DO NOT SEEK ABSOLUTION
Before we begin talking about this collection of missions, here’s your major freaking spoiler warning. This questline ties in with incredibly important events in the main story, so skip on ahead to the next entry if you don’t want any of that spoiled.
Still here? Okay then. “Do Not Seek Absolution” is heartbreaking. There’s something very sad and yet depressingly just about the fact that Arthur contracts a disease that ultimately kills him from a man he beat in front of his family just to collect some debt. Following Thomas Downes’ death, his wife Edith and their son are left with nothing to their names, and the two fall into a life of hardship and poverty, with Edith especially having to resort to extremely degrading work to make ends meet. Much of the second half of Red Dead Redemption 2 is about Arthur coming to terms with his own true nature, and with the fact that he doesn’t have long to live. Watching him trying to make up for what he did to the Downes family in the little ways he can in this questline adds an incredible amount of weight and context to the main story, so much so that I’d even say that were you to skip this questline, your enjoyment of the main story would be significantly diminished.
