If you want to mention the works at the top of the "open world" pyramid in today's game world, there must be a place for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Although, in the game's vast map, there are all kinds of collection elements, side quests and random events that make players forget to advance the main line, and forget to eat, it has to be said that the most fascinating thing about "Red Dead Redemption 2" is its plot. Especially for players of a certain age like this, the protagonist and his gang friends struggle to survive, and there is an unusual sense of substitution —although we are not outlaws, nor have we lived in the American Southwest at the end of the 19th century.
Players must also have mixed feelings about the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and its members who appear in the single-player mode. In the game, the protagonist and gang companions operated by the player must not only face the round-up of real state public powers such as sheriffs and law enforcers, but also fight against hostile gangs and bounty hunters at the same time. The well-dressed and elegantly spoken officers of the Pinkerton Detective Agency are even more irresistible threats in the plot, forcing the protagonists to shift positions overnight, and even planning to flee abroad without being able to get it.
Unlike the fictional characters and alternate backgrounds in the Southwestern United States, Pinkerton Detective Agency and their agents not only appear in the game, but also truly exist in the real history of the United States, and continue to exist for more than a hundred years.
In the 1850s, thanks to his efforts to crack the assassination plan against Lincoln, who was still campaigning, allan Pinkerton, a famous Scotsman, together with another chicago lawyer, Edward Lacan, founded the North-Western Police Agency, a private security firm that would later be the predecessor of Pinkerton Detective Agency. At the time, some large corporate employers wanted to keep tabs on labor and their organizations, and they thought private detectives were necessary. Pinkerton founded the detective agency in Chicago after consulting with six Midwest railroad companies.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln's personal bodyguard work was also entrusted to the officers of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and Pinkerton himself once cracked a famous female spy in the Confederate Army. Incidentally, on the night Lincoln was assassinated after the End of the Civil War, it was not the agents of the Detective Agency who were responsible for guarding the work, but the U.S. Army.
In 1871, the U.S. Congress allocated a budget of $50,000 for the newly created Department of Justice as a budget for an auxiliary department to organize the "search and prosecution of criminals who violated federal laws." However, to do so on a vast U.S. soil, such a budget was clearly insufficient, so the Justice Department outsourced the job to The Pinkerton Detective Agency.
At the same time, many large corporations, such as railway and mining companies, hired pinkerton detectives to go undercover in the unions in order to monitor and even undermine the unions within the company, or directly suppressed strikes and killed leaders who fought for labor rights. Similar events inspired the authors of the Sherlock Holmes series of detective novels, and there are Scenes of Agent Pinkerton in the plots of "Uncanny Valley" and "Detective Red Ring".
Pinkerton's worst record in business history occurred during a pennsylvania steel mill strike in 1892. In order to sabotage the "Homestead Strike", which lasted 143 days, the factory hired 300 Agents from Pinkerton Detective Agency. In the end, because the agents opened fire on the striking laborers, resulting in the death of 7 laborers and 3 agents and the injury of hundreds of people, the governor finally had to dispatch two brigades of national soldiers to clean up the situation.
Agents at pinkerton detective agencies were even involved in a political conspiracy to assassinate the governor of Idaho, and the agents involved in the case were eventually sentenced to life in prison.
In this context, the U.S. Congress finally passed the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893, which prohibited the public sector from engaging in strike-breaking activities, which stated: "The Government of the United States of America and the Government of the District of Columbia shall not employ individuals employed by pinkerton detective agencies or similar organizations."
And the players of "Red Dead Redemption 2" must not be surprised that the agents of the Pinkerton Detective Agency have certainly been hired by various individuals or organizations, groups, companies, etc., to hunt down extralegals and gangs in the Western Region.
However, in the minds of Americans, the name "Pinkerton" is more associated with anti-labor rights activities such as "sabotage strikes" and "break up trade union organizations". It was not until 1937, long after the end of the Western era, that Pinkerton's labor espionage operations were halted after a widespread revelation by an official commission of inquiry, and the criminal search business that had been based on it was no longer profitable after the FBI and police organizations were modernized.
Pinkerton Detective Agency, once known as "employing more people than the U.S. Army" in its heyday, lost these two pillars of business nearly a century after its establishment, and could only focus on the only remaining personal guard business that has continued since its inception. By the 1960s, even the word "detective" had disappeared from Pinkerton's corporate name.
Pinkerton didn't disappear, however— in 1999, Pinkerton was acquired by Swedish security firm Securitas AB, and four years later in July 2003 he partnered with longtime business rival William J. Pinkon. Burns merged to become part of one of the largest security companies in the world, and the brand remains to this day.
Perhaps in the game, the player is helpless against the difficult and annoying Pinkerton Agent. However, if you really need to protect your personal safety and pay the starting price, you may still be able to hire a real Pinkerton agent to protect your safety and interests in the 21st century of science, but they probably won't appear in front of you on a horse and carry a Winchester lever rifle.