Red Dead Redemption 3 "probably will happen," says Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, but he'd be "sad" about it: "It was a cohesive two-game arc"

As GTA 6 beckons, there'll be some inevitable buzz around potentially getting Red Dead Redemption 3 at some point (even though technically RDR 2 is Red Dead 3, but I digress). Rockstar co-founder and former writer Dan Houser thinks RDR 3 is likely, even though he's not sure he wants to see it.

Having started Rockstar Games with his brother Sam and three other devs, Houser worked on many of the company's biggest releases, including all the Grand Theft Auto games and both Red Dead Redemption games. Serving as lead writer on the Western sandboxes, he became quite attached to Arthur Morgan and John Marston, and believes the duology he helped craft is perhaps better left alone.

"Each of the [Grand Theft Auto] games was kind of a standalone story. It's not quite the same," he says on the Lex Fridman Podcast. "I think it probably would be, in some ways, sadder if someone continued on Red Dead, because it was a cohesive two-game arc. That might be more sad to hear someone working on that."

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He concedes, though, it "probably will happen," because Red Dead is a huge franchise and ultimately he has no control any more. "I don't own the IP. That was sort of part of the deal - it's a privilege to work on stuff, but you don't necessarily own it," he adds.

Houser is correct in that the two Red Dead Redemption games form a cohesive whole, the second being a prequel to the events of the first. But there's plenty of ground to cover with other characters, taking a page or two from the varying perspectives of the GTA series, where each installment is another protagonist and setting.

Regardless of what happens, expect it to take a while, as developing these releases is only getting more time-consuming. Arthur and John will likely remain the focal point of Rockstar's Old West for some time yet.

Creating Red Dead Redemption 2 was "not that fun," Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser says, as it wasn't "coming together" and was "over budget so much I didn’t want to think about it"