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.
