(Emma G. Schaible / Fourth Estate)
More than a game, “Red Dead Redemption II” breathes life into forgotten pasts
BY JUMMANA ALZAHRANI, STAFF WRITER
In the aftermath of the 2024 election, I’ve been thinking a lot about this country’s history. Specifically, who gets to tell it and what parts are allowed to be remembered.
We have seen a disturbing trend where elected officials are seeking to erase the past, banning books and sanitizing curricula that discuss the uncomfortable reality of racism and colonialism. In this climate, where history is being strategically whitewashed, I find myself turning to an unexpected source of truth-telling: the video game “Red Dead Redemption II.”
While politicians attempt to bury the past, consumer media and video games like “Red Dead Redemption 2” force players to confront the very injustices that others are trying so hard to forget.
By placing you in the worn boots of Arthur Morgan, an outlaw, the game forces you to experience the dying American frontier. Players ride with Rains Fall, a Native elder from the Wapiti tribe, as he mourns the theft of his people’s land and evades the government agents who come to take what little remains.
You witness the brutal consequences of policies like the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to break up tribal lands and force assimilation.
These are all ideas that our leaders today would rather we never learn about. The game makes direct references to real systematic policies of cultural genocide. Rockstar Games, the company behind “Red Dead Redemption II,” goes as far as to have a character say, “all the young have been taken from our Reservation, shipped off to reform schools. Many women too.”
When playing the game, you might stumble upon a Ku Klux Klan rally in the woods — their clumsy bigotry a stark reminder that hate groups are a real and present terror. You can clash with the Lemoyne Raiders, ex-Confederates who cling to a lost, violent cause.
By making you a witness to the racism in the 19th century, the game does something crucial; it normalizes the reality of resistance. It gives you, the player, the agency to intervene, to disrupt a cross-burning or to stand up to a gang of racial purists.
In a world that often tells us to look the other way, the game reminds us that confronting injustice is the only moral choice.
This is why we need media like “Red Dead Redemption II” now more than ever. When official channels of education are censored, our stories must become our textbooks.
Games, movies and literature have the power to foster empathy in a way that a politician’s words and a broken curriculum never can. Stories don’t just tell us what happened, they make us feel the weight of it.
“Red Dead Redemption II” understands that we cannot solve present problems by ignoring past truths. The racial tensions, political corruption and cultural conflicts of 1899 are not relics of the past. They are the same struggles that keep resurfacing in our current society.
When we interact with characters like Charles, a biracial man constantly navigating prejudice, or when we witness the systematic destruction of the Wapiti tribe’s way of life, we are not only observing history but also the ongoing struggles for identity, land and justice.
For students at George Mason, a school that prides itself on diversity and proximity to the US capital, this history is essential. In a time when truth is often contested, we need more stories that encourage us to question what has been buried.
