• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.59-72
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• 2020

Video games have become a powerful tool to tell a complex story realistically thanks to modern technology. Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), is a video game title that touts cinematic qualities such as superb acting by the voice actors and jaw-dropping cinematography as well as a rich narrative following the protagonist, Arthur Morgan's quest for redemption. Using Aristotle's Poetics and Robert Mckee's Aristotelian theory on storytelling, this study highlights Arthur's gradual change from a ruthless gunman to an altruistic hero, from which it derives the theme of redemption, and his super-objective to protect those he cares about. Then, it also explains a variety of possibilities in the narrative of the game determined by the opened-ended game mechanics, particularly the "honor" system, which reflects Arthur's moral choices on the narrative presentation with different sets of dialogue and endings. However, the study ultimately argues Red Dead Redemption 2 to be incohesive in its storytelling due to "ludonarrative dissonance," a concept coined by Clint Hocking, which indicates a conflict between the narrative and game mechanics of a video game. It's mainly because the game's various narrative choices bring changes to neither the theme nor Arthur's super-objective. Furthermore, the double-standard of evaluation in the "honor" system, and its numeric ranking system of honor also lend themselves to ludonarrative dissonance even further. After all, the study ultimately claims ludonarrative dissonance in Red Dead Redemption essentially disrupts the game's narrative unity, which is Aristotle's one of most emphasized upon traits of any story and signifies the game's instability as a storytelling medium.