ManyRed Dead Redemptionfans are familiar with the “Flowers for a Lady” side-mission for the rather morbid surprise that awaits John Marston at the end, but a player recently discovered there’s more to its grim finale than one would normally assume. This side-mission has Marston coming across an old man called Billy West, who is picking flowers for his wife to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. It’s one of the firstStranger side-missions inRed Dead Redemptionthat players can unlock, and it has John Marston helping the old man by gathering three sets of flowers for the bouquet.
After gathering Wild Feverfew, Red Sage, and Desert Sage for Billy, players are invited to join him and his wife Annabel in their cabin, insisting that John tries out his wife’s tea. Seems wholesome and harmless enough that most players are taken aback when they discover that Annabel West had been dead for years prior to theevents ofRed Dead Redemption, and that her clearly-widowed husband is under the delusion that she’s still alive, or perhaps refuses to accept the fact that she is dead.
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In a scene that has John Marston awkwardly attempt to talk his way out of tea time as the corpse of Annabel stands still in her rocking chair, players start to understand just how dark the humor inRed Dead Redemptioncan be, which has been a staple of Rockstar Games including the likes of theGrand Theft Autofranchise. Though John Marston successfully manages to escape giving Annabel a foot bath, players can re-enter the cabin immediately after concluding the quest, and if they’re careless enough, can cause Annabel to lose her head in quite the literal sense despite not being a day over thirty.
Perhaps the most darkly fascinating fact about this Stranger side-mission inRed Dead Redemption, is that Rockstar Games seems to have accounted for not just the possibility of players re-entering the cabin on the same day, but also in fidgeting around Annabel’s corpse hard enough to make her head fall off. This quest can also be completed with the game’s other protagonist Jack, though it introduces a continuity error where Billy West still celebrates his fiftieth anniversary with Annabel, despite the marriage being fifty-three years old by that point. Though not seen in the video, if Billy West is present for Annabel’s accidental decapitation, he may even accuse Marston of trying to be sweet on his wife.
To this day, it remains one of the strangest side-missions that Rockstar Games has ever made, and part of what gave it such a reputation in the community is that it’s rather hard to miss. ThoughRed Dead Redemption 3is largely a mystery and six years away at best if indeed coming at all, many Rockstar fans are hoping that the company looks intoremasteringRed Dead Redemptionand finally bringing it to PC, allowing a new audience to experience “Flowers for a Lady” and other wonderful missions for the first time.
Red Dead Redemptionis available now on PS3 and Xbox 360.
