Searching For Me in Red Dead Redemption | The Paris Review

A voice-actor trawls through an open-world videogame to find the character he played:

I hitched my horse and walked toward the local jail. Inside a prisoner lay in a rusty cell, a deputy napped in a chair, and still no sign of the Marshall. So I waited. And waited. Finally, I heard footsteps along the creaky floor behind me, and just like that, there he was. Standing before my very eyes, Marshall Leigh-Motherfucking-Johnson. Strong and weathered with a tarnished, pixelated star on his barrel chest, a little taller, and dare I say, more handsome than I had imagined. I felt actual nausea.

Say something you crusty son of a bitch. Speak!

He did.

“Well what do we have here?” he asked.

The controller went limp in my hands. My heart sunk.

It wasn’t me.

To date, the actor is still looking. Someone at Rockstar Games should put him out of his existential angst and send him a showreel.