Red Dead Redemption 3 is likely a number of years away from its announcement, let alone a release. Each new Rockstar Games franchise is carefully crafted to raise the bar for open-world game development. Its focus seems to be on Grand Theft Auto and the aforementioned western franchise at the moment, so a third game seems like a sure thing. However, as Arthur Morgan's story had players enter the Van Der Linde Gang when it was still somewhat intact, the next chapter will have to get more creative with its story.
Rounding out the trilogy with a dense father-son story could heighten its emotional weight while also taking cues from other fantastic titles of recent years, namely the God of War titles to release on the PS4 and PS5. Those products are very different to the more open-ended level design of Rockstar's typical offerings, but Red Dead Redemption 3 could take the character dynamic and use it to give the series something new, with a man and his child navigating the wild west as it screams to a halt.
God of War's Kratos Took a New Direction in Recent Years
While Kratos earned a reputation for angry yelling and frantic rampages across Greek Mythology, his priorities shifted when he arrived in the Norse realm of Midgard. When players meet him at the opening of 2018's God of War, he's far from the man he once was, now somewhat mellow and desperate for a quiet life as a father to Atreus. However, a simple task of taking his wife's ashes to the highest point in the realms is paved with tense encounters that require the Spartan he once was, rather than the father he is learning to be.
Having Kratos try to suppress his rage and learn how to teach his son to be powerful, yet controlled was a source of emotion in the first game, and carries over into the fateful events of God of War Ragnarok. Red Dead Redemption has had a fatherly dynamic before with John and Jack Marston, but it wasn't explored to the same degree as Kratos and Atreus,despite this being a philosophy that could work well for the Wild West.
A Companion Could Bring New Benefits to Red Dead Redemption
The first two Red Dead Redemption games took two characters from the Van Der Linde Gang at different points in their life, and told tragic tales that made each personality truly memorable. John Marston was a moral man being tempted from a righteous path, and Arthur Morgan was a fundamentally bad person who was perhaps the first to understand that his way of life was crumbling. They are both excellent western protagonists, but Red Dead Redemption 3 can't be centered around another member of the gang who fights with their inner moral compass.
God of War giving Kratos a son to protect and teach was a stroke of genius, as it provided a catalyst to break down his character's walls to allow a shred of humanity to shine through. It did wonders for both his and Atreus' development, and on a mechanical level it helped shepherd players along the path by following Atreus instead of getting lost along the way. Jack gave John something to fight for in 2010's Red Dead Redemption, but didn't feature enough to have a significant impact in the story. Doing more with a relationship like that could give Red Dead Redemption 3 a new lease on life, using a tried-and-tested idea to make a third game better than the last.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.