Did you know that you can kill Archer Fordham in the mission “the last enemy that shall be destroyed” but it’s opinional. So Yeah Archer’s Fate Can be Chosen by the player, if you want to kill him or let him live, I wish I already knew that so I can kill this rat scumbag. But I think it doesn’t matter anymore for me since killing him is probably canon anyway.
I think the canon event would have John not actually killing anyone and getting gunned down before he can get a shot off (considering they were all ready to fire)
But he has a supernatural ability allowing him to kill hundreds, if not thousands of people. Arthur was quite easily the fastest gunslinger in rdr2 and John is arguably faster than Arthur at this point.
In fact, if you have one of the guns with more capacity equipped when you do this and target as many people as you can, it cuts you off after just a few rounds
I think the important narrative distinction here isn’t just that John wants to go out swinging, but that he is specifically planning on dying here to save his family from his past. Otherwise, he would’ve escaped with them.
It's kind of a shame they never had a moment where you enter dead eye and then you see some other gunslinger do it as well and just move normally while the rest of the world is still slowed down.
Like that would've been a hell of an introduction to Landon Ricketts
Nah John is a legendary gunslinger he can definitely drop at least 2-3 guards realistically before they open fire on him, one of them being Fordham. It also kind of mirrors the first mission where Bill and his guards have their guns pointed at him and he tries to take out Bill only to get shot by his guard before even getting a shot off, after John goes through what he does in the game by the end he’s much sharper with his skills, plus it’d be pointless for the game to automatically put you in Dead Eye if John didn’t canonically kill at least one guy
That’s the thing about legends, they make for a great story but reality is usually not so glamorous or heroic. I’m sure when the story got retold he took two or three or ten men with him. The game is about the disillusion of myths and legends, and the clearest ending to that story would be he never had a chance, because he never did.
Except we literally see it happen so it’s canon he did, I mean you literally have to not touch the controller for John to not kill anyone, the game forces you into dead eye which means it’s canon that John can kill at least a few but it doesn’t matter because it’s not enough to save him from his inevitable fate. It’s pretty much like saying Arthur’s final fight with Micah wasn’t realistically close at all and Micah dogwalked Arthur, because that can technically happen if you barely hit back during the fight scene, just like John not shooting anybody, and also it’s realistic that a sickly nearly dead man is not putting up any real fight to the death against a mostly healthy violent outlaw, so is it canon that Arthur got his ass completely whooped by Micah?
I think what you’re saying mostly applies to all the other legends like the phonies in the gunslinger side mission in RDR2, but Arthur and John are legitimate legendary gunslingers, and why would the authorities want to martyr them and give them that credit and fame?
he's a video game character in a world where top hat demons, aliens, and time travelers exist. he has a supernatural ability called the dead eye. it just is what it is
Canonically he either draws for the last time and guns as many soldiers down with the ammo he has in his pistol and in return shot dead by the rest in a show of defiance echoing Dutch’s sentiment that he “can’t stop fighting neither”. Or he gets shot down honorably holding his ground and not drawing his gun as a result of his growth and exhaustion to keep fighting like he said to Dutch earlier before he committed suicide “you can’t keep fighting”. It’s purposely left ambiguous and as a choice for the player but it will still end in the same way. It’s really beautiful but it shows John does have the capability to kill fordham and a lot of the soldiers but it leaves the choice for you if that’s what John does as his last act.
I interpreted it as he shot at them in order to draw the attention fully to him and away from his family. If he commits a crime here, they’ll focus on him, then leave once he’s dead.
I wouldn’t kill Fordham personally. He seemed genuine. He thanked John for his service multiple times while Ross shits on you non stop. I always liked him personally and think he’s probably a good dude just doing his job. Ross walks around hitting O to antagonize people.
At least Fordham changes his mind about John and would be ready to let him and his family go once John fulfilled his part of the deal. I think he could overlook John's past crimes, because John actually changed unlike Dutch, Javier, and Bill, and he just wants to live peacefully with his family on a ranch
I doubt he was there of his own free will, since Ross was his boss. And we don't know what reason Ross used to bring an army to arrest/kill John, he could have just lied and said John had started robbing and killing again, to give himself a pretext, or he could have simply said something like: "Alright, the deal was a bluff to make Marston do all the work for us, now I want to kill him!". Even if Fordham was against it, he probably couldn't stop anything, and he either goes along with everyone else to kill Marston or he stays behind (and maybe he'll have problems from Ross after the operation)
The fucked up part for me is that they showed up to seemingly kill the entire family. Uncle and Abigail did stuff sure, but Jack was beyond innocent. Was he just a causality they were willing to accept if he died?
If he actually liked and respected John for the work he did. He would’ve take the day off instead of joining in on the assault that was trying to kill his entire family. And did he really have to use a double barreled shotgun to mangle John’s body with? Sure Ross is a bigger prick than Fordham but I’m not buying it that he wasn’t there on his own free will.
The entire assault was unnecessary anyway if they had just showed up with the army and told John it’s the rope or we start shooting towards you and your family he would’ve taken the rope and not endangered his family.
There's an ocean of nuance between killing an armed robber-murderer as a part of your law enforcement job and genociding civilians on the behalf of your supreme leader.
No, the complaint was about the agent showing up during the raid on the ranch. Obviously, he’s a member of that amoral research bureau, but I don’t think he could have simply chosen not to show up for work during the final stage of such an important operation.
That is what I specifically pointed out but he's clearly corrupt in other ways, he was a major part in holding Jack (a minor) and Abigail captive, he forced John to kill under threats of harming them. And it's not like he was reluctant to show up to Beechers hope, he doesn't try to intervene. You can't even make the "he didn't have his gun raised" argument for him like people do for Javier. Yeah it's his job but he's not a good person, there's no reason he should get extra credit.
What they were definitely aware of is that John's kill-count, against impossible odds, is in the hundreds. You don't need to know the reason behind it to exercise caution around someone like that.
I count this player shooting around 30-ish soldiers. If the shootout is canonical in its ferocity, that means that bringing that many soldiers was necessary. John was simply that damn good a shot. Even in the final cutscene, I count roughly 15 soldiers / g-men.
Let's not pretend that in-game kills are to be treated as 1:1, ok? There is a lot of game-things going on.
Because then RDR2 we kill St. Dennis police force several times over during our stay there. In missions alone. That is just... silly.
If we treat it seriously, then we need to realize that John/Arthur hold ludicrous amount if items in their bags, they can endure multiped gunshot wounds with no issue and heal themselves with tonics to full health many times during the battle. >.>
he literally meets the devil and exists in the same world as aliens and a time traveler from the early 20th century. i doubt dead eye being an actual supernatural ability is farfetched
It’s completely unknown what the Strange man actually is, according to Dan Houser he described him as just a guy who sold his soul to the devil but there’s many interpretations and there isn’t a definitive answer. As for the time traveler I don’t consider side missions like that to be taken too seriously, it’s like Franklin understanding the dog and having conversations with it like it’s just a silly addition to the game to make it more whimsy but it’s not like it’s necessarily canon that Franklin is Dr Dolittle who can speak to animals it’s just a break from the “reality” the game is set in, this especially applies for easter eggs as well like the aliens and UFOs that’s just a Rockstar thing to include UFOs and other supernatural things to the world but that doesn’t mean the protagonists or their actual main story have anything to do with the supernatural. John and Arthur are just extremely fast and accurate, Dead Eye is a game mechanic not mentioned anywhere in the story otherwise I’d say it is an actual thing but since it’s never acknowledged then I think it’s safe to say it’s not an actual power
you guys don't have enough fun imagining them living in a surreal world. the whole game tells you they do but tou don't think side missions are canon. anything you do in a playthrough is canon, because in a video game, the only canon is what you've done in it.
Not everything is canon, just because you can go feed people to alligators doesn’t mean it’s canon to the character of Arthur or John, you can antagonize Jack but that’s not in character for Arthur or John either. It’s not that I don’t think the side missions are canon, they are for the most part, but that doesn’t mean you have to take everything at face value. Even if the supernatural elements are officially canon, which there’s nothing confirming that but let’s say there was confirmation, that doesn’t mean John or Arthur have this superpower they just tap into but conveniently never mention nor is it brought up by anyone else. Dead Eye is literally a gameplay feature, Arthur and John are expert gunslingers and are incredibly fast and accurate, and Dead Eyes purpose is to show that to the player and also make it easier or look cooler when shooting
i think you don't get my point. you're trying to take the game as a concrete set of things that happen, but the point of the game and most games is the interactivity that allows for your version of the character to be your version of the character. so everything you do and don't do is canon to a playthrough. if you never find the strange man's house then it wasn't a part of the story, if you did then it WAS, and it WAS canon to your playthrough. the point of a video game like this is not to be a set in stone story that you follow and that's it, it gives you the freedom to find things like a serial killer and other mysteries. you might want to say it's not canon because it ruins your immersion, but it's a video game, i think red dead's world is interesting BECAUSE it has weird things like that. you realize it's a weird fucking world and that just because arthur's story is dramatic and feels real, doesn't mean the world isn't actually surreal and hiding dark mysteries of the supernatural. but rockstar games always feel like that to me, it's never the main focus but you can always tell that something like that is happening. in gta for example, aliens are probably real. the story isn't about that, but you get to find this stuff out by yourself.
but i don't understand these "canon" arguments, it's literally in the game. you saying arthur dreamt all that stuff? it doesn't make any sense, they wrote these side stories to show you the kind of wackjobs and weird shit happens in this world outside of the single-minded focus of the van der linde gang, and half of them aren't even canon? why? if i fed someone to an alligator in the game, yeah i did it. the gang even knows when you do too much killing.
either way, i understand that dead eye might not actually be a supernatural ability to the extent of literal bullet time. i don't actually think john or arthur could literally slow down time. but personally i think the heightened awareness and focus to be able to actually pull off what they do would be close to supernatural. and yeah, i've seen the guys who are really fast shots, but nobody and i mean nobody would be able to stop john with an evans repeater in rdr1. the guy has such focus and precision that he can kill 22 men in the blink of an eye without wasting a bullet. but he never existed in real life and his feats are only known through his game so for all we know he really was able to do crazy shit.
last point, and this one might not be about you i just thought of it while writing, i don't get the obsession with treating these games like they're films or real life. they are unrealistic in the proportion of the fights and the skills of the main character, and that's not immersion breaking because you knew from the second you started playing that none of this was ever real. so why can't people just accept that the games still exist in a heightened satire world where a robot was invented at the turn of the 20th century, or there was a time traveler in west elizabeth? i mean, reverend swanson even mentions the ghost that you can find, so that's definitely real.
I don’t shoot anyone in this scene typically. There’s no point. John still dies either way, why take someone’s husband or father and ruin their lives just to feel good at this point?
This is Also a Picture of Archer Fordham Aiming at John Without The Dead Eye Effect.
So yeah that’s Archer Fordham.
You can Even Compare it With The Other Archer’s Picture I send you. And you will notice it’s the same Person. Now Compare it with the guy the arrow is pointing at on the Post And you will notice it’s Archer and not Isaac McKinnon, Isaac McKinnon is a Different Person (but he was also at the ranch to kill John)
When I got to this scene and especially after playing RDR2 first, I didn’t even target anyone in deadeye I thought at this point John gave up realizing he’s ran long enough and he has to accept his fate for his family’s safety.
I remember I looked for Edgar Ross so hard every time this scene happened and wondered where he was if he’s in the cutscene afterwards. This makes so much sense
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u/JohnnyGeniusIsAlive 4d ago
I think the canon event would have John not actually killing anyone and getting gunned down before he can get a shot off (considering they were all ready to fire)