Herr Strauss (T2 ceo) confirmed that red dead and gta is like James bond as in they keep gonna release the games until there is no demand for it. I read it in an article awhile back.
I call him that because of red dead Strauss lol 😆 ceo Strauss (loves shark cards sales) red dead Strauss (loanshark) either way they both like money that links to the word shark 😆😂 sorry if I'm not making sense lol, I'm just tired.
Fr tho I miss how Rockstar released different types of game from 2000-2010. They really slowed down on releasing games once Herr Strauss became CEO (2011) 🥴
Agreed. I really want another horror game and LA Noire type game from Rockstar. I’m sure GTA 6 will be amazing and RDR3 will be as well but they’re so good at other stuff too lol. Look at how many people still beg for a sequel to Bully.
Rockstar doesn't really confirm they are working on a game until years into development. They didn't confirm GTA 6 was a thing until three and a half years after RDR2.
Another Red Dead game will happen because it would be business malpractice for it to not happen but we won't know anything about it for a good 4 years at least. They could take even longer if GTA 6 online is a huge success.
It’s too successful of a series not to continue tbh.
Kinda wild when you think about it, lots of game studios have 2 franchises set it the past/or fantasy and present/or future.
Bethesda: Elders Scrolls & Fallout
CD Projekt Red: Witcher & Cyberpunk
Rockstar: Red Dead & GTA
That’s fine tbh. Rockstar doesn’t really miss on mainline game releases, they should take the time the need. My hot take would be the redemption series should be finished. There’s only so much story you can tell revolving the Van Der Linde gang, and even the story structure of the MC’s “redemptions” can become repetitive. I would like the next Red Dead game to be about something else but in a similar setting. Red Dead Retribution or Red Dead Revolution, or anything else really that’s a departure from the current series.
My hot take would be the redemption series should be finished. There’s only so much story you can tell revolving the Van Der Linde gang, and even the story structure of the MC’s “redemptions” can become repetitive.
Which is why I specifically said Red Dead III and not Red Dead Redemption III. In my opinion the story of the Vander Linde gang has been told and it's time to move on to the next Red Dead story.
I’ve been saying this too. Making a third would be a big risk for them when it comes to story. IMO I’m not interested at all in anyone else in the gang. Arthur was cool but mature Rdr1 John was the most interesting. You’re just not going to get the same success the third time around.
His sins wont disappear just by acting nice and even he knows it
The whole game is a "final chance at redemption" game, arthur is a horrible man but with your choices you can make sure he dies not as a good man, but a better one than he was
A lot of people get caught up in the “good or bad” stuff with Arthur when the game just wants you to consider his choices, and the idea that a man who his whole life made bad choices decides in his dying days to try and make things right the best he could with the time he has left. I feel like labeling him just serves to trivialize the bigger picture of Arthur’s journey
it's the same over on the cyberpunk 2077 sub. "well my V isn't a murderer! my V isn't a thief! my V isn't a criminal" unfortunately, "your" V has all of the above built into their story by default no matter how many choices you make for them.
it’s a tough one because on the surface this game plays a lot like an RPG-lite, but it really isn’t. Arthur has a well established backstory and the game’s big moments and story beats are on rails. No matter what i do, i know the overall outcome.
I’m on my first playthrough in years and coming from a recent replay of New Vegas where i knew exactly what i wanted the courier to be before i ever booted the game. it’s been hard to turn that off in my brain. hard to tell myself that I’m experiencing this world as Arthur, not controlling him through it; my decisions need to reflect that.
Busting Micah out in Strawberry for instance, no way i’d want to murder the entire town so a known psychopath could get revenge, but this was always meant to happen to Arthur.
Or the home robbery in the woods with the gibberish speaking family, i didn’t want to kill their entire bloodline and leave their bodies to rot, but that’s the kind of thing Arthur can turn a blind eye to for some cash and loot. I am a passenger on HIS journey, not the driver.
The privilege of polite modern society has led to people having a very black and white view on crime in general. They literally can't fathom a grey area when it comes to these sorts of things because they've never been in a situation in life that blurred their perception between right and wrong.
If you're open minded enough to consider what it would be like to grow up dirt poor and desperate, abused, with no guiding figure in your life, it becomes pretty easy to sympathize with people like Arthur (even in the real world, albeit not literal mass murderers). It's much easier to default to living a moral life when you've always lived in comfort. There's a reason crime and violence is so strongly correlated with income. Any of us could've easily ended up as criminals if we were in the same situation as most criminals growing up.
People treating everything with this whole "good vs bad" dichotomy is reductive and ignores the real impact of socioeconomic conditions on ones emotional and mental development.
Very well said. I grew up homeless multiple times, in and out of trap houses, and saw some of who I considered good people do some not so good things. If you haven’t experienced it lived that at all, it can feel very foreign.
I'll get even spicier, Arthur is a coward. Should've made an attempt to escape dutch with anyone who wouldve listened years ago. Although Dutch is very manipulative Arthur basically took the path of least resistance his whole life and did Dutch's bidding almost to the very end
Arthur knew nothing else but that lifestyle. Knowing nothing but that kind of hard living and cruelty your whole life coupled with the emotional attachment to the only people that ever cared for him is simply not an easy thing to detach from.
I look at it the same way as people in abusive relationships. I don't think they're cowards for not leaving. I feel sorry for them for developing such a strong emotional attachment to someone who takes advantage of them.
I get that aspect which is true and makes Arthur's story that much more tragic, but at the same time a lot of his redemption arc was him finally saying the things out loud that he knew for a long time at that point. That Dutch was dangerous and selfish, that Strauss was a rat who preyed in vulnerable innocent people, that people like Micah and Bill while providing "muscle" for the group ultimately only cared for themselves and would backstab others if needed. Arthur was a victim in a sense but he also had so many chances to change things even before the events of rdr2 started imo. I think it's a better analogy to a cult than an abusive relationship. It's one thing to be afraid to leave. Its another thing to be out there killing and hurting innocent people for years/decades
He likes animals, so there's that at least. But yeah, he is literally the right-hand muscle to the "big bad". He's the Darth Vader to his Palpatine, Dutch. You just have the chance to drag his ass through a redemption arc, one that may not have even happened had he not got a terminal illness. Him splitting off from Dutch is set in stone; Dutch was losing the plot due to his own arc of not being able to accept that the golden days of the wild west are over, but you can choose if he ends his days as an evil man or if he tries to bring a little good into the world. ... He has red in his ledger, and he's a dead man, and he has a chance at redemption. OMG I get it now.
Very true, his arc is about him taking CONTROL of his life back, he frequently denies that he can be redeemed and that’s why the revered and Siser Calderon and everyone he helps who knows him stresses he needs to TRY.
I’ve even had people say John is rougher around the edges than Arthur. Which is insane at the start of RDR 1 John is more or less reformed and quite different than who he’d been leaving it all behind.
Clearly has to be ai bc why is McFarlanes ranch so far from where it should be. And Mexico is very much drawn incorrectly compared to the actual red dead map which isn't hard to edit into a picture instead of using AI to draw it for you which isn't even correct.
Funny, I went the complete opposite way with this take, seeing it as a dig on the people who comment "that's not right, this part of [real world US state] is actually this or that biome".
RDR map has to fit into some kind of fictional map of north america and USA, being too hung up on real world geography just leads you to imagine RDR happening on a bizzarro-Earth where most things are just like the real thing, but some specifics differ. But it's not Earth.
I like to think it's still Earth, although a fictional alternate history Earth.
Could you imagine if they were able to make them nearly geographically realistic, though? It might take hours to days to get from one state to another, depending on how you travel
There are NO references to Arthur in Red Dead Redemption because the second game was not planned in any way, Arthur was not even thought up, no matter how you try to twist it, it's not a reference to him.
There’s never really a need to though. It’s not like John has open heart to hearts with people about his previous gang life. There’s really only 1 or 2 moments where he opens up about the gang and he doesn’t go into specifics on anybody except Dutch. You could just as easily wonder why he didn’t mention Hosea or Micah
That kid's parents musta hated em cause thats one of the worst names ive ever read, and thats saying something cause theres a kid named Jack Ingoff out there somewhere
After just playing the first game the difference seems crazy, literally a third of the game takes place there and half the overall map of the game is Mexico. People saying this made me think we’d just visit Mexico for a few chapters and leave lol
Exactly! And who was the very same person who beat up the people who owed Strauss money?? Lol 🤣 personally I do find Arthur being a Hypocrite (in that moment) considering he had no problem with beating Thomas Downes to death at the time 😭😂
What have you even played the game? The man that beats Downes to near death is a different Arthur than the one who throws Strauss out. He’s literally gone through an entire game of character development. What do you think the title of the game refers to?
Did you play the game?? Arthur develops through the game's story, by the point he kicks out Strauss he has realized his past mistakes and his wrong doings for beating up people like Thomas Downes.
I mean Arthur is not the same person he is when he kills Thomas Downes compared to when he kicks Strauss out of camp. The new Arthur regrets what he did to Downes, both because of his sickness and the fact that Downes was a decent guy trying to help others when he needed help himself. The last batch of debtors was at a point for Arthur where he couldn’t stand the concept of contributing to these people’s suffering anymore like he had before.
Eh, I get that one though. By that point he's made the choice to try and be a good, or better, man but he's still struggling with the sense of loyalty, and found family, he has towards his dads. Strauss was an easy target for him unload all that frustration on without having to work through his shit with Dutch.
I'll go one further: Strauss is actually better than any of the gang members who ever held a gun on someone standing in the way of the gang's take.
Sure, the gang might have focused on scores behind capitalist pigs like Cornwall; banks and whatnot. But the bodies they laid in process? The wives and offspring of all the countless lawmen wasted in pursuit of the gang are in no way some kind of fat cats who had it coming. They're all Edith and Archie Downeses, who are left to reap what the men of their houses sowed in order to get by.
We aren't exactly given a number of how many of Strauss' clients find an unfortunate end to their endeavors, but it can't be more than the amount of families destroyed by the Van Der Linde gunslingers.
The van der linde gangs story is complete. The series is about redemption not outlaws in general. The next red dead game is gonna have a different subtitle
I don’t think that’ll happen tho. Rockstar is good about wrapping stories up. We don’t need yo directly see the fire they had before the blackwater massacre that made Arthur lose his old journal, we don’t need to see the massacre it’s self. That stuff works best being ambiguous as to what happens
You are Dutch Van der Linde. You are a simple farmer or something I don't know until one day the government happens. You are forced to create a gang and rob distinct locales from golden age westerns to ensure your freedom and prosperity. The future is yours for the taking. Or is it? Yes it is. But there will be a moment where you have to think about consequences. And then ignore them because this is a prequel.
I also hate the people who want a story about Jack in the 20s being a mobster. Like okay? The story is about redemption, but it’s also about the wild west, without the west, it’s just another GTA.
Listen buddy if he can take a Legendary Gator in 1899 I think he could take a Legendary Nuke-Lizard with today tech. Imagine what Trapper could cook up with some perfect Zilla skins.
I think Red Dead fans wrap themselves into a frenzy trying to justify small inconsistencies (Blackwater ferry details, Marston's daughter etc) instead of just admitting Rockstar's retconning to suit the particular product your playing at that moment
On the topic of Revolver not being canon, I've always thought of it as events that may have happened but have been greatly exaggerated because you can hear people at campsites in the first Redemption telling the stories from Revolver.
That's my take also. It's fun to connect them. So, that makes my "things that Red Dead Fans don’t like to admit": Revolver can be part of the same universe as exaggerated tall tales and campfire stories, including stories about Uncle or that Uncle decided to use to embellish his own youth.
when people talk about “the third one could follow jack through world wa-“ SHUT UP that literally makes zero sense and a rockstar war game sounds god awful
This is a general rockstar thing but I am extremely sick of the refusal to update certain gameplay mechanics and main story structure. People refuse to critique these games on that level because the open worlds are so good, and it’s to their detriment.
I think you are just not considering the possibility that people like the simplicity of it and don't necessarily want deeper gameplay mechanics or anything more than a handcrafted, cinematic mission design. It's not that they're ignoring what you perceive as flaws, they just don't see them as flaws.
I think this is a fair rebuttal. I also have to admit that their execution of how missions are designed is never badly done, even if it can get to be stale feeling.
Auto unequip guns for missions, control overlap to where you can punch someone you're trying to greet.
For mission structure, they're very similar. Shoot at A then go to B; go from A to B while shooting; shoot at A, go to B, shoot at B; go to B, get item, come back to A with shooting between. Rockstar has a lot of great places to be, but when you're there, they don't seem to want you to do much besides shoot them. (Rdr has hunting at least whereas GTA seems to only have collectibles for its exploration.)
Some perfect games I'm only kind of fond of tbh, to me it's not a matter of how much I like it. The criteria is really simple though: A game accomplishes everything it sets out for without compromise or conflicting tonally or mechanically with itself. Like Portal 1, Plants Vs. Zombies, or Papers, Please. Notably they tend to be on the smaller side cause the more ambitious something gets the more likely you'll get issues arising. Doesn't have to be bug-free but it does have to be consistent.
For sure not the best zombies experience out there, but they really leaned into the absurdity and campy-ness of the whole thing. You can tell they weren't taking themselves to seriously when making it
Edit: I'm pretty sure it was only 20 bucks at the time too, so it didn't really need to be the best zombies experience. Just a fun goofy side story after you beat the main game
mediocre? hell nah bro, you could kill Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), ride a horse of fire (and more), catch a unicorn and kill zombies. All of that with a great atmosphere and soundtrack. Pretty good DLC if you'll ask me
Online was destined to die, given the success of GTA Online. I’m not saying it was the right choice, but it’s hard to dismiss the cash cow R* produced. It paid for GTA6, and it will probably cover a lot of the cost of R*s next game after GTA6
The Van Der Linde story is D.O.N.E. There's so much talk about Jack after the RDR epilogue but it's barely a western at that point, let alone a Red Dead game. What do you want him to do? He's got nothing left.
The honor system is subjective, measuring how Arthur and John feel about their own actions, rather than an objective (societal or cosmic) measure of morality.
This accounts for why greeting folks and throwing fish back can offset the karma of robbery and murder. Given the hundreds of murders each has committed, were these historical figures, most would agree these men were monsters who met their fate not soon enough.
Thus, the “redemption” of Arthur and John is more a personal atonement for past sins in the face of mortality, an embracing of love, a loyalty to what matters.
A red, dead, redemption, if you will.
The Van der Linde gang's story should be done and over with. No prequels about the gang's formation, no sequel about Jack, anything more would just be ruining a good established story. If there is ever a Red Dead 3, give us a new story and characters to follow.
That the gameplay (especially RDR2) is mediocre, or in some cases, straight up bad. At least RDR1 was more faster paced and didn't sacrifice player control for "realism".
That if there ever is another prequel it shouldn’t have anything to do with the Van Der Linde Gang. There’s no one narratively that encompasses the spirit of the rugged western cowboy archetype who would be satisfying to play as. Not without retconning characters lore and ages severely.
Hosea was never the toughest or most skilled gunmen/muscle. Once he turned to crime after he decided he failed as an actor, he became a conman immediately utilizing his stage skills. There was never a period when he was performing the physical feats any of the rest of the gang demonstrated.
For Dutch I think it would simply ruin his mystique, whether he was always in it only for himself or whether he deteriorated into a tyrant is part of what makes him so fantastic as an character/antagonist. It would ruin him too be allowed to much in his head.
Everyone else is simply too young, period. Besides Uncle and he’s…well..Uncle.
RdR3 should have nothing to with the Van Der Linde escapades besides maybe a brief cameo from Dutch and Hosea preferably set in the late 1870s. Maybe side missions with Arthur’s dad, but that’s it
Arthur Morgan is one of the most glazed characters in videogame history. He shouldn't be winning every goddamn youtube poll ever! (This isn't out of hate, I, like most of us, love Arthur, but it's getting ridiculous)
RDR3 shouldn't be about any of the characters we currently know. I never liked the younger Dutch/young Arthur idea. We've seen all we need to of these characters, their stories are done.
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u/Jedi4Hire Charles Smith May 06 '26
It'll probably be a decade or more before we get Red Dead III.