Manifest Destiny’s reinforcement through Native American stereotyping in Red Dead Redemption 2

Abstract

[eng] Video games are currently acquiring a more central role in contemporary society from a storytelling perspective. They are products that engage with a broader, younger audience and seem to be progressively establishing themselves as new forms of narrative. However, as a relatively new field of study, video games are usually exempt from analysis from non-specialized media outlets, and the little analysis it undergoes tends to be centered on either its technical aspects, or, as of late, on the means by which the video games were produced. Among the criticism directed towards Red Dead Redemption 2, the most noticeable is its extreme case of unpaid overtime suffered by the developers. These circumstances, however, seem to have hidden certain elements, such as narrative analysis. Hence, in this paper the game’s most prominent Native American characters were examined under a postcolonial perspective. The study argues that the game’s Indigenous portrayals were harmful and stereotypical as they are part of the game’s reproduction of colonial discourse that reinforces the Manifest Destiny.