Roger Clark is certain Rockstar Games will make Red Dead Redemption 3. He is equally certain he will not be the lead.
Clark, who voiced and motion-captured Arthur Morgan across every frame of Red Dead Redemption 2‘s 60-plus hour campaign, said in a recent interview that Rockstar would be “crazy” not to make another game in the franchise. He also said Arthur’s story is “fully told” and that a hypothetical third game would likely feature “a brand-new storyline and a fresh cast of characters.”
For anyone who has not played Red Dead Redemption 2, here is the context without major spoilers. Arthur Morgan is the protagonist of a story set in 1899 about the final days of the Van der Linde gang. The game’s narrative is widely considered one of the greatest in gaming history. Arthur’s arc is complete in a way that leaves very little room for continuation. Clark is not being coy when he says the story is told. It is told. The ending is the ending.
With that said, Red Dead Redemption 2 was itself a prequel to the original Red Dead Redemption, featuring a younger version of John Marston as a supporting character years before his story in the first game. Rockstar has already demonstrated that it can build an entire game around a new protagonist while weaving established characters into the narrative. A Red Dead Redemption 3 set earlier in the Van der Linde gang’s history, or in an entirely different time period, could include Arthur in a supporting role, a cameo, or a flashback without making him the lead.
If that next mainline game is Red Dead Redemption 3, which is the most likely candidate after Grand Theft Auto 6 and Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick talking about legacy IP, we are looking at a release somewhere in the early 2030s. Clark’s statement that it will “take a long time” is, if anything, an understatement.
The “different story” aspect of Clark’s comments aligns with how the franchise has always worked. The original Red Dead Redemption was itself a spiritual successor to Red Dead Revolver, with no shared characters. RDR2 was a prequel that introduced an entirely new protagonist while weaving the first game’s cast into supporting roles. Each entry has moved backward in time: Revolver (unspecified late 1800s), RDR2 (1899), RDR (1911).
A third game could continue that pattern and go further back into the Van der Linde gang’s formation era, the 1870s or 1880s, when Dutch was recruiting young outlaws and building the family that RDR2 showed falling apart. A younger Arthur could appear as a teenager or young man. A younger Dutch could be the charismatic visionary he is described as being before paranoia consumed him, or Rockstar could break the pattern entirely and set the game in a completely different time period, a different frontier, a different country, or even a different century.
Clark is right that Rockstar would be “crazy” not to make it, though. RDR2 is the third-best-selling video game of all time. It holds a 97 on Metacritic. It generated record annual sales in 2026, eight years after launch. The franchise is too valuable to abandon, and Zelnick has said as much on the record. The only question is when, not if, and “when” is likely measured in years, not months.
If it’s any consolation, it’s believed that a re-release of RDR2 is coming, and the game is currently available on PS Plus.
