Expert Blogger

While hope may be more abundant in relation to a game within the beloved _ Red Dead _ franchise, there is a case to be made that the trust and optimism in Rockstar’s delivery of the title may be misled, as outlined in u/kentuckythumbpicker’s post on Redd

Bringing it full circle, I do not want to see Red Dead Redemption 2 pull a Magnificent Seven, even if this means making a bad guy version of the Seven. Which right now it’s looking that way. Seven cowboys riding off into the distance? The Magnificent Seven (I’m talking simply click the up coming post 1960 version) is a great standalone tale on its own, while also having borrowed from a tale not its own. If you haven’t heard of Seven Samurai go watch it immediately, stop reading this article. While video games are drawing more and more from film, Rockstar has proved they can develop games that draw from certain pools while keeping it fresh and original.

What adds to the wariness is the fact that Rockstar – a Take-Two Interactive subsidiary – had originally intended on releasing DLC for _ GTA V’s _ story mode, which never actually came to fruition. Then, when asked about the planned release of the DLC during a 2015 earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick stated that story-based DLC was never discussed. In 2017, Rockstar finally shed some light on the lack of story-mode DLC, when Director of Design, Imran Sarwar, stated that, “it was not really a conscious decision, it’s just what happened.” Sarwar went on to state, “At Rockstar, we will always have bandwidth issues because we are perfectionists and to make huge complex games takes a lot of time and resources. Not everything is always possible, but we still love single-player open-world games more than anything.” The latter sentence gives some hope that _ Red Dead Redemption 2 _ will receive the attention and treatment that it rightfully deserves, but while any game is in development, the mention of studio “bandwidth issues” is sure to send shivers down gamers’ spi

While Red Dead Redemption 2 will largely focus around Arthur Morgan, the dutiful right-hand man of Dutch Van der Linde, an even more significant portion of the game will revolve around the gang itself and Arthur’s relationships with each member of the outlaw gang as they try to outrun the law and survive in the vastness of the American West.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson ( Boogie Nights , Punch-Drunk Love ) and featuring a towering Academy Award-winning performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood ‘s emphasis on the struggles between the old ways of the West and the impending boom of the oil industry carries with it several ties to the time period that the Red Dead titles have explored, and likely will play into the themes of Red Dead Redemption 2 .

As the oldest of the entries here, there wouldn’t be a list of Western films complete without at least one entry from the extensive canon of legendary Western actor John Wayne. However, among all of the actor’s work in the Western genre, The Searchers (from director John Ford) still ranks tall among its all-time greats, and is certainly worth a watch for those looking to hop into Red Dead Redemption 2 .

If The Proposition ends up catching your eye, a neat tidbit about its director, John Hillcoat, is the fact that he created a machinima short film with Rockstar Games in the buildup to releasing Red Redemption in 2010, which was called Red Dead Redemption: The Man from Blackwater . The short film itself was created entirely inside the engine of Red Dead Redemption and was aired on FOX around the time of the game’s release – the full movie is still available for viewing here (via Dagger 323 on YouTube).

Another item you’ll want to snag in your travels is the ancient tomahawk, located East of the Wapiti Indian Reservation, on the Eastern part of the Calumet Ravine. It lies embedded and forgotten in an old tree trunk, awaiting its new dest

Unfortunately, GTAV felt a little too cliché. This is where I get nervous that Red Dead Redemption 2 might lean too heavily on certain tropes. I would much rather see an American western tale that resembles a classic, opposed to a film that has been rebooted as of this year. I do not need a game with big set pieces, explosions and more ammunition falling than the leaves on the trees. I’m going to make one more recommendation of the west I envision opposed to the west presented by Hollywood: the Lonesome Dove series puts on the glitz of western tropes while also doing a great job explaining how people lived at the time. This is more in the style that would be preferred in Red Dead Redemption 2. A game where cowboys are cowboys, people are living by the land they’ve settled and getting along fine with the natives. Yes, there were some bad Tribes, but mostly few and far between.

The Western genre is vast and expansive, and surely there are plenty of other deserving picks that we could go into further detail on. However, the five films we picked below were curated to give a variety of the Western film genre across the past several decades, while also incorporating some significant thematic or aesthetic ties that (likely) may appear in Red Dead Redemption 2 .