GTA is "not as good as Dickens," former Rockstar boss says, but he "binged on Victorian novels" so Red Dead Redemption 2's writing would "capture that 19th-century feeling of life and death"

Is Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and former lead writer on Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, an equal to literary legends like Charles Dickens? Well, I dunno, ask me again in a couple of centuries when gaming's canon is settled, but Houser himself will tell you that there are some similarities between Victorian literature and Rockstar's world-building, and that influence became very explicit for Red Dead Redemption 2.

During a press tour for Grand Theft Auto 4 well over a decade ago, a journalist said that the GTA series is "just like Dickens," as Houser reminisces to The Guardian. "I was like, God bless you for saying that! But I thought about it afterwards and, well, they're not as good as Dickens, but they are similar in that he's world-building. If you look at Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy or any of those authors, there's that feeling of all the world is here – that's what you're trying to get in open world games. It's a twisted prism, looking at a society that's interesting in one way or another."

Houser sees similarities between "those big 19th-century novels from Thackeray onwards" and the stories told in Rockstar's open-world games, where you have a lengthy, spread out narrative that spins up numerous threads while maintaining a realistic sense of time. "They are quite physical in that sense, and games are very physical," Houser says.

Some time later, during the development of Red Dead Redemption 2, Houser found himself looking to that era of literature for more direct inspiration. "I binged on Victorian novels for that," he explains. "I listened to the audiobook of Middlemarch walking to and from the office every day. I loved it."

Houser wanted Red Dead Redemption 2 to "feel from the writing perspective, slightly more novelistic. I thought that was a way of doing something new on the story side – and the game was going to look so pretty, the art was so strong, I thought the story had better really set it up. We were trying to fill out the three-dimensional lives of the characters, and also to capture that 19th-century feeling of life and death, which was very different from ours."

Whether or not the plot stands up to comparisons against the titans of classic literature, I think it's tough to argue that Red Dead Redemption 2's story is anything short of Rockstar's best work, so clearly taking that inspiration paid off. Houser left Rockstar back in 2020, but who knows – maybe the best way to get ready for GTA 6 is to finally read through Crime and Punishment or Great Expectations. Trevor actor Steven Ogg would certainly support the endeavor.

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser left the studio because of how long GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 took to make: "I don't know if I had another one of those games in me."