So Rockstar is finally making a new cowboy game. Huzzah! Regardless of whether it’s called 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Red Dead Redemption 2, Red Dead 3 (hey, Revolver counts&hel🌼lip; kinda) or Red Dead: Zombie John Marston’s Revenge, it’ll undoubtedly be 💙a wonderful virtual Western. But can it hope to fully match its illustrious predecessor? After all, John’s epic open world had a seismic impact on the sandbox genre; penning a beautifully sombre note to the dying throes of the Old West across a map that ticked off every great frontier trope. 

Judging by that map, it looks ൩like Rockstar’s next cowboy classic could be a prequel to Redemption, a decision which makes total thematic sense. Spoiler: Marston dies in 1911, his untimely demise marking the end of the era of the outlaw as civilization (and the automobile) slaughter the days of swinging saloon doors and XXX whiskey. There ain’t a whole lot left to say about the final days of the American Frontier.

That’s 🅠why it’s so important the next Red Dead finds its own voice, and crucially, its own distinct era. Luckily, there’s 🅰plenty left to say about the Old West’s 19th century heyday; an era defined by the American Gold Rush and a sense of pioneering discovery. That and, y’know, dudes in ponchos blasting the crap out of each other at high noon. 

This feels like the ideal setting for the next Red Dead. Picture a map dotted with unexplored markers; each icon representing an undiscovered patch of wilderness for your aspiring frontiersman to colonise. Capture an oil deposit. Mine the land.🍷 Make a tonne of dollars. Uh… beat a distraught preacher to death with a bowling pin, then suggest he . 

Considering Rockstar’s well documented obsession with stuffing movie references into its works, would♎ you really be surprised if Red Dead💖 3 went all Daniel Plainview on us and centred on competing oil barons who are violently vying for petroleum deposits? Say, with an empire-building system like the one in GTA: Vice City Stories? 

If the carbonite cool developer set the game slightly later in the 19th century, though, one huge advan🦋tage quickly roars into view… you could play as a young John Marston! In RDR, much is made of John’s wayward past. Throughout his teens and early twenties, the charismatic cowboy was a key cog in a savage gang. He and his outlaw buddies - like Bill Williamson and Dutch van der Linde - murdered, stole and pillaged, which sounds like an ideal setup for a campaign built around old timey gang wars and multi-tiered, GTA 5 inspired bank robberies. 

Roll back the clock even fu🧸rther, and there’s scope to play as Marston’s Scottish-American pop - a man John described as someone who, “if you ever spoke t🌌o him, you’d think he only ate haggis and wore a kilt.” According to Red Dead canon, Marston Snr popped his clogs in 1881 (possibly in a bar brawl), yet even if he met an undignified end, my inner Highlander can’t help but dig the idea of playing an immigrant cowboy with a slight Scottish accent.