Red Dead Redemption 3: 10 Predictions For The Story

When the first Red Dead Redemption dropped - all the way back in the bygone era of 2010 - it was instantly hailed as a masterpiece. The story of John Marston's quest for redemption was mature, poignant, and resonant. It hit all the right notes, and set an intimidatingly high watermark for subsequent video game stories to hit.

Then came Red Dead Redemption 2. No one knew for sure what it would be about going in. Sure, there were theories, but no one was certain. Many people thought that the first game's story was perfect, and that it should be in no way, shape, or form expanded upon - be it as a sequel or a prequel.

John Marston's backstory was left vague, with him only mentioning that his gang - then thought to consist solely of himself, Dutch, Bill, and Javier - left him to die after a botched robbery. Who could've predicted that the prequel would surpass its predecessor, letting us play through the tragic redemptive arc of Arthur Morgan, John Marston's quest for liberation, and the fall of Dutch van der Linde simultaneously?

We can only hope that the inevitable next game will rise to the same glorious heights as the first two. But what could the story be?

Some of these predictions will compliment each other, and some won't, but they're all distinct possibilities that merit consideration.

Let's dive in.

The last we saw Jack, he had just exacted his revenge and killed Edgar Ross on a riverbank in Mexico. While it was oh-so satisfying, it represented something truly tragic: Jack just threw away the clean, peaceful life that John - and Arthur - died to give him.

Will Red Dead Redemption 3 be about an adult Jack, potentially in the Prohibition era? Probably not. Don't get me wrong: that'd be amazing. WhatCulture's very own Comics Editor Ewan Paterson has speculated about that very possibility. It's just that at that point, it wouldn't be much of a Western.

But there's this little caveat: Red Dead Redemption 2 was barely a Western, itself.

A hefty portion of the game was set in Lemoyne, which is essentially a stand-in for Louisiana. Traditionally, Louisiana isn't a "Western" location. It's not in the American West, at all - it's in the Deep South. Then you have Roanoke Ridge, which is more reminiscent of Eastern Appalachian states like Kentucky and West Virginia than anything in the west.

Westerns aren't restricted to a certain era. Breaking Bad was technically a Western, after all. It's all about theme, location, and tone. So maybe we COULD see something with Jack in the 1930s, after all.