Summary
Despite being one of the most enduring images of American pop culture, no video game franchise captures the feeling of being a wild and free cowboy better than Rockstar’sRed Dead Redemption. Across both games in the series, players are able to immerse themselves fully in the waning days of the Wild West. That includes everything from horseback riding, wilderness exploration,and the series’ iconic honor system.
With the inherent lawlessness of the setting, the honor system allows players to express what kind of cowboy they want to be: the noble gun-slinging stranger that fixes problems where they’re found, the black-hatted bandit that terrorizes the countryside, or something in between. InRed Dead RedemptionandRed Dead Redemption 2, players take control of members of an outlaw gang, but being that the Van der Linde gang’s story seems to have run its course, a possible third game could take an exciting new direction with how it tackles honor.
The Van der Linde gang’s story is one of the most beloved in modern gaming, with protagonists John Marston and Arthur Morgan frequently topping lists of thegreatest game characters of all time. But they represent a very limited scope of what the Wild West was. Scrappy underdog outlaws clearly make for really compelling stories, but with the gang’s narrative wrapped up neatly, it may be time for a thirdRed Dead Redemptionto explore a different protagonist archetype that would lend its own unique spin to the honor system.
Thehonor-based choices John and Arthur facein their respective games are meaningful and have an effect on how their characters evolve, but they’re all choices very specific to their gunslinger lifestyle. Different types of characters in the West can have very different types of choices that still impact their honor.
A sheriff may have a hard time making choices regarding how they enforce the law in their town; letting a crook go and keeping the peace gives high honor while pursuing a criminal and letting the town fend for itself in their absence yields low honor. A bounty hunter protagonist may receive higher or lower honor depending on how they choose to bring in their bounties.A railway tycoon like Leviticus Cornwallmight have to choose between building a railway around a town or bulldozing the whole place to build the track more efficiently.
Now that theVan der Linde gang’s story is wrapped, it would be very interesting for the nextRed Dead Redemption 3to focus on a snake oil salesman character. These ‘doctors’ would go from town to town in the Old West selling alleged miracle cures that did nothing at all. By the time their hoodwinked customers realized they’d been scammed, they were long out of town to start the process again.
Red Dead Redemption 3could easily feature one of these types of characters as the primary protagonist to really shift up the honor system. The question of doing the right thing and selling actual medicine at a cost to the business' profits versus the desire to keep making money to buy more weapons and horses would be an interesting application of the system that the series hasn’t explored yet. A lot of the honor choices in the original games boil down to the obvious good choice against the obvious bad choice. Expanding the protagonist to a different Western archetype like the snake oil salesman or even a Pinkerton detective can dramatically expand the amount of choices within the honor system and make thenextRed Dead Redemptiona little less black and white.
