I knew it wouldn't end on a happy note. It's the Wild west. Most of these tales are mired in tragedy, but they did a great job at making you like and enjoy John Marston. You start believe that maybe he'll get a second chance once you finally eliminate Dutch. So when you attempt to settle down and return life to what is was before with your family on the farm, when you realize the government agents are not going to honor their word and are set on eliminating him, it really hits you like a ton of bricks that he's going to suffer a tragic fate, the exact same fate as the guys who were once upon a time his brothers-at-arms suffered
after all.
I found the ending to be one of the greatest (if not
the greatest ending I've ever witnessed in a video game.) Only one game had succeeded in making me feel empathy and sympathy for the characters before I played this, and that was The Walking Dead. That ending was epic, too, but RDR's more-so, imo. It was simply grounded more in reality, and reinforced the idea of karma and played on the phrase you'd heard numerous of times during the course of the game; "Your past will always catch up with you."
Marston could have ran, but he he knew the government would never stop hunting him or his family until they were certain he was dead. The whole irony (or tragedy, depending on how you look at it) is that he did everything to ensure his families well-being, and yet his wife still succumbs to depression/illness and dies, and his son, despite at once aspiring to become a scholar of sorts, turns to the life of an outlaw, the very life his father died to protect him from. All of that happens in the course of no more than four years after his death.
Killing Ross, the man behind it all, was bitter sweet. You got revenge, but it was fleeting. I reckon that's how revenge is in reality. You think you'll feel better that you've killed them, but do you really? Poignant storytelling, all the way down to the ending song "Deadman's Gun". Fit Marston's life to the tee. All in all, great game.
Now to jump on this Undead Nightmare.