As someone inveterately tepid on GTA 5, I was shocked by how much I loved Red Dead Redemption 2 when it finally hit PC five years ago. But how could I not? Arthur Morgan is a triumph of a character: Nuanced and heartfelt and clearly written with a great deal of love, and voiced perfectly by his actor Roger Clark.
Who, it turns out, is still very happy to sit down and chat about RDR 2. In a recent interview with Gamology, Clark responded to a bunch of fan questions about his time on the game, including what it was like to do mocap (very involved, sounds like) and if he’d ever play Arthur in a live-action adaptation (“Danny Devito or we riot,” says Clark).
But most interesting to me are his answers to two other questions. Namely, if there was a scene in the game he struggled with and whether he would change anything about the game’s story or his own performance. His answer to the first prompted him to talk about RDR 2’s endings—spoilers ahead, naturally—and specifically, which one he considered his own personal “canon.”
“There’s a high and low-honour version of going to help John, and there’s a high and low-honour version of going back for the money,” Clark says, describing each of the game’s possible endings. “I never see much point of going back for the money, you know, Arthur’s days are numbered. What’s money gonna do [for] him anyway? You might as well help John.”
Which is completely true. By that point in the game, poor Arthur is absolutely riddled with terminal tuberculosis and, even if he wasn’t, has had his heart and worldview irrevocably shattered anyway. Life doesn’t have much left for him at that point, and it’s difficult to see what he’d get out of returning to the gang’s camp to try to loot its fortune.
“So I think going back to help John, with high honour, for me is my canon ending.” Mine too. In fact, I’ve never played the game on a low-honour run. It just wouldn’t feel right for Arthur.
The thing he would change, meanwhile, is how he said Colm O’Driscoll’s name. Clark is an Irish-American actor, and he’s fully aware that the proper pronunciation of Colm sounds more like “Column” than “Comb,” but Rockstar insisted Clark pronounce it the latter, incorrect way while voicing Arthur (after all, the character wouldn’t have much reason to know the proper pronunciation of Irish names).
“The only thing I regret is saying Colm O’Driscoll incorrectly. Rockstar made me say it wrong. I told them it was wrong. They didn’t care,” says Clark. In fact, the Gamology video even shows off a scene from the gang’s camp—which I’ve never encountered—of Irish character Sean Macguire aggressively correcting Kieran’s pronunciation of the name. He clearly never told Arthur (or, just as likely, he did and Arthur didn’t care).
Oh, and yes, someone asked the obvious question. “A lot of people ask me, ‘Well what’s [RDR 3] gonna be?'” said Clark, “Well, I have no idea. And even if I did, I would tell you that I have no idea.” With Rockstar focused on GTA 6 right now, I’m gonna guess we’re all gonna have no idea for the foreseeable future.
