of the movements of the camp is a fucking genius

not john's hat casually fading out of existence during the proposal

One thing I want to point out is that canonically John uses the Blackwater money to pay off the loan from the bank, if you stay until after the credits and hear John and Abigail talking about running the ranch he says he used the money to wipe out the debts. So when Ross and the other Pinkerton's show up years later, John honestly does think he may be in the clear, he's living on land he fully owns and it has been many years since the Micah fight, making it all the more devastating that he still isn't free

Imma argue on Jim/Jons side. What else was he supposed to do? These people who gave him a second chance were attacked, him jumping up to defend them was the only right choice.

I always thought that John Marston using a dead Pinkerton agent's name as an alias was actually pretty stupid.

That point about his theme song just begging to playout is spot on lmao. John really couldn't be just a one man and not another.

I love how the violent heroism of John's past is not just personally appealing to him, and the player, the world also rewards him for it every time he picks up his gun. He would never have been hired as a ranch hand if he hadn't intimidated the wagon thieves. It's his saving of Mr. Geddes' cattle that earns him the goodwill that results in a bank loan. It's only due to Sadie's bounties that he can keep making the debt payments while his ranch isn't making money. John feels like Abigail wants him to live life in humiliating, emasculating hard-mode: Doing demeaning work for little reward when he is used to a life of excitement and sacks full of stolen money. And that's a perfect metaphor because an honest life IS, a lot of the time, hard and unrewarding. And it takes Abigail leaving him for John to realize that the simple home and family life he often resented actually means more to him than all the excitement and money in the world.

I wish the ranch life was more polished. Dinners, dialogues, fishing trips, fetch with the dog, donating meats to cook, growing and harvesting your animals, and more so just common things throughout the world that could be shown through the rancher/married life lense. The home has a bath, so imagine if you could bathe and it's Abigail who offers to help. That would be sweet, and taking her out like the extra activities in GTA V with your friends.

But at least there are very sweet cutscenes for going to bed with Abigail, that's nice.

10:42 Seriously, what choice did he have? When even a farm hand like Abe and Dickens have pick up their guns and fight, John hibernate in his cabin and pretend didn't hear anything?

20:25 John shouting "Pretend his Micah!" to Charles as he demolishes the poor fella made me laugh my ass off for a few good minutes. Absolute comedic gold

I think sadie definitly beleives aruther died to "stop micah" likely due to her own issues with revenge but she just misunderstands he just died to save john to save his family