- Father, Brother, Sister, God , Time Lord, Wizard, all of them.
- Alternatively, he's the husband of the woman he mentions at the start.
Red Harlow and Jack Swift may have lived in the same universe as Redemption, but the events of Revolver may have been greatly exaggerated. The story of Red's revenge may have spread over the couple of decades between games and gotten more and more outrageous with each telling until is was written into a Very Loosely Based on a True Story book. This could explain some of the wackier stuff from Revolver, which doesn't fit in with the more realistic Redemption.
- Word of God proves it, in the game Jack Marston is reading a book with a plot very similiar to Red Dead Revolver.
The player character turns out to be Uncle from RDR. Uncle's age is never disclosed, and John remarks at one point that Uncle has been old for as long as he can remember. It's not impossible for him to be old enough.
The game will be set somewhere near the front lines, and protagonist will be able to do missions for both factions and play them against each other. Eventually the player must pick a side which will affect the ending.
- Semi-jossed: Red Dead Redemption II is a prequel, but it takes place years earlier with Arthur Morgan as the protagonist.
Each has the ability to use Dead Eye targeting (presumably Landon can since he teaches level 3 Dead Eye to John). Dead Eye could be another form of Eagle Vision. This makes Jack an Assassin too. Taking this WMG one step further, Edgar Ross and the Federal Bureau are probably all Templars.
The pre-order Assassin's Outfit certainly doesn't hurt the theory.
- An expansion on that theory: Dutch's gang was a radical splinter faction of the Assassins until he went crazy.
- Another expansion, the Aztec Mask in Undead Nightmare is a Piece Of Eden, albeit one the Templars never bothered searching for, because it has no practical use.
- No wonder they can't swim.
...Revolver Ocelot in Valhalla, living out his favourite fantasy for all eternity.
- Nah, if anyone is Ocelot in this universe, it got to be Landon Ricketts. Just look at that hair and that mustache...
- Who better to represent Ocelot's idealised self-image as a badass peacekeeper of unbeatable gunfighty prowess than himself, while his soul takes a break from Magnificent Bastardry to try out being a easily misled Unwitting Pawn living on the knife's edge?
- Impossible for both, Ocelot would never be happy unless he's betraying someone.
- You can betray many someones. Think about it. After just about every random chance to help someone, you can kill them and loot their corpse, or tie them up and leave them there, or so much more.
- Dead eye is John's version of Wolverine's enhanced senses
- Don't forget John's other superpowers. He has infinite stamina (can sprint forever), low-grade super strength (he can knock out most people with only a handful of punches, and he can aim and reload a cannon all by himself), and resistance to foreign substances (he recovers from a snake bit in a few seconds, and becomes sober only a minute or two after being completely wasted).
We know it's a book that Jack Marston reads, but there are signs that it could have really happened in New Austin:
Twin Rocks is a location in both games, and the two look quite similar (there's even a dry riverbed in Redemption where a stream was in Revolver). Brimstone looks pretty similar to Armadillo (even the saloon is nigh-identical), Rogue Canyon could be an exaggerated Pike's Basin. 'Ghost Town' could be Tumbleweed when it still had a few residents. Bear Mountain is problematic (the outside looks like Tall Trees, while the mine area looks like Gaptooth), as are Governor Griffon's mansion (Tumbleweed mansion? Somewhere in Blackwater?) and Annie's ranch (Warthington's? Critchley's? Maybe even Beecher's Hope).
Revolver is so exaggerated and unrealistic compared to Redemption because a) all dime novels took liberties with the truth (Billy the Kid, Jesse James...) and b) Jack Swift's sections, at least (y'know, the ones with the teleportation) would have been second-hand from the start due to him dying in the final mission and being unable to tell anyone besides Red, Annie and the barmaids in the saloon (at which point he was drunk).
Yes, I did just buy the Legends and Killers DLC and watch a playthrough of Revolver. Why do you ask?
- Red Dead Depression
Pretty straightforward, really. A young, healthy man, good with a gun, the war brewing over in Europe. America will get involved eventually, and his services will be drafted, possibly by the FIB (See my next theory below) to do their dirty work in Europe, as they wont care if he lives or dies, his death tying a neat bow on the whole Marston business.
- That, or they could send him over the border into Mexico, as it would allow them more control over him (and more ability to use his familiarity with the frontier than the trenches of the Western Fronts or even the deserts of the Middle East) and it's not like the Germans were not dangerously powerful in Mexico (due to their alliance with the Mexican regime of the time).
There's no real evidence to support this, besides it being by the same developer using the same engine, but for some reason I just like to believe this is true. Both games share similar themes of confronting a criminal past and dealing with shadowy government agencies, in a crapsack world with black and grey morality. In further GTA instalments, I'd love to see little hints that this is true, maybe a history show on the TV about the turbulent old west, it's heroes and villains (Marston a villain, Ross a Hero...)
- Both feature the Captain Ersatz versions of real life locations and a dark nihilistic tone.
- But West Dickens refers to Manhattan at one point. One would think if the universe was the same, he'd have mentioned Liberty City instead.
- Not to mention an entire side quest named "California", all about a man trying to reach California (not San Andreas).
- Maybe California is made up of North California and Oregon, while San Andreas is made up of the southern parts of California and Nevada.
- New York was once called New Amsterdam. Place names change.
- If it is, i like to present the possibility that Irish is an ancestor of the Mc Reary's.
- I think it would be hilarious if in GTA V you can see a movie trailer for "John Marston: Zombie Hunter", where the west's most infamous outlaw has to fight hordes of zombies to save his family. And of course, John is a clean cut all-American guy with an AK-47 and a rapping black sidekick.
- Possibly confirmed by an Easter Egg in GTA V, where a book titled Red Dead by J. Marston appears.
Think about it there's a plague raising the dead and infecting people including Abigail Marston, maybe John is one of the zombies! Also, even though he doen't look like a zombie it could be because he hasn't seen himself in a mirror, or he's just really well embalmed, or a ghost, etc.
- Jossed, i'm afraid. John is the playable character in the DLC, as it represents an alternate continuity from the start of the game.
- Of course, this doesn't exactly preclude the possibility of him being infected and possibly even put down by Jack in a mirror of the epilogue in Vanilla.
- That first part is true. The epilogue does a Time Skip to after the end of John's story from the main game, then he pops out of his grave, with the intent to "finish his business on this earth." This troper hasn't played long enough to figure out what that means.
- Jossed, i'm afraid. John is the playable character in the DLC, as it represents an alternate continuity from the start of the game.
The Cougar Men, the Donkey Ladies, the flying bird people, we think they're all hilarious glitches but they're not. Instead they're intentional nods that something very strange is going on the old west, something that will come to a head in the Undead Nightmare Pack
Why? Because there's no FBI to betray him anymore and its not like any zombie is going to permanently put him down. Also, he freaking deserves a happy ending for once.
- Four words: He Knows Too Much.
- Jossed: He still gets killed by Ross after he cures everyone.
- He does return as a zombie, however.
Think about how the average player would act in regards to the Homestead epilogue, after the false Everybody Lives Happily Ever After (TM) ending. Would they live on the ranch until the end of there days teaching Jack and doing mundane chores after having experienced the adventure the rest of the world has to offer? What choice did you make: to continue herding animals or to hunt down the train robbers?
In short, Marston- as epitomized by the Player- CANNOT just stay on the ranch forever, no matter how much he may love and care for his family, just as he would have eventually roamed around on his own sooner or later if the BOI didn't step in and create a reason for him to do it sooner. Eventually, he will return to his old life simply because he cannot NOT do so. And when he does, there is a fair chance that he will do something unbelievably damaging or in general illegal, particularly with World War I and troubles from across the border looming on the horizon. Ross- probably having made a study of the Marstons- knew this, and it just added the final nail(s) to the coffin of his decision on what to do with John.
He is always helping strangers out of his own good (Er, depending on how you play I suppose), and usually finishes a stranger mission start with "I'll see what I can do." Plus he has the government out on his butt to do favors for him.
He appears randomly, and in the strangest places. He orders Marston to do morally amibiguous deeds. He never dissaproves of his behaviors, and he is invulnerable.
- Correction: The strange man can be killed in one of the first two encounters by just drawing your gun and shooting him. In fact, in the first encounter, doing this will cause John to shout "I don't believe you!"
Is because he spent so much time talking to corpses. They probably appreciated that. Or it's just that he's not that appetising, since he's skinny and stinks worse than they do.
- Or he could smell like corpse after being around them.
Is actually a book Jack Marston is writing. He writes of his father's exploits before he goes off to deal with Ross. This is why after you finish that last thing, there's no more missions for him. Same for Undead Nightmare. All that are just stories Jack is telling us. (and the zombie thing is his attempt at writing a horror novel set in the Wild West. Of course, it begs the question as to why he used his own family and zombie-fied himself rather than making up a family.)
- This actually makes a lot of sense (although it doesn't explain Jack being able to use dead eye) and explains John's dead eye ability, it's a fantastic exaggeration of his sharpshooting prowess and a literary device by Jack to make his father more heroic. it also explains the missions which are chapters in the book while stranger quests are sub plots that are continued throughout the story, hence the mentions of large timeskips between them. This explains Jack's mission to kill Ross not being an actual mission, because it's really happening and isn't a part of the story. Also, Jack could have gotten many of the games events from his father's journal, passed on to him.
- You've already explained how Jack would know Dead Eye. He read it in his father's journal and incorporated it into his story.
- You could even take it a step further, and say that the John's death, and Jack's revenge are merely Jack adding a twist to really make his story powerful to the reader.
- Makes you wish even more now for a DLC with an alternate ending, huh?
- I will now take it as canon and pretend I'm playing out the story Jack wrote.
- As to why Jack would zombie-fy his own family? Maybe he was using an original, different family that was similar to his own. In our games, however, we have the Marstons as that is the family we're familiar with.
Ross, despite his abrasive attitude towards John, didn't kill him even when he had the perfect opportunity and cover story (John died killing Dutch). Knowing the feeling of being forced by the government to do their dirty work, he gave John a few, brief months of peace and comfort with his family before Ross carried out his standing orders to kill him.
- Makes sense , he didn't seem to take pleasure in killing John.
- I dunno, Ross seemed pretty damned satisfied that John was killed. If R* wanted to show him as not taking pleasure, they would have had him do something like look away/look down or at the very least have a very regretful look on his face. And this is if John absolutely had to die and there was no other way out. Ross is shown very clearly lighting up his cigar with a smug grin on his face.
- If anything, Ross would have emphasized with John after having him killed. By the time Jack catches up with him in "Remember My Family", he's tried time and time again to retire and spend his remaining years with his family, but the government keeps pulling him back in for work. Perhaps under his snide "He killed himself with the life he lived" exterior, Ross realized the similarities between his situation and what he put John through, and maybe even emphasized with him after the fact. He does threaten to kill Jack as well, but to be fair, by that point in the conversation it's pretty clear that Jack is there to put a bullet (or 16) in his head.
- Perhaps he was genuine about leaving John and his family be, even if he himself didn't like the guy. Again, if he really wanted him dead, why not kill him after Dutch's death? My thinking is, the man who signed John's death warrant wasn't Ross, but Governer Nate Johns, who was set on eliminating the west's outlaws... all of them. When Gov. Johns got word that one of the outlaws was still alive, he ordered him killed, and knowing that John would be a very dangerous foe, sent the Army. As for Ross, he was willing to let John be and move on to "somebody else to annoy", and even if he'd never admit it, he may have realized that John was truly reformed and therefore harmless. But when Gov. Johns brought the hammer down (and maybe even raked Ross's ass over the coals for sparing John), he wasn't opposed to it, as again, the idea of a former outlaw like John getting off scott free disgusted him. In the end, this makes Jack's murder of Ross and rejection of everything his father wanted him to be even more tragic. Ross may have been completely unapologetic and of the mindset that John had it coming, but he wasn't really the mastermind of John's death. All Jack did was murder Gov. Johns' toy soldier.
The May Incatec gods punish Abraham Reyes for his desecration of their temple by slowly driving him mad, and his growing paranoia turns him into a tyrant by 1914.
Overjoyed to have her father back, Bonnie acquires a new zest for life, gets married, and lives happily ever after.
Harold MacDougal's mind is unable to reconcile his memories of the zombie plague with his knowledge of science. He eventually cracks and assaults a fellow scholar at Yale.
Irish was so freaked out by the zombie plague that he commits suicide in an outhouse in Thieves' Landing.
Greatly disturbed by the zombie plague, Landon Ricketts throws away his guns, renounces violence, and becomes a farmer. Now that he's no longer getting into fights, he lives long enough to pass away peacefully in his sleep.
A zombie plague turns out to be the last straw for Marshal Johnson. He finally says "enough is enough" and retires.
Edgar Ross knows John was involved with the zombie plague somehow and uses this as a pretext for invading Beecher's Hope with the Army and murdering John Marston.
In 1914 Seth steals the May Incatec mask and claims it as the "treasure" he sought for so many years. He becomes the Zombie Lord and sparks a new zombie plague, which cause the May Incatec gods to resurrect John Marston as their Undead Avenger to put down the new plague.
- Not bad, except... When John is zombified, only his grave is visible. It's shown very clearly that he and Uncle died in 1911.
- John and Uncle did die in 1911. According to this theory, the events of Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare both take place within one year. If we assume several months pass between "The Outlaw's Return" and "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed", that leaves ample time for the events of Undead Nightmare to take place. So shortly after John Marston put down the zombie plague, Ross and the US Army invade Beecher's Hope and John and Uncle are killed.
- Also, the idea that everybody comes back to life "even if their heads were blown off" is ridiculous even by Undead Nightmare standards. With Abigail and Jack as examples, the only possible survivors of the undead plauge are people who either aren't bitten or haven't been killed. The reanimated dead die again. And if you get killed while infected, well sorry, you aren't magically going to regrow your head once the mask is put back.
- It's a zombie plague created by May Incatec gods. It is the very definition of A Wizard Did It. I don't see how you can accept a cursed mask turning people into walking corpses but not that same cursed mask resurrecting people from the dead.
- Well I'm under the assumption that since Abigail and Jack were still tied up, it isn't a "poof back to normal" kind of Deus ex Machina. Instead, the infected people just turn back to normal, with unexplained bloodstains on their shirts. If you got killed while infected...you aren't going to come back to life. You stay dead. The mask only had the power to reanimate the dead, not actually bring them back to life. What I'm trying to say is that there's a difference between the undead and the infected in the game. At least, that's how I see it.
- Well, I'm not under that assumption. As far as I'm concerned, when magic is involved all bets are off.
- ...but not famous enough to avoid becoming a shelfwarmer
, apparently, according to his behavior in Toy Story 2.
- Adolescence.
- So would that in turn make the ending of Max Payne 2 a tragic twist by having Mona die and Max live? The ancestor with the troubled life gets redeemed in death; while his descendent suffers on despite his sacfrices.
- Except that Mona lives if you beat the game on the hardest difficulty.
- According to Max Payne 3, that ending isn't canon.
- But isn't Landon around the same age as Uncle? Red's tale took place only about what, 30 or so years prior? (If one fully considers the two games to be in the same universe).
- Except Landon in famous himself.
- His famous duels took place much later than Red Dead Revolver. It's possible that he wasn't able to settle into a quiet life.
- From the mouth of the old guy himself: "Abigail was any man's wife! And Jack, he was any man's son!" Plus, Adult Jack's facial feature looks strikingly similar to Dutch's (minus the age difference, of course) instead of John's. The only thing missing is this: Why would John then take Jack in as his own boy? Maybe Dutch liked John and told him "If anything happens to me, take care of my boy." Sure enough, Dutch goes insane and the gang breaks up. John, deciding to keep his promise, takes Jack.
- I think that John's only biological child was his deceased daughter, which means the Marston bloodline is obliterated. I didn't know it was possible to make the ending even -more- depressing.
While it's day when John gets betrayed, it cuts to night time when we see them again. Why did they wait that long before attempting to kill him? Plus, no matter what outfit John was wearing he will be back in his "starter" outfit which implies they changed his clothes for some reason. DeSanta clearly wanted to have some fun with him first.
- Think about it. The whole game, John is saying to himself, "I hope I wake up soon." What a nightmare." or "I must be dreaming." Thats why McDougal suddenly returns, Nastas is still alive (well sort of), and nobody mentions the freakin' zombie apocalypse when you play as Jack. At the beginning of the game, John listened to Jack tell a story about zombies. He went to bed with that on his mind and thus dreamed everything. Plus the title, Undead Nightmare.
- It is suggested by Red Dead Wiki that he was the same man who came to Blackwater and boarded the train with John Marston in the opening sequence.Archer mentions that 'there is always someone watching' regarding John's actions.
- This would make perfect sense why he casually told Jack about Ross's whereabouts,since traveling and monitoring John during the game gave him an idea of John being a man who desperately wants to leave his outlaw past behind him and who only wishes to redeem himself and be reunited with his family,thus he gained a level of compassion towards him and became sympathetic to Marston's cause.Giving the information about Ross to Jack knew he will 'settle' things the only way possible anyway
- Red Dead Redemption is the story of one of the earliest cycles that Roland took through the tower, assuming that the WMG that 19 corresponds to it being his 19th cycle through the tower is correct. This is very early on, and as he is being redeemed in part each time he progresses through the tower and gaining another piece of what he needs to finally be at peace. Well before the cycle looked anything like its current incarnation.
- I like to think that those things are just literary devices by Jack as he writes out the story of Red Dead Redemption. It wouldn't do well if the protagonist got capped off on Chapter Three, now would it?
- George Miller once said the same thing about his movies. By that logic it could be based on Mad Max...or Babe: Pig in the City.
Jack will become a bank-robber after getting back from WWI, and you play as a FBI agent trying to track him down through the Roarin' 20s and the Great Depression. Your exploits end up being dramatized into a series of books and movies that inspire a young Cole Phelps to become a police officer after the end of WWII.
- Or, Jack ends up running a criminal empire of underground bars and alcohol. However, he has a family and he is a fairly nice guy. And the game focuses on a blood feud between the Marstons and Edgar Ross's son and his family. And you have a choice of who to work for. As for the game world, it has several large cities, and miles of gangster riddled depression stricken wasteland between it. And horses return, along with 30's cars. Horses are slower, but they are more maneuverable, cost less, and can go off road. Cars are faster and protect the occupant.
- Confirmed, Red Dead Redemption II says hi, although John's daughter is still a no show.
- Mac Farlane's Ranch is probably still in operation, though keeps going partly as a tourist attraction and may be the site of the local county fair. Most other locations in New Austin are still there as quasi-backwater towns somewhat like Bakersfield or Fresno in California at worst or relatively important cities along the lines of various locations in in New Mexico and Arizona.
- Or they are reincarnations.
- Jossed.
, the sequel will be a riff on The Magnificent Seven- Jossed.
The rider will always complain about the hump hurting his, ehm, valuables because of the trepidation, and say that he'd rather ride a horse.- Jossed.
- A representation of the Maze.
- A cameo by the Man in Black or a reference to him by The Stranger.
- Non-playable characters that behave like excited, annoying tourists and cannot be killed.
- A blonde woman in a blue dress, dropping a milk can near a train station.
- A creepy kid in the middle of nowhere, asking you if you are lost.
