Red Dead Redemption 2 is an incredible game with incredible attention to detail. The combination of its vast and well-realized open-world, thoughtful design, attention to detail, and abundance of content results in a constant sense that a new piece of the game you’ve never seen before, a new discovery, is right around the corner. For example, years after release, many players just found out that after the Valentine bar fight with Tommy early in the game, the character is left with brain damage and a dent in his head.
More specifically, Tommy is left with Aphasia, which renders him unable to speak. Players may pick up on this later in the game when Tommy pops up in a mission and can only manage to grunt. Meanwhile, there’s dialogue with Valentine shopkeepers and locals that talk about the consequences of the fight, but it’s all fairly easy to miss, which is why so many only learned about all of this when a post about it all on Red Dead Redemption 2’s Reddit page went viral.
“Tommy suffered a brain injury — a real one called Aphasia –that involves an inability to speak,” reads a comment on the Reddit post. It typically happens after damage to the brain occurs. You may notice that when you try to speak to Tommy during that mission with Lenny, he just grunts and moans; he is trying to speak but he literally cannot formulate words. Not only that, but shop keepers in Valentine will mention that Tommy just was not the same following that encounter with Arthur. The gunsmith, upon recognizing Arthur as the one who fought Tommy, will say he knows Arthur from that fight. Arthur replies with something along the lines of ‘People are still talking about that? I know I ain’t’. The gunsmith then replies: “Fair enough. Neither is Tommy’.”
I’ve only just noticed after the bar fight Arthur left Tommy brain damaged and a heavy dent from
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Of course, details like this aren’t game-changing by themselves. But added together, they often make up the difference between great games and the medium’s best games.
As always, feel free to hit the comments section with your thoughts or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there. Did you know about this detail? Meanwhile, for more coverage on Red Dead Redemption 2, click here.
