14 DAY TRIAL // I cared for John Marston and for his family even though while playing as this character, I did quite a few things modern morality would consider as being bad. I killed quite a few people in order to take their valuables, I scared a lot of them away from things I needed, killed soldiers of a legitimate government to advance personal ambitions and used all those around me to make sure that my future would be as trouble free as possible.
Yet everything I did seemed like a good idea at the time and, more importantly, felt right within the shrunk down version of the Wild West that Rockstar delivered in Red Dead Redemption.
John Marston is a more grounded character than those around him and seems the only one who actually experienced peace of mind and happiness with his wife and kid, despite their past and the horrors they saw and experienced. It's only natural for the player to root for John and do whatever it takes in order to return him to his family and to his wife, even if that means shooting a lot of people.
But Red Dead Redemption is not aiming for the happy ending. There are some twists and turns, some pretty predictable after the Mexico portion of the game, and the perspective shifts to Jack, the child John had with Abigail while still part of the band he ran with. The boy seems to initially have put his past behind him and there's a glimmer of hope that I, as the player, hang on to desperately.
Rockstar shattered my hopes by putting the young Jack in an even tougher position than his father ever was, with both the Federal government and the wave of modernity hot on his heels. It's a depressing ending expertly handled by Rockstar, the best part of the game the player needs to experience.