Red Dead Redemption 2 Hidden Tragedy Will Break Your Heart

Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the mostly richly detailed games in history, putting together a game world that's as gritty and realistic as it is emotionally tumultuous to play through as Arthur Morgan.

If you somehow haven't played it yet, then this article will go on to discuss a pretty major story spoiler, so if you don't want to have a big part of the narrative explained, then it might be best to stop here.

The death of the Wild West was a famously tough time and location to live in, and it created some even tougher people, many of whom feature in the second Red Dead Redemption game.

Arthur Morgan might be the toughest of them all, and we have the pleasure of playing the game as him, a story that really lets us explore the depth of the man and his character.

As such, it's particularly tragic when it emerges that he has contracted Tuberculosis (during one of the game's missions), which is essentially a death sentence at that point. As part of that storytelling, Rockstar included a heartbreaking detail that you could easily miss, but really hits home once you know about it.

Arthur's Writings and Drawings Worsen With His Illness

Rockstar Games

Over on Reddit, one user asked the community to drop some random Red Dead trivia, and a response pointed out a genuinely upsetting detail about Arthur's writings and illustrations in the game.

"Arthur's drawing and handwriting gets worse as the TB gets worse," the response points out.

As another user points out, that's not the only reason that his drawings might change as you play through the game, saying: "Arthur's journal drawings actually change based your gameplay as well. If your Honor is high, his sketches are cleaner, more detailed.

"Low Honour Arthur drawings are messier, darker, and have more aggressive lines, like he hates that he's even drawing."

But even that isn't the final layer of detail to the drawing system, as a third comment explains: "The animals also get more detail in the drawings if you've observed them through the binoculars, rather than just shot and skinned them."

With the hype around GTA VI at an all time high, it will be interesting to see if Rockstar has been able to replicate the sheer amount of detail in their seven year old Western epic. If they have, I personally can't wait to start exploring.