So, here's another idea that's been riding around in my brain meats for a couple of years, that first came along while I was chatting at work with a colleague. We got to talking about a follow-up to Rockstar Games' 2010 acclaimed Western-themed sandbox game Red Dead Redemption, itself a spiritual follow-up to 2004's Red Dead Revolver. The Western gunslinging revenge story Revolver was something of a cult classic, but Redemption-- which followed the path of John Marston as he set out to take down his erstwhile outlaw partners at the behest of some corrupt government lawmen. Redemption's sprawling landscape took players through deserts, plains, forests, and mountains, while in the background there was the definite impression that the era of the "Wild West" was drawing to a close.
The ideas I set out below may seem slightly less relevant now that Red Dead Redemption 2, a prequel to Redemption, has been confirmed as dropping at some point in 2018, but hell, there are still ideas here that could be utilized for future entries in the franchise. Below the break, I'll talk about some basic story notions and gameplay mechanics that could be incorporated if Rockstar decides to do another follow-up at some point down the line.
Red Dead Prohibition
Like that name implies, this entry in the Red Dead series would be set roughly a decade after the events of Redemption. This puts it after World War One (or "The Great War" as it would be called here), the Prohibition is in effect and all those Roaring Twenties tropes are in full swing. (See what I did there?)A good chunk of plot and story, therefore, can be centered around these things. The Prohibition means that moonshine and other home-brewed booze is getting sold to speakeasies and similar. Gangsters run these operations, smuggle the contraband to and fro, and make a nice profit off the vices of the era. Other gangs set up daring bank robberies and engage in showdowns with the police. Meanwhile, government agents-- including a nascent Federal Investigative Bureau (the Rockster-verse's expy for the FBI)-- are trying to shut them all down.
Setting
Redemption was set in "the West," with New Austin (American Southwest-- Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana), Neuvo Paraiso (Northern Mexico-- Nuevo Leon), and West Elizabeth (American Rockies-- Colorado, Utah, Wyoming). As it would, befitting the Western feel of the game. But Redemption was set in 1911, as the Wild West was dying out. Prohibition would be set east of these locales-- in areas evoking Appalachia, the Midwest, and the Deep South. This gives us a variety of landscapes which we can travel through, with a similar variance in the peoples.
In the urbanized areas more common in the Midwest region, we'd see the Art Deco style famous in the era, with flappers and jazz music. Meanwhile, in the Deep South, you have your hardcore conservative types decrying the moral decay of society and preaching against the evils of "the demon drink" and the lurid things one can see in the cinemas and the obscene things that movie stars do. Appalachia has lots of coal mines and moonshiners and all manner of other weird shit, as any Rockstar game is going to have your stereotypical hillbillies inhabiting this kind of land.
Gameplay
Obviously, the game would maintain a lot of the usual Rockstar standard fare as it pertains to weapon handling and shooting. Weapons would all be of the era, with maybe one or two anachronistic pieces since Rockstar likes doing that. Riding horses would be less of a thing here-- maybe a handful of opportunities in the more rural parts of the map, or for specific missions or sidequests. So horse-riding doesn't carry over fully from Redemption, but hunting still could be a thing in the rural areas, especially in Appalachia.Cars, however, are more common and while they'll never have the speed of some of the souped-up hypercars in Grand Theft Auto V, they will still have some major horsepower to them. Indeed, this can factor into sidequests-- getting the parts you need to make the ultimate hot rod-- and racing will key in as well. After all, NASCAR-- that proud American auto-sport (my own opinions on it aside)-- has its roots in this time period, as the bootleggers would modify their cars to outrun the police, and would race their cars against one another to show off what they could do.
Certain story arcs and mission strings would be centered around a modified version of GTA V's Heists. The player-characters all seek to make money for one reason or another, and the game would be set during the time period of notorious bank robbing gangs like the real-life John Dillinger. So some mission strings would be set up to plot out the robbery-- finding out when the money will be in the vault or safe, determining how quickly the law will respond, and mapping out a getaway.
In terms of customization, there would be necessarily less of it. I foresee players having a selection of different outfits-- or perhaps pieces of outfits, a la Sleeping Dogs, with all pieces of a particular set granting some buff of some kind. Redemption had something like this, with certain outfits granting certain bonuses. (Dressing up in a particular gang's outfit, for instance, means they won't shoot you on sight.)
Characters
Rather than only controlling one person throughout the game, as in Redemption, there would be multiple player-characters, as in GTAV. One of them is a low-level gangster crony with big ambitions, who for the purposes of this post we'll call "Lenny." Lenny is a small-time schmoe from a town in Appalachia. He does odd jobs for the Willis City Outfit, one of the organized crime families in the setting of Prohibition. This particular outfit has moonshine operations in Appalachia and the nearest parts of the South, and has to get its booze then to the speakeasies in the Midwest. As a result, Lenny ends up getting tapped to help run this stuff in cars. That's all Lenny's expected to do, but Lenny wants to move up in the world. He wants to pull of daring bank heists like his hero, Jon Lassiter. He starts looking to form his own gang so he can pull off a job, and see what happens when he has that kind of money to hand. Indeed, Lenny dreams of even joining the Lassiter Gang, and pulling off a big score with his hero.
The second character is a little more complicated. He's a member of the nascent FIB, but he's been sent undercover by his superiors so they can try to take down Petey Cicero and the Willis City Outfit. We'll call our little G-Man "Gabriel." Coming originally from Willis City (Prohibition's expy of Chicago) then moving east to Carcer City before coming back home, Gabriel's status as undercover gives him some leeway with his activities, as his boss in the FIB is willing to look the other way as long as it leads to evidence they can use against Cicero. Gabriel is conflicted about his role in all of this, believing that all the bad things he's doing are being done for the right reasons, but also having his doubts that his FIB bosses are much better. (And given that one of the FIB's inspirational "heroes" is Edgar Ross, the duplicitous SOB that used John Marston and then had him killed in Redemption, we the audience would understand that Gabriel's concerns are valid.)
Let's introduce a third character to round our little gang out. There could easily be more than three player-characters, but we'll hold things at three. Our third gang member used to live on a farm out west, but after his parents passed, he fell into the outlaw life. He distinguished himself during the War, but now he'd just like to leave all the killing behind him and settle down and write books. Despite his dreams of writing the "great American novel," he's stuck writing dime novels and pulp fiction. Money is tight and after happenstance brings him into contact with Lenny and Gabriel, he agrees to strap on his guns and help them out, and thus does Jack Marston enter the picture. Yes, our third player-character (and last introduced) is none other than John Marston's son, whom we last saw in the post-game free-roam section of Redemption.
As noted above, there are a few other characters we'd get to meet in the course of the game include Jon Lassiter, notorious and famous bank robber and expy of John Dillinger and his gang-- including members such as Hauptman Kochler (Herman Lamm) and Danny Boy Morgan (Baby Face Nelson). Kochler would be a contact early in the game, helping teach the protagonists the tactics they'd need to be successful. Morgan is volatile and hot-tempered, and during the course of the game would be responsible for murdering several FIB agents, much like his real-world counterpart.
We also have Petey Cicero, head of the Willis City Outfit, though we'd likely also run into Cicero's chief rivals, Jimmy O'Roarke and Michael Devitt. O'Roarke has an organization of moonshiners in Appalachia who interfere with Cicero's business, while Devitt is the head of the Irish gangsters in Willis City in direct opposition to Cicero's Outfit, and issues between the two would inevitably blow up into a full-scale mob war, complete with a scene equivalent to the real-world St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
With the FIB, we have an older Archer Fordham, Edgar Ross' former partner. Dedicated to bring law to the lawless, he's nonetheless mellowed out slightly with time. He's still a condescending ass, but a reasonable man. Spearheading the FIB's mission to take down the Willis City Outfit is the Bureau's new ace, Spencer C. Dyson. (J. Edgar Hoover) He's the real jerk-ass of the bunch, and possibly corrupt as well, in fine Rockstar tradition. There would probably be some kind of confrontation with the FIB in late game missions, but how exactly it blows up is something I leave up to the Rockstar writers.
Other Activities and Shout Outs
Given the Roaring Twenties setting, there's plenty of opportunities for other references to real-world events and trends:- There would be plenty of chances for any of the characters to sit down and play cards, whether Holdem or Hearts with NPCs, or possibly underground casinos to play blackjack or other games of chance.
- Theater shows would have either burlesque stuff going on or some early cinematic movies, all short ones, obviously.
- Dance halls playing jazz and having lots of 20s-era dancing going on.
- The Scopes Monkey Trial. A retelling of this could be given a Rockstar spin, but I imagine it more as background noise, picked up from newspapers/radio and NPC chatter, unfolding over the course of the game.
- Fatty Arbuckle. This could be part of a minor sidequest, with one of the protags helping an Arbuckle-expy get to his parties, and then having to rush a Virginia Rappe-expy to the hospital, then outrun the police or angry protesters after the media sensationalizes things.
And there you have it, Red Dead Prohibition. Obviously, this is all barebones stuff, with a vague skeleton of a story and plot, but the setting allows for what I think would be some interesting storytelling. It also allows for some of the common trappings of Rockstar's games and satirization of America, its culture, and history.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
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