#osvitio

The Partitio parallels are obvious on the surface, albeit rather shallow: they both hail from the 19th century US Wild West, or a fantastical analogue of it, and they have the accents to match. Fandom likes to call Partitio a cowboy, but Sundown feels noticeably more authentic in that regard. His look and backing musical tracks are ripped straight out of spaghetti westerns, whereas Partitio dresses like a 1920s businessman and comes with a jazz leitmotif. Also, Sundown is an actual gunslinger, rather than having to exist in a pseudo-Wild West where firearms don't exist.

As for Osvald, both he and Sundown are tall, bearded older men who rarely speak. Sundown is explicitly the oldest character to make it to his game's final chapter, and the irony of his Kid moniker is commented upon in the script. They also both have personal arcs related to being less closed-off to others, and their stories are tied in some way to vengeance: Osvald's dealing it out himself, while Sundown's incarnation of Odio is the "child of vengeance."

And then there's the bits with Mad Dog. I've already more than put in the work to show how Osvitio functions as a ship, but when it comes to Sundown and Mad Dog -

The remake describes their relationship by quoting Romeo and Juliet and likening it to something out of Greek myth...in a period when calling something Greek was a colorful euphemism for gay stuff. Sundown's scene in the game's best ending is riding off with Mad Dog. Also, just look at this official art.

That piece does not tell me that this is a one-sided rivalry where neither of them ever kills the other (unless the player chooses to do so at the end of the story). It tells me that these two men have known each other carnally, probably multiple times over a period of years, and are never going to talk about it. Mad Dog will talk around it, calling them lovers half in jest and dropping the aforementioned literary references; Sundown just won't say anything at all. But they've definitely done some things far out on the lone prairie.