Like many other games under the Rockstar Games umbrella, Red Dead Redemption 2 gives players many opportunities to do a little good or a little bad in its sprawling world. While it’s ultimately up to the player whether to make protagonist Arthur Morgan an outlaw with a heart of gold or a hardened criminal, Red Dead’s complexity ensures that sometimes what goes around, comes around. One Red Dead Redemption 2 player recently discovered this when a moment of idle in-game cruelty came back to bite them.
Karma refers to the idea that the sum of a person’s actions in current or previous lives will decide their fate in future lives. However, a more informal definition of the word has cropped up in more recent years, which takes karma to be a very specific kind of fate– namely, the fate that one brings upon themselves by committing specific actions. An open-world game like Red Dead Redemption 2 has plenty of opportunities for players to bring karma down on themselves.
Redditor CSHC_FIN shared a 40-second video showcasing the events resulting from their decision to accost a man while traveling through a mountain pass on foot. Although the video doesn’t feature the snow currently found across Red Dead Redemption 2, crossing a mountain is still a risky business at the best of times. CSHC_FIN ignored this fact in favor of picking a fight with the NPC they encountered, which quickly led to a hilarious karmic punishment.
After using a lasso to drag the aggressive NPC down off his horse, CSHC_FIN had Arthur Morgan beat him viciously and then throw him off the side of an open cliff face. However, the NPC ended up tumbling only a short distance before landing on a small ridge only a few feet down from the path. CSHC_FIN could have turned their back and continued their trek, but instead, they decided to have Arthur Morgan descend down to the NPC’s level and continue the fight.
When the player attempted to go down and continue fighting the NPC, Arthur Morgan slipped and ended up tumbling down the mountain. Falls can be devastating in Red Dead Redemption 2, especially if they aren’t prompted by a bug. In this case, the last 12 seconds of the video are entirely dedicated to Arthur Morgan tumbling head over heels down the cliff as the screen flashes red and black to indicate fall damage. Several other fans commiserated with CSHC_FIN over the affair, despite noting that the player had definitely brought the fall on themself.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Stadia.
