I mean, it's only temporarily, but john briefly abandoned his son and his son's mother because he refused to believe jack was his, and arthur makes references to it.
It is possible to abandon your horse by taking off the saddle and putting it on another horse, but it’s not a part of the storyline and it’s easily avoidable.
When other gang members die, their horses aren’t seen again. You can purchase some of their horses in the epilogue though, implying they were sold after their owner’s deaths.
During the later chapters you can encounter a man with a tent full of... inappropriate pictures of women, he also talks of how he was stalking a widow you can encounter in a side mission.
You can come across multiple scenes of NPCs and gang members arguing and occaisionally being physical with one another. Two main characters are in a very toxic relationship and are constantly verbally abusing eachother.
Yes, Dutch is horribly abusive to Molly and the phrase "you'll just believe whatever fantasy you're currently living in" or something to that effect is particularly unsettling. Micah is often sly and somewhat gaslighting in his attempts to cover up his own wrongdoings.
In a mission you have to complete to progress the story, you collect bounties for someone in your gang, and it doesn’t take long for you to figure out the guy in debt presumably abuses his son as while you search for the money you go into the son’s room (he gives you the money) and when you open the door the son screams something along the lines of “don’t hit me again!” (I don’t remember the exact quote as it caught me off guard). As you’re walking out you see the father again, and you have the ability to kill him. And if you choose to kill him you gain honour.
It can be found out that one of the members of your gang does heroin. The player can use cocaine gum, but this is far from graphic, as the player quickly puts it in their mouth, and the use is not required or forced upon the player.
It isn’t canon to the story, but if you choose to, you can abuse any animal you come across by hitting it. Also, there’s an NPC or two that hit their horses, and I know there to be one you can rescue by stealing it who takes a long time to calm because it’s so traumatized.
In addition to the animal death discussed under other questions, you're bound to encounter carcasses at random, including one of a horse in the second mission. Some of them will be graphically decomposed, frozen, or burnt.
Horses can become agitated, though I’m not sure if that qualifies as “sad.”
When hunting, it’s possible to wound an animal without immediately killing it. This sometimes results in the animal collapsing and dying slowly. The animal is clearly in distress and the scene can be pretty upsetting.
Rabbits are a basic wildlife spawn in most areas of the game. A character requests you hunt and kill them for food in the Chapter 2 mission "Exit, Pursued by a Bruised Ego". You will fail this mission if you scare away the rabbits. Dead rabbits have a "skinning" animation that is fully shown.
You can kill domestic cats you come across, and you can hunt wild large cats such as panthers and cougars. One side mission requires you to kill a lion.
It's heavily implied a character murdered a dog. The attack and the aftermath are not seen, but it is heavily implied by the dialogue and the fact that the dog is missing. Horses die, sometimes violently, and pets can be murdered by the player, optionally.
Not sure how there can be any yes votes, there are no dragons in the game (beyond potentially easter egg cryptids but I've not seen any sign anyone's even claimed to have seen one.)
They frequently appear in the southernmost areas of the game, namely in Lemoyne. This includes some mandatory encounters tied to the main story in Chapter 4 - Particularly in the missions "Country Pursuits", where (the characters are pursued by an aggressive bullgator that attacks a minor character), and "Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten". Additionally, one of the Legendary Animals needed to get certain pieces of gear and to 100% the game is an alligator. The encounters with basic wild alligator spawns can also be quite violent if you cannot escape them in time, but they only attack when you get close.
Most snake encounters consist of your horse spooking away from one, sometimes with the sound of a quiet hiss or rattle. A dot appears on your map, so they're easy to avoid. The snakes are also very difficult to see. They're flighty and will slither away. You may run into some snake bite victims as side encounters, and you can get bitten if you manage to step on the snakes, but it's rare.
There are bugs, and buzzing sounds, but Ive never come across any graphic details for the bugs. The most that I've seen and heard them are in the swampy areas of the game.
In a mission while Arthur and uncle take 3 women into town, Arthur looses one of the girls and upon finding her in a hotel room with a man saying “I will get what I paid for” implying that he had sexual intentions, Arthur beats up the man and brings the girl outside the girl says that he hit her but Arthur hit him a lot harder, this is not shown
There's a few special encounters where the player is drugged. Basically, if someone invites you into their house to eat and it's not a story mission, be cautious.
There is a very vague implication of the possibility of child abuse previously occurring off-screen when a parent is questioning a kidnapped child that has just been freed from his captors in the mission "Angelo Bronte, A Man of Honor", but the child himself denies it.
It probably happens more often, but the two most notable things I remember that happen in the main story are as follows (no spoilers):
1. In a drunken haze, Arthur drowns (I don't know if he kills) a guy by dunking his head and holding him in water behind a bar.
2. A character kidnaps a guy, takes him on a boat out into a swamp, drowns him by holding his head under the water, and then tosses him in.
Multiple instances of rape are implied to have occurred off-screen. There is also a missable interaction where the player character is sexually assaulted, and one of the other gang members talks about it.
I've only played the online counterpart and the first game, however there were some missions that required lasso'ing someone and hog tying them, I'm sure this game is no different.
The NPC encounter others are talking about occurs by a cabin in the swamp just north of Saint Denis slightly east of a river. A man will invite Arthur into the cabin. DO NOT go inside; you'll immediately lose control and Arthur will be knocked out. There is a brief, blurry scene of the man tormenting him, then heavy implications of sexual assault taking place afterward. Gang members will actually comment on it later. It's very unsettling.
Your characters grow facial hair and shave either themselves or can visit a barber to get a shave. No visuals of razors are shown.
Several characters and enemies use knives as weapons.
Towards the end of the game, the player character is diagnosed with Tuberculosis and is shown struggling to breathe as well as coughing up blood on multiple occasions.
There’s a scene where a characters dead body is seen riding on a horse and carrying its own head in its hands with the eyes gouged out. Heads explode if they get shot at with a shotgun or a sniper rifle. One person gets shot in the head in a cutscene and it’s quite graphic, even though it doesn’t explode. There’s a mission where you track down a serial killer that leaves dismembered bodies behind as clues.
You can find a stranger on his horse near-dead and take him to the doctor, and you can watch him get his injured limb amputated. You don't have to watch, though. The doctor tells you that you can leave.
If you fight an npc with only your fists you may knock them out instead of kill them. It's also possible to drink until your character blacks out and wakes up in the same spot hours later.
I’m sure there are more instances, but you can optionally play a minigame called five finger fillet where you stab a knife between your character’s fingers and if you press the wrong button, they stab their fingers and cut them instead.
There are multiple instances of torture. Your group keeps a member of a rival gang tied to a tree without food or water. The leader of that rival gang kidnaps your character and hangs him naked by his ankles as he threatens to castrate him. In the epilogue, one of your companions is captured and strung up over a fire without a shirt.
There are multiple occasions in which you can choose whether to save a character or let them die via falling. Sometimes you may not be successful in trying to save them. There are also random encounters where people fall, and at a waterfall there is a barrel with a woman's skeleton inside who was implied to have fallen to death.
You can overhear dialogue where an NPC tells another NPC that he saw "girls as young as twelve" in the local brothel. I do not know if this alludes to a side quest, or is just for atmosphere.
Major spoiler:
Arthur sacrifices himself at the end of chapter 6, holding off the Pinkertons so John can escape.
Charles also volunteers himself as a distraction for the others to escape after the Saint Denis bank job, though he survives.
I don't remember if the R word was used, but in numerous instances you see insults related to that word. It's used in reference to the main character when he's pretending to be a man named Fenton.
A child of one of your gang members is taken captive by a man and is used as incentive to do work for him. The child is not harmed or even threatened, and the child is seen multiple times as describing it as being a positive experience, with the captor giving him toys and candy.
PS: No pedophilic undertones
In a small town you can overhear a conversation between a sheriff and his mistress over their affair. They are heavily implied to be cheating on their significant others.
There is a scene where 2 characters get very drunk at a bar. The two get jail time for drunken violence and one of the characters vomit when they get out of jail
This is a very common idle animation for a lot of NPCs because it’s the Old West.
As well as it appears in multiple cutscenes and any Red Dead Online player can spit using a specific emote
While not a trans character, a man who has disguised himself by crossdressing kisses Arthur without consent in order to hide his face. The whole interaction is pretty lighthearted and Arthur isn’t too upset about it. I didn’t personally see it as predatory but I figured it was relevant enough to be worth mentioning.
While not a trans character, there is dialogue where Bill’s full name is found out, and he is mocked both by other characters and by the player character for having a feminine name. The dialogue is easily missable.
While not explicitly stated, Bill is very heavily implied to be gay. A letter can be found in camp talking about him being dishonorably discharged from the military, which could be interpreted as being outed to the player.
There is an optional side mission where an electric chair is used in a fairly graphic cut scene. I'm not sure if this counts as electro-therapy though.
No, but there is an abused and mentally ill girl shown locked in a secluded room of her family's house and the parallel is close enough that I figured I'd mention it.
this game takes place in 1899 so it doesn’t go into any specific medical terminology or anything but yes there are definitely characters with mental illnesses
technically, yeah, I guess, but not in the same way you might think — in chapter 4, Arthur gets kidnapped and acquires a gunshot wound, which he later cauterizes by stabbing himself with a heated file and then pouring gunpowder into it and setting fire to it with a candle. pretty rough.
A major character becomes increasingly unstable and unwell over the course of the story, and with that shift in their state of mind, they become more and more prone to extreme, needless violence. Many minor antagonists, including rival gang members and a hidden serial killer, are depicted as rather unhinged as well. A lot of the good guys (including the protagonist) are violent and struggling with forms of depression, addiction, and/or PTSD, too.
SPOILERS
At the end of the mission with the braithwaite‘s and grey’s, Mrs. Braithwaite is left sobbing and hysterical as she runs into the burning building
This game hasn't really bothered me as someone with misophonia, but if you're overly sensitive to noises there are (minor!!!!) eating sounds, breathing/out of breath sounds, coughing, gory, whistling and humming.
again, it was never something that I was really bothered by as its subtle and most times you can simply leave the area of the noise, but it is there!
Despite the overwhelming amount of "no's", one of the main character's son, after the ain character s forced to defend him and himself, and the young character realizes it, he begins to have a panic attack. Late epilogue 1.
!!!SPOILERS!!!
In the Mission 'we loved once and true I', Arthur helps his ex girlfriend save her brother Jamie from a cult. Almost at the end of the Mission he holds a gun to his head and threatens to k!ll himself, but Arthur saves him. If you fail to save him he actually k!lls himself and the Mission fails and you have to try again.
In one of the side missions you have to go after famous gunslingers and one of them tries to / or actually kills himself.
The player's character sometimes makes self-depreciating remarks about his own appearance and if you comment on his reflection in the mirror, he states how ugly and pathetic he thinks he looks, obviously carrying a tone of unease/uncomfortableness with looking at his own reflection.
The character Algernon Wasp met during the 'Gilded Cage' mission goes off to throw up and specifically says he must stay thin etc, clearly implying bulimia.
A fairly major character loses her husband and her house early in the story. Later on, she copes by taking revenge on the gang that's responsible, but it takes her some time to recover. There is also a much smaller character, a war veteran near Valentine, who seems to be suffering from PTSD. Many characters allude to past traumatic events that continue to affect them, but those are the two that come to mind the most.
!! Spoiler!!
I don't remember "underwater" scenes but your character can actually drown and in one mission, a ship sinks and the main character and a few others have to get off it.
SPOILERS
when your character washes ashore there is shaky camera from heat exhaustion
when you are at a bar for a few
drinks the camera doesnt nessacarily shake, but its still difficult
Thunderstorms can be flashy at night sometimes, especially in the forested areas that get very dim. There isn't just lightning in the sky; the entire map will briefly flicker between bright and dark. The side mission "A Bright Bouncing Boy - II" is especially intense with this.
It's very difficult to come across, but if you play red dead one and two John and Abigail have a stillbirth of a daughter. There are references to this in red dead 2.
Despite the no's, YES. Dutch killed a pregnant woman during the Blackwater disaster and this is gradually found out through the story. It happens offscreen however.
Sort of, in an unavoidable mission in chapter 3. The player's character has to pretend to be a "bit slow" and "quick to anger," basically implying he has a mental defect that makes him prone to violence and murder.
At some point on a mission, one of the main characters in the gang (Lenny) says it in reference to Arthur being seen with him, as he is black. There are also multiple instances of people using derogatory slurs towards black characters (an example of this is if you tell Lenny to distract the Lemoyne Raiders at Shady Belle before killing them).
There is a lengthy "man in a dress" joke in "The Artist's Way IV". A strange character you befriend wears a dress and heavy makeup to "hide" from a number of people that are upset with him, and to further get a rise out of everyone. Typical man in a dress hijinks ensue, people are flabbergasted when they say he's beautiful and discover he's a man, he gives out a comical kiss that goes very unappreciated, etc.
No one is for sure transgender, but there is a person on a side quest who says she is a woman despite appearing to merely be a cross dressing man. Another character uses she/her pronouns for this character, but no one else in the game does. It is not entirely clear if her being a woman is merely an act for the show she does, or if she truly is transgender. If she really is trans, the game sort of implies subtextually that she is not a real woman. But for 1899, Arthur seems to be more accepting than one would expect. I don’t remember what pronouns he used for her, but I do remember that he did make a comment about her not being a real woman. However, as previously mentioned, I do not know if this person was canonically a trans woman or simply a man dressing up for an act. I think the game more implies that she is merely doing it for an act, similar to what drag queens do but she’s not a drag queen. However, this does share some similarity to misgendering so I thought I would mention it.
No, not canonically. However, there is a side quest in which two male characters are implied to be in a relationship (in the very least, it’s some more of a bromance) and if you wanted to be evil and kill them I think you could.
Frequent slurs and prejudice against racial minorities, including Native American, Hispanic/Latino, and black characters. References to lynchings are made, and the KKK can be encountered in random events.
kinda surprised theres no mentions of it but it is a pretty tiny... easter egg? I guess youd call it?? Its not graphic really BUT in one location on some farm or another in one of the small pens out of a row of like 3 or 4, if you walk inside you will see a black sheep with a bow on its neck and a man, both dead. The man has his pants around his knees, and if you loot the sheep you'll get a wedding ring, implying the man was carrying out a nasty sort of "honeymoon" with the sheep. Not certain how they both died or anything, you only come across the bodies and go by context clues. There may be other references to bestiality that im unaware of, but this is the only visual depiction of it.
There's a random encounter on a farm involving an incestuous relationship. However, this scene is in no way necessary to progress the story, and can be avoided entirely
Yes, some characters sing songs about having sex, and there is an (offscreen) scene where your main character is heavily implied to be sexually assaulted. You can also walk in on two characters having sex in a mission.
There is one moment as far as I know, but it's entirely avoidable. There's an npc you can find at a lake/river complaining about a girl. The first time you see him you can offer him advice, and the next time you see him is in the epilogue, where he will be complaining about the same girl. If the player chooses to antagonize him, John will call him a "crying baby." The npc denies that he's crying, and John says something else I don't remember. You can of course avoid this conversation if you don't antagonize him, or just don't meet him at all.
hosea mentions that a specific herb helps his illness, but it's not confirmed what exactly he has.
• also, SPOILERS: the main character, arthur, contracts TB from a man who owes the gang money in chapter 2, and in chapter 5-6, he is extremely sick and dying.
In Rhodes, Valentine, Saint Denis and almost all prominent villages, there are characters that you can meet that will beg for money and proclaim how they have been mistreated by their village. They are seen to be homeless. Many NPCs can also be seen laying on benches and sitting on streets, maybe implying that they could be homeless.
Sort of. Arthur can have two encounters with a nun where he mentions that he doesn't believe in religion or an afterlife, and in the second encounter he admits that his inevitable death scares him. The nun offers a practical alternative to religious dogma, telling him to believe that "love exists" and advising him to do loving acts.
A wagon, not a car. There is a scene where a leymone raider is run down by one of your companions. You also will probably find yourself accidently running people over with your horse in crowded places time after time
The player can hogtie NPCs and drown them by placing them in too deep of water. The player character can drown to death. A couple missions include characters heads being held underwater for a period of time, sometimes its the player attempting the drowning.