If it wasn’t already clear before, Dan Houser clearly has a favorite among Rockstar Games’ treasure trove of award-winning titles.
The lead creative behind Rockstar’s best titles sat down with Lex Fridman to discuss many things. Among those is the tumultuous development of Red Dead Redemption 2, which, according to him, went past the given budget and timeline. And while he’s moved on to found Absurd Ventures, a multimedia development studio working on everything from comic books to a new open-world game, the emotional weight of stepping away from decades of work remains.
However, it’s interesting how differently he feels about the two major franchises he helped shape. When it comes to Grand Theft Auto 6 playing out from a distance, Houser seems relatively comfortable with the situation. The same can’t be said for the prospect of Red Dead Redemption 3 happening without him.
The reason comes down to the fundamental nature of each series. Grand Theft Auto had standalone stories. On the other hand, Red Dead Redemption functions completely differently. “I think it probably would be, in some ways, sadder if someone continued on Red Dead, because it was a cohesive two-game arc,” Houser stated.
The Redemption saga tells one interconnected story about the Van der Linde gang and the people caught in the orbit of its leader, Dutch. The first game shows the final days of that era through John Marston’s perspective, while the prequel explores the gang’s decline through Arthur Morgan’s eyes. The pair creates deeply connected narratives that inform and enhance each other. Details, characters, and events from RDR2 recontextualize everything players experience in the first game. The tragedy of Arthur’s story adds layers of meaning to John’s eventual fate. It’s storytelling designed as a unified arc rather than separate episodes.
But even though Dan Houser admits that he’d feel sad if Rockstar Games continued with the Red Dead franchise, he admits that it will probably happen, too.
After all, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling video games of all time and is widely considered an all-time great. It’d be a shame to end the franchise in its third entry, even if it’ll be on an extremely high note.
Of course, Dan Houser is no longer part of Rockstar. He’s currently focused on making open-world single-player titles with Absurd Ventures. So Red Dead Redemption 3 happening is still up to the creatives left within the company, particularly his brother, Sam Houser.
With that said, it’ll be interesting to see how the series continues without one of the people responsible for its narrative coherence and emotional weight.
Perhaps before that happens, Rockstar might consider keeping fans busy by dropping more frequent updates to Red Dead Online and maybe even finally releasing that long-rumored patch for current-gen consoles and the Nintendo Switch 2.
