Unfortuantely this is where Rockstar always runs into a problem, the jarring difference between what's possible for the character in the game and what the story suggests you can do. Now personally I killed around 30 US Marshalls in a single go around playing through the game, and the story missions routinely pit you against large numbers of enemies, so it's entirely plausible that he could take on an armed federal compound. Secondly, they aren't really in a compound as I recall (it's been a while though) just some safe house in the middle of no-where with maybe 3 or 4 guards. Attack at night, and he could kill them all before they know what's happening.remnant_phoenix said:So he extracts the info and kills all three of them. Then he goes to the federal compound where his family is being held, killing anyone and everyone that tries try to stop him? One man against multiple trained federal personnel? Yeah, that makes sense.Enkidu88 said:Now I never bought that explanation. At one point he has all three of the people responsible for his family's kidnapping in arms reach. There was clearly a third option here: Beat the fuck out of them until they tell you where the family is, and given Marston's actions throughout the game this doesn't seem like a leap. This is also the late 19th century, where the fastest form of communication is the Telegraph, meaning that the bad guy can't have a "kill the family if I don't call every fifteen minutes" cop out like other modern stories. There was absolutely no reason Marston couldn't "extract" the information from the kidnapper, and his failure to do so just makes him look like a pansy.remnant_phoenix said:Do me a favor.ConjurerOfChaos said:And that was his mention of Red Dead Redemption.
The main character of that game was a mentally five-year old, unlikeable, irresponsible, egocentric sociopathic fuckwit. I could have enjoyed the game, had not John F. Marston messed it all up with his whining and bitching, paired with an almost aggressively stupid ignorance of the misery of the people around him because he was so sunken in his own (uninteresting) fate.
Set aside any possible biases or assumptions and try to imagine yourself in John Marston's situation:
You ran for years as an outlaw, but then you realized that that wasn't the life you wanted live, so you left the life and tried to live peacefully with your wife and son. Then, the government kidnaps your family and holds them hostage, saying that they'll give your family back and excuse your crimes if you hunt down some of your old gang members. You now have two options: 1) Turn yourself in and pay the consequences for your crimes, as well as abandon your family to an unknown fate. 2) Tow the line and do the fed's *****-work, as well as doing any number of other people's *****-work along the way to get to your ultimate goal: give the government what they want so you can have your family back and live the peaceful life.
This is the 19th century, I remind you, and incredibly easy to drop of the grid (since in effect there is no grid). Much of Canada, Mexico and even the Northwestern United States were still sparsely populated or even uninhabited in some places. Worst comes to worse he could pick a direction and live in the woods somewhere.But let's just say that he does. He goes all Rambo on the facility and busts his family out. Then what? Where could he possibly go that he and his family could live peacefully without being hounded by the feds? No where, that's where.
Marston could have always have offered to "disappear" his former comrades, just tell them look, you go off and enjoy the Mexican sun for a while, and in a few years after I have my family back, go wild. He never even tried to negotiate with people he'd spent years with, people he called his friends, he just immediately starts gunning them down.The way he went about it in the story was the only reasonable and plausible way that he could give his family a peaceful life. And that's the key. IF he lowered himself to the place of "torturer" on those greasy agents and extracted the info, and IF he could defy all odds and bust them out a secured federal compound, he could get them back, sure, but then what? He'd be forcing his wife and son to go on the lamb with him as he is now considered a highly dangerous fugitive.
Secondly, Marston's plan was to live on a farm with his family. A 19th century farm, one of the most difficult lifestyles one could have back then, going on the lamb into a relatively unexplored area of the world would not have been significantly harder than that and might have even been easier depending on where he goes.
The rest of this is going to be spoilered.
I'm glad you bring up going on the lamb though, because this is exactly what Marston should have done when he got back his wife and kid. Ross, the guy who abducted his family, repeatedly shows himself to be ready to betray anyone and everything in the pursuit of his goals and ambitions. Marston's choice to stay on his farm, where Ross knows he is, is illogical and stupid. His complete inability to see the betrayal of Ross makes his character look short sighted and stupid. I mean yeah, it looks good and heroic, for him to go down in a gunfight. Actually, I think Marston being killed after being on the lamb several years would have made the ending far more poignant. That in the end, he couldn't out run his past.
I'm not necessarily saying it's badly written, it'd be good on paper is more what I'm saying. I, too, am a writer and can see what they're going for, but when compared to the overall plot points, combined with the mechanics of the game, the character of Marston starts to unravel a bit. He was a thief and a murderer, a profession you don't typically survive for as long as Marston did, without being both cunning and intelligent, yet his actions throughout the story don't suggest intelligence nor cunning. He loved his family, and yet didn't have the forethought to consider that a double-crossing federal agent (who was already guilty of kidnapping his family) might just threaten them in the future. It was just in the finer details that the story began to crumble.Ultimately, he wasn't looking to "deal justice" to the manipulative feds, he was looking for a second chance, a...what's the word? Ah yes, a "redemption."
Like I told ConjurerOfChaos, if you don't like the story or the character, that's fine, if you're going to argue that the story or the character are badly written, I'll go to the mat as long as it takes.
Like I said, I'm not saying this is by any means the worst story ever written or anything, it was competently done. The mistakes I've listed are all common mistakes that writers can fall victim to, I've made such mistakes myself. However, there is plenty of criticism that can be leveled against the story and the character with good reason.