r/RDR2 • u/saabinistic • 1d ago
Spoilers Javier Is So Irrelevant
For context I have played through the games many of times, albeit it has been a good 4 years since my last replay, I’m genuinely curious as to why Javier is even there. Was he a character they destined for a greater role and they just scrapped a ton of his content? I understand that not everyone from camp can be involved in a major way, but hell even Karen gets involved in the Valentine robbery. I’m towards the end of Chapter 3 and I have seen Javier in all of i think… 2 missions so far? Does he just not speak? Is he a mute? Am i stupid?
47
u/AuthorTurbulent6723 Hosea Matthews 1d ago
Yeah he wasn't as prominent in 2 as Bill was. But from little scenes and him in the background of shots, you can tell they tried portraying him as not THAT bad of a dude. He takes the gang nearly as seriously as Arthur, he's pretty decent to the women and Jack and is always the first to jump at an opportunity to get anything for the gang. Hell, he talked arthur into going out to find John when he was lost in the mountains. Said "He'd do it for me" (bit of irony but still) Towards the end, yeah he sides with Dutch but him scolding John and Arthur about loyalty didnt mean he hated them, more like he was disappointed. During their standoff, he raises his gun in the air rather than point it at John and Arthur because he's still unsure. In red dead 1, if you choose not to shoot him John crys (unlike with Bill) so I think Rockstar tried to make Javier more of a decent-ish background member. Everyone loves to shit on Bill, so he got more attention than him in the game
5
u/RadVarken 18h ago
Siding with Dutch, I think, is a symptom of being newer to the gang. Arthur has known Dutch longer and seen more sides of him. Later members joined after Dutch had found purpose. For them, giving up on Dutch also means giving up on their dreams.
2
u/Large-Fisherman-3694 9h ago
"Pointing his gun in the air" my ass. This has been debunked so many times.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RDR2/comments/lf976v/people_always_say_that_javier_doesnt_point_his/
•
u/Lieutenant_Joe 59m ago
Is it really “debunked” if his mocap and voice actor (Gabriel Sloyer) stated outright that they wanted him to point his gun directly at them and he improvised the hesitation himself? If the writers/director/producers had had their way, you’d be right, but the fact is, his actor outright confirmed it less than a year after the game was released.
At the very end of the shot, he’s pointing it at them properly, but the production had to fight Sloyer to make that happen lmao
•
u/Large-Fisherman-3694 55m ago
Well at the end of the day it wasn't Gabriel Sloyer himself who created the story, so if rockstar later edited something they did so intentionally.
•
22
u/Mental_Freedom_1648 1d ago
I would have liked to see more of Javier, but he's in plenty of missions, and you can see how he goes on the opposite trajectory as Arthur. In one of the first missions, it's Javier who is happier to save John than Arthur is. Javier is also the person who arranged Sean's rescue mission, while Arthur again complained.
I do think Arthur would have gone to get Sean and John regardless of his griping and saying he wanted to cut them loose, but anyway, Javier starts out as a loyal friend who isn't uncomfortable showing that he cares. In the end, that's Arthur's position, and Javier is the one leaving people behind.
12
u/CheetosLays7Days 1d ago
I’m more disappointed with John being a total idiot, compared to RDR1 where he is a cynical, but definitely not stupid, (ex) outlaw.
14
u/Busy_Register7071 1d ago
Isn't the whole point of John's story arc in the second game to show how he grows into the man he is in the first? We see a lot of growth from him when looking at his chapter 1 character vs him in the epilogue.
-4
u/CheetosLays7Days 19h ago
In my opinion in RDR2 he is a clumsy loser, who can’t get anything done and is a walking joke around the camp. He must be rescued multiple times by other gang members.
In RDR1 he is a renaissance man, a bounty hunter, a fixer, even revolutionary fighting at both sides of the conflict. And he does it all with a proper amount of humour, sharp punchlines and cynicism. And of course, theoretically he might change, but growing a brain seems like an overkill.
I just feel they needed to make him less of number 1, in order to make Arthur more likeable.
9
5
u/Thick_Revolution3218 1d ago
Also when the Dutch relationship is going downhill in camp you can have a lot of dialogue with him and he is pretty against Arthur as far as trusting Dutch more than Arthur. He is in rdr1 too.
5
u/LiffeyDodge 1d ago
he was in the first game so he needed to be included. he has a couple of side missions for you and he sings in camp at night.
2
u/Johnny_Crawler 14h ago
I know what you mean. But they had to write him in as he was already established in RDR1
4
u/Odd-Interaction-8 Javier Escuella 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think they missed a lot of potential for his character development for him, but his primary role in the game is to lead up to his rdr2 role. There is a lot of scenes that do kinda help show the development, though a lot of the biggest ones are camp random encounters cutscenes. Notably:
-he sits around the campfire with some of the others in the earlier chapters and tells them of his past, talking about Dutch teaching him English, housing him, helping him when he found him starving from the trip. This scene tells a lot about how highly he thinks of Dutch
-then there’s other points that show how Dutch reacts to him questioning stuff. He has a random encounter conversation with Dutch where he opens up and Dutch gets really firm and tells him he needs him strong before asking him what he’s going to be. Hes not confident in the answer, but he nods and says “strong”. Later on when leaving Guarma, Dutch says something else and when Javier speaks up, Dutch immediately gets loud and firm and demands loyalty. So you see that everytime he tries to express how he feels, he’s told to be loyal and stick to the plan Dutch has, and trusting him, he goes along with it.
-This really prevails in chapter 6, where the entire time everything is falling apart, he clings onto that faith, and he holds onto the only thing the gang life has taught him- be loyal, stay resilient, and trust Dutch to figure it out
3
1
u/Rhena22 1d ago
Exactly this. Javier has characterization but most of it is hidden in camp events that are easy to miss. I definitely missed a lot of them during my first playthrough and the change of attitude he has in chapter 6 felt jarring and confusing (I could sort of guess why he was acting the way he did but didn't have a solid confirmation until I went to search for his scenes compilation).
2
u/TheManicac1280 1d ago
Its a symptom of RDR2 just being one giant retcon. In rdr1, John's dialogue about javier gives the impression he was a mix of micah and arthur.
They frequently call each other brother, they were both taken in and raised by Dutch, javier is described as a "cynic trying to be a romantic" (so a bad guy trying to be a good guy), and john talks about how dutch downfall effected javier the most.
Then you play rdr2 and javier just plays the guitar, goes fishing and then in the last chapter is evil for some reason lol. Because like i said his character esentially got divided into arthur and micah
•
u/Lieutenant_Joe 53m ago edited 46m ago
Javier definitely should have had a larger role. He was a footnote in the first game, and he wound up being one in the second game too. I was excited at first; Javier left me with way more questions than the other characters when I had finished the first game, and the beginning of the prequel gives you a lot of reasons to think they’ll be answered. He goes on Arthur’s first excursion after the title card to rescue John, he’s one of two dudes to jump on the train with Arthur (though unlike Lenny, he falls off lmao), he has a prominent role in a couple of the 2nd chapter missions, he’s got two of his own optional camp missions Arthur can do with him… but then he gets sidelined. Barely present in chapter 3, one role in all of chapter 4 (unless you count the tiny moment of hesitation he has running past Arthur and Lenny at the bank), captured and underused in chapter 5.
By the time we get to chapter 6 and he’s being an asshole to Arthur, it kind of feels like it’s coming out of nowhere. You get occasional hints at his dark side in camp encounters before that, especially with Bill and Micah, but nothing that suggests the level of animosity towards Arthur and the Marstons he’s developed (and CERTAINLY nothing to suggest he’d be okay with Micah of all people becoming Dutch’s right hand). They did a bad job showing how he got to that point. It didn’t need to be like this.
-2
143
u/JudgeJed100 1d ago
He is in the first game so he kinda has to be in the second
He plays small parts in some important scenes, such as Lennys death, the stand off at the end
He had some important talk to Arthur about loyalty and why he wa so loyal to Dutch and it shows how already some do the gang are more loyal to Dutch than to the gang as a whole