The final twist in Red Dead Redemption is one for the ages. After John Marston gets his revenge on Dutch Van der Lind, he himself is gunned down when a traitor gives away his whereabouts afterward. It's unexpected and heartbreaking, but the head writer was taken aback by the extreme reaction to the narrative choice.
Rockstar co-founder Dan House was a long-time narrative lead at the studio before his departure in 2020. He was in the trenches for the first Red Dead Redemption, and he recalls the thought process with Christian Cantamessa, the lead designer, leading up to the climax.
"He was into it, and I was into it, but just knowing the production realities of - how does an open-world game work if you've killed the protagonist?" Houser remembers, to IGN. "So I said, 'I think maybe we have to kill him.' And he goes, 'That's a great idea. Got to do it.' I said, ‘I don't know if... let me just think about this.'"
Their departments were easy, because it's all storytelling, whereas there were large mechanical considerations. "The nature of an open-world game is you finish a story, then you go back into the world and wrap up all the side content if you want to," Houser says. "We'd have to play as someone else for that."
They decided on Jack, John's son, who gets aged up three years to 19 in an epilogue timeskip. He becomes your character for the endgame side-quests and larfing around, opening a number of quandaries for the studio.
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