If one thing can be surmised from VG247's recent interview with Rockstar, it's that all future DLC for open-world cowboy simulator, Red Dead Redemption 2, will almost definitely be destined for its online component, Red Dead Online. For fans that have been holding out hope that Red Dead's exceptionally dense single-player would be expanded sometime down the road, this revelation all but snuffs out that possibility.
According to Katie Pica, lead online production associate for Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar is "100% focused on online right now", and believe that, in time, Red Dead Online will provide players everything they "love about single-player".
It should come as no surprise that Rockstar would decide to make Red Dead Online the recipient for future updates, especially when one considers the previous 5 years of Grand Theft Auto V's ongoing support that saw the studio pumping content into GTA Online rather than its single-player counterpart. While many fans have voiced disappointment over Grand Theft Auto V's lack of story DLC, it's no secret that GTA Online's success has earned Rockstar, as well as their parent company, Take-Two Interactive, hundreds of millions of dollars in profits thanks to micro-transactions.
That said, I don't believe that this non-news should be cause for disappointment. Red Dead Online has already demonstrated an ability to immerse players in its persistent, living world. Rather than simply being plopped down in the middle of nowhere with only your imagination, Red Dead Online ferries your newly-created cowboy through a series of some decidedly cinematic story missions that lead into a much larger, over-arching narrative. Sure, it isn't a continuation of Red Dead's core story, but it does present players with an opportunity to cultivate their own online identity by taking part in an all-new, adjacent story. While not as "concentrated" as traditional, single-player DLC - that is inherently designed to be churned and burned through - Red Dead Online's "slow burn" approach to interactive story-telling encourages players to experience the vastness of its world through intermediary activities while they wait for the next leg of their main story to become available.
When Read Dead Online's beta launched late last year, players wanting their extra-curricular outlaw activities to include a little more structure may have felt they had been stripped of purpose once completing the first chapter of Red Dead Online's main story line:"A Land of Opportunity". However, since the recent "Frontier Pursuits" update introduced professions, players have been able to assume a clearly-defined role within the online world - making for a significantly less abstract experience that feels more akin to its single-player than it does a western themed sandbox.
Tarek Hamad, Red Dead's online producer, goes on to to explain: "The team’s ambitions for Red Dead Redemption 2 were sky high in every way, and when we are building worlds of that scale, the single-player experience almost always leads the way. Our ambitions for our online games are just as high, and with Red Dead Online we are continuing to build and expand to match the world we created for Red Dead Redemption 2’s story, not just with the roles but other activities, new random events, characters to meet, new ways to engage with the world and further inhabit your character, as well as trying to improve the overall experience.”
Case in point: Red Dead Online's ever-expanding world isn't going to replace a bonafide single player, but it will damn-well come close.
