Red Dead Redemption 2 And The REAL Wild West
How will Rockstar weave the real 1899 into it's upcoming Western?
The first Red Dead Redemption game was set closer to the First World War then the famed California gold rush of the mid-1800s. John Marsden was hunting down Dutch and his old companions well after the sun had set on the classic western era that we know from the movies. Set in 1911, John Marsden was a man out of his prime and out of his time.
Red Dead Redemption 2, though set only 12 years earlier, is a world apart. Many of the same themes of the dying west are still setting in across 1899. The trailers released for Red Dead 2 emphasis that while the west is still wild, its days are numbered.
So what sort of things were going on in this era, and how can we expect it to shape the world and events of Red Dead Redemption 2?
5. The Mythologised "West" Vs. The Real Thing
One of the crazy things about the Wild West, is that is was almost fully mythologised and well remembered while it was all still going on.
Theoretically, but also possibly because Rockstar seem to be going to crazy lengths to build this world, Arthur can go rob a train and then head to his favorite book store and spend a dime on a novel about the very same thing. ‘Dime Novels’ or ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ were mass produced works of fiction telling the stories of the wild west. Most famous cowboys such as Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill were barely done with their exploits before these novels were consumed en-masse by a hungry public.
The dynamic that Rockstar are likely to play with here is that while the wild west is fondly remembered, people don’t actually want to experience the real thing.
While in previous decades people were happy to put up with the occasional outlaw as an occupational hazard while trying to strike rich in the goldfields, by 1899, people had enough of this and were ready for the law to step in.