The actress Cali Moore on the set of five years of Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a slow and deliberate game that focuses on much more than the protagonist Arthur Morgan. Each member of the Van der Linde gang finds his time in the limelight as Dutch and his boys head east towards Saint-Denis, then into the vague and increasingly desperate dream of freedom. .

It's a dark march across America, but a love story at the heart of the game is a source of hope. John Marston and his wife Abigail represent a potential path for the future, and it is this story that ultimately leads to the plot of the original film. Red Dead Redemption.

Building this relationship had to feel authentic. John, Abigail and Jack are important members of the Dutch gang. Rockstar had to spend time during his five years of filming and intervention to make their relationship go smoothly.

[[[[Warning: What follows contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2.]

A five-year tour

Logistically, the Marstons were among the most complicated characters to capture for Red Dead Redemption 2. Rob Wiethoff played the role of John Marston in the original Red Dead Redemptionand he was ready to come back for the prequel. Abigail, described by Sophia Marcozzi in the first match, had been redone. Jack Marston, played by Josh Blaylock in the original title, would also be remade … and required multiple actors because of his growing child during the game. Marissa Buccianti and Ted Sutherland would play Jack, as well as a child providing the necessary motion capture for the first scenes.

The production took five years, with actors coming to play once or twice a month, says Cali Moore, the actress behind Abigail Marston.

"Most of our work has been done on the scene of motion capture. So we played the stage in its entirety, as if it was theater, "Moore says. "The first few months I was there, there was only John, Jack and me. We built this family unit so soon that we ended up doing things like the proposal stage, [we’d] have known each other for five years and met each other. Everything does not work; there is a lot of real chemistry out there. "

After only a few months of Marstons' presence, the rest of the cast was integrated and they started working on the scenes that would build the rest of the game. The scenes were made and prepared in disorder; actors never had access to the entire timeline or context until much later in the production.

Sometimes the filming would be devoted to scenario scenes, and sometimes the cast would focus on smaller, optional interactions that players would encounter around the camp. Rockstar gave the actors more details about their characters and scenes slowly over time.

"Every time you come, you learn something new about your character, and we learn all these things together," says Moore.

When the actors are not on stage, they would be together in the green room. There, they made friends, made arrangements for a drink, and shared stories about how Micah Bell's actor Peter Blomquist had allowed them to break up the character during the scenes where he was joking.

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Create Abigail

Abigail starts the match as a hostile presence near the Dutch camp, shooting John between two missions. In return, he is openly hostile towards her and the concept of marriage.

During the campaign, their relationship changed. Jack is threatened by the Pinkertons and later taken by the Braithwaites. When John is in danger, Abigail makes friends with Sadie and Arthur to make sure he gets home safely. When the van der Linde gang finally dissolves under Dutch paranoia and Micah's betrayal, Abigail is one of the few characters to make a pitch for his family.

Moore describes Abigail's arc as "an actress's dream," taking the time to recognize director Rod Edge as "brilliant."

"He really knows how to create these scenes and make the most of each actor," she says. Sometimes that means a scene of tender love with John or a confession vulnerable to Arthur. On other occasions, it is Abigail who is raising hell when Micah hits her. Moore's favorite running joke is an epilogue squirrel that John continues to bring and that Abigail continues to hide.

"They definitely have a tumultuous relationship," says Moore. "They had a good time writing faithfully at that time. John has this incredible talent to go to a wild kid who does everything he wants to learn from his mistakes and become a family man. Being his partner was so interesting.

"Abigail has learned to make her own happiness where she can. So she sees where [the gang] Goes and tries to put John on the right track, and the gang disappears, but their love and moral compass lead them to Beecher's Hope and sometimes to this beautiful life. "

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Weakness in the West

Abigail is also a character with one of the most obvious weaknesses of the game. Much of the van der Linde gang seeks to hide its weaknesses and give the illusion of invulnerability. Hosea tolerates Bill until he gets away and shoots a gun at his drunk colleague. Lenny is silent and withdrawn. If Arthur teases the Dutchman, the latter answers him by specifying who is responsible for the camp. Meanwhile, Abigail is openly vulnerable and emotional, a luxury that is offered to her as a woman and mother in the West.

Moore notes that it was easy to fall into this role thanks to Jack's actor.

"The little boy who played Jack at his youngest was the nicest little boy. He's, for example, five years old and he had that tiny little voice and he was the cutest thing you've ever seen, "Moore laughs. "It was very difficult not to have maternal feelings for this kid. I will never forget the scene where Jack was kidnapped and they bring him back.

"He jumps out of the horse and he says" Mom, "and he runs to Abigail, and while he was doing this scene, he was running towards me. It is not very difficult to burst into tears. The kid is adorable, and he is so adorable, and those moments were so easy to connect, because as a mother, I was wondering what it would be like to kidnap your kids without knowing where he's been in days. end, and with that nice little boy in front of you? It's definitely another layer of Abigail that represents this character. "

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Repetition makes perfect

The crew not only Red Dead Redemption 2 have to cover a mass of content, some of which would never be seen in a single game, but each scene had to be put into practice to perfection.

"You'd think that after five years they would end up saying," Well, yes, it's good, "says Moore." But everything had to be perfect, and we went beyond what the scene was perfect. "

The long duration of the shoot, combined with chemistry, means that many of the relationships between the characters are similar to those between their actors. The relationship between Hosea and Abigail partly reflects Moore's relationship with actor Curzon Dobell, whom she describes as a "charming man".

The meetings at the camp with the entire cast gave Moore a chance to play the spicier side of Abigail. "Abigail has a little mood. She does not have time for a malarkey; it can go from zero to 60 on some things, "she says.

The actors were continually surprised at the amount of content and the number of scenes filmed. While playing the game or chatting with fans, Moore notes that she would be surprised by the number of interactions or smaller scenes that she has filmed and forgotten until their return .

For her performance, Moore recognizes that it is a bittersweet story, as it opens the door to the tragedies of the original film. Red Dead Redemption. However, she believes that the entire story of both games is beautiful and poignant.

"You see what made John such a man: a faithful, authentic and faithful man. He had to learn the hard way.