Trailer #2 Revisited: The Secret Gameplay Trailer

[Cuzzzin]

The second Red Dead 2 trailer occupies sort of a weird space in the journey of this game. Trailer #1 has the initial excitement of the announcement then a long drought of information that formally ended with Trailer #3 when we finally started learning things about the game. There was also some frustration with the second trailer as it carried with it what seemed like an inevitable delay while only providing a very brief introduction to the game's main character. 

 

After all, Trailer #2 was the sort of trailer that we're used to from Rockstar, heavy on getting impressions around tone and story, but light on gameplay. At the time, the game just seemed like a collection of cut scenes, but in retrospect, it seems to be showing a lot more...

 

A common trend of what we see in the trailer is debt collection. It's pretty likely that Strauss--the gang's accountant who also lends money out--will provide a string of missions centered around debt collection. 

 

We see in trailer #2, two concrete instances of Arthur Morgan collecting money and one probable one. There is the opening scene of him greeting the guy at a camp and him demanding money from someone else. I'd argue that the young man whose mother is mourning is most likely also being asked to return money. My guess is that "black" is actually being used as a pun in this case. Keeping her in black could mean keeping her mourning, but it could also mean keeping her out of debt as black ink was traditionally used by bankers to denote profit or income in bookkeeping. The young man can keep her in black regardless depending on if he pays Morgan, but it's his choice for how to take it. 

 

Now knowing about the interaction system that the game is going to have, it makes the second trailer seem more than just some randomly spliced together cut scenes. It's actually showing off the new gameplay element of dialogue/interaction choices and their scope.

 

Arthur is mostly  friendly with the first person he's collecting debt from with a tinge of threat

He's actively being threatening to the young man, but in a way that is subtle

He's finally just violently shaking someone else and demanding money

 

If these are actually character chosen interactions which seems likely at this point, it's also the best illustration of how Rockstar is moving further away from more binary GOOD or BAD interactions like in Mass Effect or Bioshock. Arthur is a threatening outlaw trying to hustle money from people regardless of the three approaches, but there is still nuance in how he gets that job done. 

 

It's also possible that the debt collections just have prescribed cutscenes with no character choice, but it will be cool if it turns out that Rockstar had snuck in their biggest gameplay change since GTA III without people noticing.