Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Loneliest Year

After twenty hours of Red Dead Redemption 2, I have yet to have lassoed and dragged a Klansman behind my horse. Which isn’t to say I haven’t pulled the past behind me, heavy and refusing to die. I still get the point. I have went to the woods, in search of a gathering not meant for me or with me specifically in mind and came up with nothing but the crack of branches under my feet. Perhaps this is the true meaning of being an outlaw, to be in search of many things and still be content to end up with nothing at all except the remembrance that you are part of a large world that is constantly filling itself. I began the journey as most players do. In the snow, in the frigid season, much farther north than I want to be. You are among family, none of them blood, even less of them chosen. To enjoy this game, the world and its charms, woods and their snakes, is to enjoy the lonely banality of existing. I run the stamina dry on my horse getting to another town, somewhat like the town I just left. I love the trail as the sky loves the clouds that honor its modesty. Sure, I might need to visit a butcher or spend an evening in a hotel, scrubbing the frontier from my legs, but what I do more than anything is travel between those points. And if each Non-Playable Character is a universe unto itself, then isn’t what we’re really doing is traveling between worlds more than we are living in them? Aren’t we just burning one world at a time because we know so many more are out there?

I, Arthur …