Red Dead Redemption 2 is not a story about redemption, but about what happens when a system decides someone is no longer useful. Arthur Morgan doesn’t fail morally; he becomes obsolete within a structure that values loyalty, efficiency, and narrative coherence over people. The Van der Linde gang operates like a system disguised as a family, tightening control as it’s threatened. Arthur’s growth doesn’t save him because systems don’t respond to moral awakening—they replace inefficiency. His final choices matter not because they fix anything, but because they reject the system’s logic. The tragedy isn’t his death, but that the system works exactly as designed.