Might as well start with a very clear warning on that one, Zach.
*** SEVERE SPOILER ALERT***
I just finished playing through the single player campaign of Red Dead Revolver (Xbox 360), and I'm man enough to say I wept.
Which is admittedly a strange thing to do in a game that is all about being a man. I held my mouth with one hand, battling with a weird shame inside of my mind, as John Marston fell on his knees, riddled with bullets from federal agents and army men, a dead man looking at his executioners.
Fact is, real men don't cry, or so it is believed. The whole game is indeed about masculine identity and men struggling to find their own, so I guess I'm in the crux of it. During his lengthy travels, Marston meets a few men lost in their own struggle for masculinity. Abraham Reyes hides his manly desires behind his role as a rebel-leader doubled as an artist. Bill Williamson finally found a band of thieves stupider than he is so they can be scared of him, which was not the case in his old days with the gang, where he was the omega male, as recalled by Abigail Marston.
The father figure, Dutch, (note the character model which sports a fatherly mustache, and the fact that the protagonist cannot, in the end, commit patricide), lost his way, leaving little for John to become when his time comes to play father. And that's when the game becomes really fascinating.
The last few missions of the game, which we could rightfully call the end-game, are game-mechanics-wise barely rehashes of things we did earlier (cattle herding, hunting) and are far from the climax one could expect from a Rockstar game. What happens then is that John Marston comes back home to find a family to rebuild. His son, Jack, still resents him for missing all this time, and John finds himself in need of becoming a father figure.
That is, you, the player, you have to come to terms with the player you've been, the choices you've made. Were you an ass all this time, or did you really bought into the redemption thing? I did the latter, being charmed by the polite protagonist and feeling compelled to do right instead of wrong (of course I did tie up a few damsels to put them on the railroad, but old habits die hard, isn't that what they say?).
During those last missions I experienced all kinds of emotions, from the frustration of trying to teach an ungrateful son (he doesn't understand all I've been through just to meet him in that game!), coming to terms with the fact that this son probably won't be the rancher Marston seems to want him to be, to the joy of seeing that same son finally enjoy the things his father does for a living.
Becoming an icon of masculinity for a virtual son is a troubling experience, I found. Because this game, more than any other, made me feel manly; tending to the herd, hunting at night, skinning animals and such are all awesome tough-man things I never had the opportunity to try in my real, dull urban life. A healthy father and son relationship, at least in my opinion, comes to fruition through the passage of knowledge, the father helping the son come of age. In just a few missions, the game managed to make it feel as if such a thing was slowly happening between John and Jack. And then it all goes to hell.
The death of John Marston works because of that build up. Because the player didn't get to see the family until the end-game, because the family was the reward, the last few missions offered the simple life you fought for all along. When it's taken away so suddenly, you have to ask yourself, in the short time you spent with your family, were you a good man, a good husband, a good father? Did redemption work out in the end?
Ultimately, the game puts you in the shoes of Jack Marston. I stopped playing at that very moment. I was planning to go for 100% completion, just for gamerscore's sake, but I won't be doing that, at least not now.
I decided not to, because it puts me, in proxy, in my own life, as a man struggling to fill his father's shoes, and those are large shoes, both in my life and in-game.
I know these are personal considerations, and that the game maybe didn't hit as close to home in your case. But I feel this game is truly one of the best mature gaming experiences I have had thus far with video games. Probably some gamers will find this end-game disappointing, or just won't feel it's as important as I saw it, and that's fine with me. Not everybody will have his or her interest piqued by a father/son thing. But the fact that a game can touch a mature subject (that is not ultra-violence or sex), in that case fatherhood, with such finesse, goes to great length in convincing me that the medium is indeed growing up. Maybe someday soon it will be ready to fill in the shoes of its narrative fathers.
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