# Talk:John Marston

If nothing else, Undead Nightmare certainly proves that Marston is one of gaming's great characters, a fully-formed creation who is nonetheless flexible enough to reflect the player's own intentions, able to express genuine performance through a shift in posture or the twitch of an eyebrow. It's a genuine pleasure to spend another five or six hours in his company. — Whitehead, Dan (October 28, 2010). "Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Pack". Eurogamer. p. 2. Retrieved July 10, 2016.
As much as I can find praise of Marston as a character, I'm not finding much with context/depth out of immediate reviews of the game itself. He's certainly seen as a significant part of Red Dead Redemption, but the coverage and scattered nominations stops short of explaining his independent importance in video game history. Unless there are unused sources for his development and more reception on his character, I would recommend merging this into the main game's article. But regardless of whether that happens, the major points of his character article should be covered in the main game's article. I would recommend a separate subsection under Legacy if the sources require it—otherwise the character development goes in with Development, and comments on his character within Reception. czar 12:54, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates/Red Dead Redemption/archive2 and @CR4ZE, just reiterating here years later that I still don't see what sourcing is used to justify Marston's independent notability from that of the two games. I'd be interested even in the top three sources being used to justify this split from the RDR1 article. Honestly the strongest source for independent notability doesn't even appear to be in the article yet (the 2013 Polygon feature) so if the case is that the best sources aren't even cited yet, would be curious what those are. Otherwise articles like these tend to be coat racks for minor details about the game's story and development that can be sufficiently covered in the main game articles albeit with some loss of fidelity (but the same reason why game articles do not cover every aspect of reception and development). czar 02:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Know I'm reviving a four-year dead horse for a beating here, but hey I figured this was a conversation worth revisiting. Thanks for the ping. So in my mind that Polygon interview definitely helps build a case for notability. Really should be mentioned here—there's some good info to unpack. This Game Informer article outlines disparities between Marston and Morgan and gives analysis on both (heavier on the latter, mind you). I tried to find some "best VG characters" from RS that were more than mere listicles and found two so far: GamesRadar (#14); Independent (#8). Is WatchMojo (#10) reliable? This is a preliminary outlook, if anything, from 20 mins of research. I haven't searched up much on Wiethoff yet—page 1 of Google also brought me to Polygon above—but maybe diving deeper would merit something more substantive for Marston. I maintain he's notable, albeit with the willingness to be proven wrong. — CR4ZE (T • C) 03:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Reading back over the article, it still feels like a coat rack for plot summary. Anything important that needs to be said about the character can be said in context of the existing articles, particularly because his impact is particular to the games in which he appears, nothing out of universe. I'll undoubtedly check back in a few years as fictional character notability standards slowly work themselves out, but will go back to unwatching this page for now. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 04:41, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The sentence:
"The character of John Marston received critical acclaim. Keith Shaw of Network World described the character as "complicated character".[26] "
To be changed to:
"The character of John Marston received critical acclaim. Keith Shaw of Network World described Marston as a "complicated character".[26] "
Described the character as complicated character is both grammatically incorrect and unnatural. Kazzymiller (talk) 23:37, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done, though with slightly different phrasing. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 04:06, 10 April 2025 (UTC)