Red Dead Redemption II | Ep. 18 – Saint Denis Ain’t No Place for Men Like Us
Arthur returns to Saint Denis, where crowded streets, civilisation, money, politics, and an uncomfortable number of lawmen continue to prove that perhaps the Van der Linde gang was better suited to somewhere with considerably fewer people.
It had been six weeks since our last Red Dead Redemption II stream. Illness, technical problems and a bit of schedule reshuffling had kept us away, along with my determination that WET was finally going to get played after being postponed far too many times over the years. At least we had stopped at the beginning of Chapter 4 rather than halfway through something important.
The downside was discovering that six weeks is more than enough time to forget what half the buttons do.
🤠 About the Game
Red Dead Redemption II follows Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as federal agents and bounty hunters close in around them. The old outlaw way of life is disappearing, and surviving means robbing, stealing, fighting and trying to stay ahead of a world that is becoming increasingly organised.
Saint Denis feels like the complete opposite of the open countryside we have spent so much time travelling through. It is crowded, noisy and full of tiny details to inspect, which is particularly dangerous when I am supposed to be concentrating on a mission. There is still a Jade Restaurant sign attached to another restaurant farther down the road, and I remain unconvinced that the owner should be allowing his competition to advertise on his building.
🗺️ Where We Are in the Journey
We resumed exactly where Episode 17 ended, at the beginning of Chapter 4. If there was going to be an unavoidable six-week break, this was probably the best possible point for it because we were between major sections of the story rather than returning halfway through an active mission.
We already knew Saint Denis reasonably well from earlier exploration, although “knowing the city” in my case apparently means remembering where suspicious restaurant signs are while forgetting which button makes Arthur climb over a railing. The plan was to get back into the story, pick up where we left off and see what Chapter 4 had waiting for us.
Saint Denis had other ideas.
🔥 What Happens in This Episode
The evening began with the usual community catch-up while I reacquainted myself with the game. Happy_Cat_Lady had suffered the Great Greek Yoghurt Massacre after a yoghurt escaped the fridge, JD was recovering from surgery and had been given instructions to rest and eat cheese, and aadil_idk wanted to know whether he was watching a chicken play Red Dead Redemption II. I confirmed that I had just laid an egg, so that question was settled.
Gary also mentioned that his head was “pounding,” which obviously could not be correct while he was sitting in the Republic of Ireland. His head should have been Euroing. That was the joke that nearly caused Happy to inhale her pizza, while Mr Smith found the whole thing far more entertaining than Gary probably did.
Eventually we remembered that Arthur Morgan had things to do. The Joys of Civilization sent us looking for Angelo Bronte, and a group of children offered to help before one of them stole our bag and ran off with it. Unfortunately, the game would not let me retrieve our belongings using the obvious solution, which immediately brought back memories of our Plague Tale playthrough and my long-running campaign to solve those games by simply getting rid of the troublesome brother.
Instead, we had to chase the thief through Saint Denis. Tesco Lasagna happened to be standing nearby, so I thought we could jump onto the horse and close the distance quickly. We mounted, turned around, travelled approximately two feet and apparently tripped over something that did not exist. Arthur landed face-first while Tesco Lasagna ended up on its side, bringing our mounted pursuit to an extremely efficient conclusion.
asmith501 described what followed as “the slowest chase in history,” which was difficult to argue with. I could not remember the climbing controls, spent several minutes investigating a railing and briefly considered whether a nearby broom might provide an alternative form of transport. Eventually we found the correct button, climbed up onto the roof and carried on, only for Arthur to fall straight back off it.
Fortunately, the mission gave us plenty of time to catch up. When we finally reached the children, they supplied Bronte’s address and returned our belongings, but I still felt revenge was justified. If the game would not allow us to shoot them directly, perhaps dynamite and radial damage could solve the problem. Chat had reached much the same conclusion, but the cutscene placed us behind a gate while the children escaped in the other direction before we could organise anything explosive.
Shortly afterwards, a police officer began shooting at us for absolutely no reason whatsoever, assuming we ignore the random gunfire I had been producing around town during the chase. Naturally, I defended myself by putting a cap in his head. His colleagues objected, our first Deathloop of the night followed, and Arthur was left with a $35 bounty.
We headed to the post office and continued the established tradition of entering through the doors with considerably more enthusiasm than necessary. Thirty-five dollars for shooting a police officer seemed remarkably reasonable. Bargain.
With the opening mission completed, question marks had appeared around the city, and one nearby stranger mission was too tempting to ignore. Help a Brother Out led us to a shop where two men were being held behind a false bookcase. We freed them and prepared to escort them back to Brother Dorkins, although their rescue had to wait briefly because the shop contained signs, labels and an advertisement that clearly required investigation.
The advertisement involved pomade, with papasoup60 helping establish that we were essentially looking at hair gel. Only after this important research was complete did we return the captives to the monk.
Around the same time, FlyingFox21 announced that he was going away for a “weeding.” Correcting it to “wedding” did nothing to stop the conversation once it had started. We had already moved on to gardening equipment, horticultural dress codes, the possibility that Fox had packed completely the wrong suit and the important question of who had been assigned responsibility for bringing the rake.
Our next question mark started The Artist’s Way, which caused a much less entertaining problem. Charles Châtenay produced a nude drawing during the conversation, and because I do not allow nudity on the channel I brought up the Bouncy Bouncy screen almost immediately. Unfortunately, roughly half a second still made it onto the stream.
That meant downloading the entire two-hour broadcast afterwards, covering the image, rendering a corrected version, uploading it again and deleting the originals from Twitch and YouTube. It was a considerable faff for half a second of artwork, although it did at least show what the new PC can do. The RTX 5090 got the entire stream rendered and uploaded again in around ten minutes.
Thankfully, A Bright Bouncing Boy was exactly the sort of distraction we needed afterwards. Professor Marco Dragic handed Arthur control of a remote-controlled model boat armed with torpedoes, and we spent the mission sailing around a pond, avoiding mines and blowing up model ships. It was tremendous fun.
Once the legitimate targets had been destroyed, there was an unrelated rowing boat sitting off to one side. Chat and I were thinking exactly the same thing: could we blow that up as well? We tried. The game immediately failed the mission.
Fortunately, failing meant we got to play the whole boat section again. Gary described the unnecessary destruction as “a Doc thing to do,” while papasoup60 admitted he had been thinking along exactly the same lines. On the second attempt we discovered that actually using the aiming mode made aiming considerably easier, completed the demonstration and earned an invitation to visit Dragic’s laboratory near Dover Hill.
The rest of the evening became The Mercies of Knowledge, beginning with another professor who wanted one hundred gallons of moonshine for a “machine of love.” That sounded like an excellent party, although I did wonder exactly what sort of Bouncy Bouncy activity required that quantity of alcohol.
An informant at the Rhodes post office gave us the information required to intercept the moonshine shipment, but first we had to read the note he supplied. This became a problem because, despite all the hours we have already spent in Red Dead Redemption II, we have barely needed to manage the inventory properly. I could not remember where anything was.
Chat guided me through the satchel and note menus while Stryker_500 explained how quest items worked. Along the way we accidentally discovered first-person mode and also established why I miss so many prompts: the microphone arm sits directly across that part of the monitor. Moving it to the other side would block the radar, while the headset clamp already lives over there, so naturally Gary remains responsible for the entire desk arrangement.
The inventory hunt reminded me of our recently completed Fallout 4 playthrough, where any mission asking us to “read the note” or “listen to the tape” became a challenge if I had missed the name when it briefly flashed onto the screen. After collecting almost everything in the Commonwealth, finding one particular document could become a quest in itself.
Eventually we found the right note and intercepted the moonshine wagon. The fight left Arthur with almost no health, but I remembered that healing items existed before we added another Deathloop. Expecting pursuers on the road, I then used a tactic that has worked surprisingly well in other games: ignore the expected route completely and drive cross-country.
There was water, awkward terrain and a fence, but there were no pursuing enemies. We delivered the wagon successfully and discovered what the professor’s “machine of love” actually was.
A chair full of electricity.
More specifically, an electric chair.
For reasons that continue to go against my better judgement, we carried on helping him. The police chief wanted $100 before allowing a public demonstration, and I am fairly certain we were not given a receipt so we could claim the money back from the professor. I also wanted to know whether the machine was using AC or DC, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable technical question.
The final stage sent us after Wilson J. McDaniels, wanted for murder, bigamy and immoral animal husbandry. The long ride gave chat plenty of room to wander through films and television, including The Green Mile, Buffy, Dollhouse and the supernatural hospital series I could not remember until JD finally supplied Kingdom Hospital.
Eventually we reached McDaniels and began the capture attempt with considerable enthusiasm. Unfortunately, shooting everybody in the camp also meant shooting the one person we had specifically been told to keep alive. Mission failed.
We tried again, got Deathlooped ourselves, and by that point my shoulder was aching enough that calling it a night seemed sensible. I had hoped we might finish by finding out what the professor intended to do with his chair full of electricity, but this is still my first playthrough and I genuinely do not know where that mission goes.
Before signing off, we looked ahead to Oblivion Remastered and the upcoming Labyrinth movie night, then sent the raid over to OurChickenLife. After six weeks away, we had rediscovered the controls, found Bronte, rescued prisoners, played with a model torpedo boat, stolen a wagon of moonshine and helped advance the development of an electric chair.
A perfectly normal return to Red Dead Redemption II.
🎬 Watch the Episode
If you want to see Tesco Lasagna trip over apparently nothing, the slowest chase in history, our completely justified attack on an innocent rowing boat and the early development of a chair full of electricity, the full episode is on YouTube.
Watch Red Dead Redemption II | Ep. 18 – Saint Denis Ain’t No Place for Men Like Us
You can also catch up through the Red Dead Redemption II playlist or find more videos on the Dr Ravenholm YouTube channel. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a like, subscribe and let me know whether you would also have fired a torpedo at the rowing boat.
🔴 Join the Adventure Live
The best part of these streams is that none of this happens in isolation. Chat is there for the failed plans, forgotten buttons, technical problems, conversations that wander off in completely unrelated directions and the occasional suggestion involving dynamite.
You can join us live on Twitch or YouTube and become part of the next questionable decision as it happens.
🏕️ Community & Links
The stream may finish, but the conversation generally does not. There are plenty of places to keep up with everything between episodes.
Live — Catch the next stream as it happens:
Twitch | YouTube
Community — Continue the conversation between streams:
Discord
Socials — Follow the clips, posts and assorted distractions:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X
Music — Find my music away from the gunfire:
Spotify | Apple Music
Support — Help keep the streams, videos and questionable decisions going:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs
More — Find everything else I am working on:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog
⚡ The Chair Full of Electricity Can Wait
For a stream that began with me trying to remember which buttons did what, we actually covered a surprising amount of ground. Saint Denis gave us story progress, distractions, Deathloops, model warfare and several extremely questionable moral decisions.
Next time, the immediate objective is simple: capture Wilson J. McDaniels without shooting Wilson J. McDaniels. That does not sound difficult, which probably means it will be.
— Dr Ravenholm
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