Red Dead Redemption is a series filled with somber storytelling laced with high-paced action and combat. The protagonists of both Red Dead Redemption games are tragic characters, the victims of constant sorrow and loss of both friends and family. Although there are some comedic moments and bright spots in both open world western games, the main characters' lives don't start (or end) happily. However, it could have been much worse.
It's clear early on in Red Dead Redemption 2 that the game's main character, Arthur Morgan, is a cynical man, someone who has been through hell and back even before the game actually starts. Through dialog much later in RDR2's story, Arthur reveals that he had a son at one point, and although he and the boy's mother never married, he would visit them from time to time. They tragically died while Arthur was away, but originally players were going to become much more familiar with Arthur's offscreen offspring.
Red Dead Redemption 2's story originally had a significantly darker opening, one which heavily involved Arthur's son Isaac. As revealed in a 2019 panel consisting of Red Dead Redemption 2's cast, Arthur's son was originally going to appear in the game's intro as a newborn, someone Arthur was protecting after the Van Der Linde gang disaster in Blackwater. The beginning of the game features the gang fleeing into the snow-capped mountains in an effort to avoid the many law enforcement officers on their trail, and it's in those snowy mountains that Arthur's son was meant to die.
As the Van Der Lindes hid in the snow, Arthur's infant son would be too weak to survive the frigid temperatures. Despite his best efforts to keep Isaac safe, Arthur's son was originally meant to die during the opening of Red Dead Redemption 2 as a product of the gang's failures at Blackwater.
The developers did not wish to include such a dark death in Red Dead Redemption 2 before players could even begin to explore the massive in-game world, but what if the original beginning had remained the same? If his child had died in the opening scene, Arthur may not have had the strength to continue on with the gang, and perhaps would have found the strength to call out Dutch's irrational behavior much earlier.
Rockstar Games may have been right to rewrite this part of Red Dead Redemption 2's story, as Arthur's loss would have caused many drastic tonal changes. If Isaac had remained a tragic victim of the gang's misfortune, RDR2 would have been set up as a much darker and hopeless scenario, and it's unlikely the writers could have convinced Arthur, let alone players, to continue to have faith in Dutch Van Der Linde for much longer. Arthur's cynicism and attachment to characters like Jack Marston is born out of the untimely loss of own child, but the developers made the right call in not forcing players (and the Van Der Lindes themselves) to watch it happen.
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