I was underwhelmed by the end of the end of RDR.  I get it, and appreciate what they were trying to do (someone mentioned the Movie Hurt Locker, and thats pretty on point); however I think for a video game they couldve done better.  My vote for a better ending goes like this:
 
Instead of walking out the barn doors, Marston rigs the barn with dynamite, slips out the back, and blows the whole thing with a number of army dudes sky high.  the government stooges give chase, and after John cathces up with Jack and Abigail, all three have an epic shootout with the US army, culminating with the three executing Edgar Ross, him on his knees a la Boondock Saints.  They could even give a little speech first, about redemption and how the spirit of the West will live on despite civilizations attempt to crush its spirit.  Obviously, they couldnt just return to the farm afterwards, so the end would show them driving a wagon to the Northwest of the map, blazing forth to stake their claim in California or Oregon.  They could play another kickass song, and it would set up for a bomb sequel, where the family tries to adapt to a normal life while on the lamb. 
 
That would be sweeeet.....

There's nothing wrong with bittersweet endings.  Your ending would be good for a happy ending, but not everything needs a happy ending.

I actually like bittersweet endings, believe it or not....I just think this one couldve been done better, bittersweet or no.  Personally, I wanted Marston to go out victorious, not giving in.
 
And that ending wouldnt be happy, per se.  Marston still doenst get to settle with his family.  His dream of peace is shattered once and for all, and hes turned his whole family into exactly what he was trying to turn away from.  Now, his whole family are outlaws, and no doubt the cavalry will be gunning for them the whole way.  It sets them up for a brutal struggle running from the law, not a peaceful retirement.   Itd be kind of like Empire Strikes Back; theyre injured and on the run, and the whole Empire is looking for their asses now...

I agree that would be a pretty good ending. Perhaps they could have done multiple endings, where in one you get yours, and in the other you walk out the barn doors and meet your fate. That's the beauty of video games, things can end different ways. To only give us one option while it ties up the story the way Rockstar wanted, an option to meet that fate would have been appreciated.

" Honestly I think if they went anywhere they would've have gone to Mexico where the US government wouldn't try to kill the fam. "

You basically took MW2's ending and turned it into your dream RDR ending. 
 
No thanks.

" You basically took MW2's ending and turned it into your dream RDR ending.  No thanks. "

" @Ping5000 said:

" You basically took MW2's ending and turned it into your dream RDR ending.  No thanks. "

MW2??  I guess I see where youre coming from, but its pretty damn different imho....  Maybe I missed the part where Soap and Cpt Price kiss and ride into the sunset with their teenage son "

Good point.   That is weird; MW2 definitely wasnt on my mind, but I see it.  The speech in MW2 was different; I really am thinking of Boondock Saints where the brothers and dad execute the guy in the courthouse and in MW2 you get told the speech before knifing the dude in the eye.....still the similarity is there.  And youre right too, in a literary sense, RDR's ending is perfect.  It also hits just right at the movies its paying homage to.  Still, it pissed me off that Edgar fucking Ross got the best of John Marston in the end, and it seems funny that he just left Abigail and Jack alone and in possession of the family farm after that.   
 
Dying so willingly just seems like an odd fit for someone who wanted so desperately to have his family back at all costs

I like the ending of RDR. 
 
I do not like yours.

I liked the ending, especially the extra ending that comes after that via stranger quest.  That said I have to admit I found it out of character to have Marston walk out those doors like that after all the ass kicking he did throughout the game.  I would have preferred to go down fighting locked in a burning barn I think, then get forced to dive out a window, THEN get shot down before I can get to my feet.  That would have been a slightly better way to handle that particular sequence (instead of going so directly into a cut scene death).

" Good point.   That is weird; MW2 definitely wasnt on my mind, but I see it.  The speech in MW2 was different; I really am thinking of Boondock Saints where the brothers and dad execute the guy in the courthouse and in MW2 you get told the speech before knifing the dude in the eye.....still the similarity is there.  And youre right too, in a literary sense, RDR's ending is perfect.  It also hits just right at the movies its paying homage to.  Still, it pissed me off that Edgar fucking Ross got the best of John Marston in the end, and it seems funny that he just left Abigail and Jack alone and in possession of the family farm after that.     Dying so willingly just seems like an odd fit for someone who wanted so desperately to have his family back at all costs "

@Dylabaloo: Yeah, and I did, it just felt so....tacked on.  It wasnt even really a main story mission, and there was no ending past that to speak of except for the credits.  I definitely went and put one right between his eyes, though......
 
Oddly enough, the first time, I just went up to him (Ross) and shot him-and failed the stranger mission.  I thought, that cant be right, nothing happens after you get your "redemption"?  I had to reload, watch the cutscene and duel with him to even see the credits. 

Honestly it makes no sense for him to do anything other than walk out of the barn for a number of reasons.
 
1: He wanted to protect his family above all else.  If he is still alive his family is in danger, the end.
2: Why not walk out and face it like a man, he probably suspected it was coming and knew there was no point in trying to avoid it due to reason 1.
3: If he went for a long barn shootout they might have burnt his barn down, his farm already had troubles and with him and uncle dead it was already going to be hard enough without having to rebuild the barn.
 
I am curious though what did you guys do a mentos pose?  I shot about 5-6 of them in the face with my pistol so I definitely "went down fighting" , I just don't see how you can call what he did giving up.  Meanwhile Edgar Ross didn't get the best of him.  The US Government, Edgar Ross, his assistant, 10-15 federal agents, and about 50 members of the US army did.  You might say the deck was stacked.
 
That said I personally would have liked to see an alternate ending too but I would have done this....
 
Everything is the same until the barn then Jack decides to refuse to run and tried to make a stand with his pa.  Needless to say he does something balsy and stupid and gets killed while John and his wife are forced to watch.  They make a break for it which could result in another part of that mission until they finally loose them in the woods of tall trees.  As they ride back around and south toward mexico they look back in the distance to see their farm being burned down.  Zoom forward a few years and you see an older looking Marston burying his wife who died of some disease or some such outside a rundown shack in mexico.  We then proceed in a fairly similar line to a show down with ross except it goes down in armadillo where Marston says a few words and Ross makes excuses and draws and of course Marston kills him.  Then the new sheriff who is clearly some city lawman who recently moved out tries to stop him but gets scared and backs down while Marston looks at the town which is more run down and empty than before then looks back at Ross dead and as he turns tosses his own gun on the ground and walks away without a word.

@ Karkarov:  I likes.  That image, of Marston throwing his gun down after losing everything, and killing everyone involved, would be freaking EPIC.
 
I suppose what he did wasnt "giving up", but in a way it was in a game where you regularly took on just as many army men.  The deck was stacked the whole time, but he blazed right through hundreds of soldiers doing the govt's dirty work.  And I get it, it was definitely a proper way to end the story.  I just wanted Marston alive.  I wouldve been stoked if it ended like your idea.....

I wonder what would happen if you were to mark and kill all of the guys at the end.

 Speech from military guy and then death. Speech from Marston and family and then kills Ross.  End result of Price and Soap's actions: On the run. End result of Marston and family's actions: On the run.  True, the stuff you're dreaming up is drastically different from MW2, but you're hitting the same beats, which is really weird.  Also, your ending results from them running from the law, which wouldn't make much sense considering just what John wants. He wants none of that for him and his family, so he winds up giving himself up, because once he's done for, Ross has no reason to chase after Abigail and Jack. He freed them of that burden, making this the ultimate redemption, but that's another topic of discussion.     "

.I think the original ending gave it a more memorable feeling.  I loved how the entire end sequence was done.

" I wonder what would happen if you were to mark and kill all of the guys at the end. "

Wow. Finally a game manages to make a perfect ending, and yet people bitch and moan because it's not an happy one. 
John did what he had to in order to save his family. If that means to go out of life with a bang, then so be it. I think it was really refreshing to have a game end on a more realistic note, instead of the "I AM THE BEST! I ALWAYS SURVIVE!" ending of more or less every other game.

I loved the ending, except for the part where you post-game free roam play as Jack.
 
Made a new game just to be able to play with the guy I sunk 20+ hours into with.
 
Though I couldn't help but think if given total control, you could have definitely killed all those Army men (10 bottles of fiery-death, 5 sticks of dynamite + hundreds of rounds of ammo...). Still a good ending though.

" I wonder what would happen if you were to mark and kill all of the guys at the end. "

Why would he do that? The end was just John's realization that he could never escape his past. In a country where forgiveness is preached, he is given none. It was social commentary, something Rockstar does great in their games.

" You basically took MW2's ending and turned it into your dream RDR ending.  No thanks. "

that game had a perfect ending like the movie a bittersweet life.

@ Kazzurak: By the same token, why should he go against his word and come after Marston after all the dirty work he did for them?  The govt proved they werent above the killing of innocents as long as their mission was done...

lol erm...no I'm ok with it's own official ending, frankly.

Alot of people keep saying the ending was "perfect".   Theres no way that ending was "perfect".  It does fit in a literary sense (sort of), but wheres the redemption?  Marston wanted above all for Jack not to be like him, and now he is.  Like Jimbo said, thats a circle, not an arc.  Far from "perfect"

Come on, the guy was a fucking outlaw for most of his life, bureau would get him sooner or later. 

I thought a cool ending would've had the government stooges execute John as soon as he killed his last fellow gunslinger. We get a black screen.... several months later his son gets a letter telling him that his father was killed... he travels to Blackwater to learn what happened and exacts revenge. 
 
I wasn't huge on the ending myself. Everything leading up to it I loved though.

" Alot of people keep saying the ending was "perfect".   Theres no way that ending was "perfect".  It does fit in a literary sense (sort of), but wheres the redemption?  Marston wanted above all for Jack not to be like him, and now he is.  Like Jimbo said, thats a circle, not an arc.  Far from "perfect" "

I submit that "Red Dead Revenge" is a more fitting title for this game. I think it's hard to be "redeemed" if you're filled with about 30 bulletholes and rotting 6 feet under while your snot-nosed kid guns down your killer. The ending sucks, just saying.
 
To everyone saying that John had to walk out of the barn to keep his family safe, I kind of agree. But they mess it up from there, IMO. Having Jack kill Edgar Ross will only beget more violence on John's family in the end, which means he didn't really save them from anything. Oh, and congrats to the writers who took an adolescent kid with dreams of becoming something in life, filling him with rage, making him into some (goofy) uneducated brutus like his father, and calling him and his family "redeemed"...

Personally, I liked the ending for Red Dead Redemption. I know that it was not perfect, but nothing is perfect. The one key point I noticed is that while John always says he does not want Jack to go down the same route as he did during his life, what does Jack do? Jack goes in the exact same direction, and even kills an ex-fed. The game was called Redemption due to the fact John was told he could redeem himself by wiping out his former gang, and this is all the name refers to in my eyes. Had it been relating to the entire game, Revenge would be a much more fitting title. After all, he takes revenge on his former gang for the botched robbery, and Jack takes his revenge against Ross. It would make sense, but Rockstar likely went down the path they did for a reason. The game was in production for several years, so odds are they chose the path they did for a reason. Maybe they did it in order to really fulfil their idea of how the game should close. Or maybe, they did it due to the fact they need Jack alive, and John is no longer a character that will benefit their plan. For all we know the story could be split over two different games or an expansion with DLC. After all, we know Rockstar are damned good with DLC.
 
  @Karkarov said:

" Everything is the same until the barn then Jack decides to refuse to run and tried to make a stand with his pa.  Needless to say he does something balsy and stupid and gets killed while John and his wife are forced to watch.  They make a break for it which could result in another part of that mission until they finally loose them in the woods of tall trees.  As they ride back around and south toward mexico they look back in the distance to see their farm being burned down.  Zoom forward a few years and you see an older looking Marston burying his wife who died of some disease or some such outside a rundown shack in mexico.  We then proceed in a fairly similar line to a show down with ross except it goes down in armadillo where Marston says a few words and Ross makes excuses and draws and of course Marston kills him.  Then the new sheriff who is clearly some city lawman who recently moved out tries to stop him but gets scared and backs down while Marston looks at the town which is more run down and empty than before then looks back at Ross dead and as he turns tosses his own gun on the ground and walks away without a word. 

The ending was perfect, it made sense, represented something larger and was very memorable 

I actually liked the ending a lot, it's something you don't see too often in video games.  The guy you have been playing with the entire game gets blown away scarface style and then many years later his only son goes on a journey to kill the man that did his father in. 
 
Now that's a western. 
 
Not to say that your ending is bad, but it wouldn't be as memorable in let's say a couple years.  I have a feeling i'll remember how Red Dead ended for a long time to come.