Rockstar Games has revealed its plans for Red Dead Redemption 2's single-player DLC - namely, that there aren't any. In a recent interview with VG247, the developers talked about their vision for the future, and it looks like that future has "Online" written all over it.
During the interview, which you can read in full here, the developers speak predominantly about Red Dead Online, the differences between it and GTA Online and the future they envision for the multiplayer mode.
As we suspected, the Role system introduced in Frontier Pursuits is what we can expect going forward. Players will be able to expand their careers and pick up new ones as more content is added to the game in the coming months.
Rockstar's people weren't mentioning single player at all during the interview, and when asked, their answer wasn't what we were hoping for. Right now, there is no plan to create story DLC for Red Dead Redemption 2. The developers are "100% focused on Online right now" due to many concurrent plans and a desire to translate everything people loved in single player to Online in some form.
Rockstar clearly learned from the situation with GTA Online. Back when GTA 5 was released to roaring success, the company did not yet know how massive GTA Online would become. They even officially announced story DLC being in development, however that was never released and years later they clarified that it got canned.
Instead of running those laps again with Red Dead Online, they're just straight-up saying it - don't expect additional story content. This does make sense for multiple reasons, however. Red Dead Redemption 2's storyline is a neatly tied package without loose ends. It leads on into Red Dead Redemption seamlessly, and during its course you don't have a lot of blanks.
Had we gotten some single player DLC, it would likely have been a prequel (even though Red Dead Redemption 2 is already a prequel for the 2010 game), or a spin-off focusing on some side characters, or an entirely new narrative completely unrelated to any previous Red Dead story. It would have run the risk of feeling superfluous.
We love a good single player experience, more so than a multiplayer one, but there is something to be said about outstaying one's welcome, and the single player portion is already extremely long. On the other hand Red Dead Online is enjoyable, but had a rough start and still needs some polish. While highly successful, it isn't anywhere near GTA Online's level, but a lot of care and content can help narrow that gap.
What kind of adventures could await in upcoming Red Dead Online content?
