If you forced me to name the best game of the previous generation I'd say "what an odd demand for a kidnapper to make", and then I'd say "Red Dead Redemption 2". Rockstar's Wild West adventure is one of the most tender and the most brutal video game narratives I have ever found myself enraptured by, and I wish games could be inspired by its thematic depth, its nuanced characters, and its hopefulness inside a grey morality, rather than just trying to emulate its scope or its photorealism. In some ways though, Red Dead Redemption 2 is too good, and has scared developers out of its genre entirely. The age of cowboys is perfect for video games, but too few seem willing to explore it.
It would be reductive to say that video games are all the same, not to mention dismissive of the indie scene where fresh ideas are bursting from the seams of your computer screen, but there are a few safe tropes most major studios like to play in. IO Interactive is embarking on a fantasy game, and it's rumoured that Naughty Dog is as well. From the artwork IO has shown off, this seems to be your standard dragons, elves, and goblins type of setting too. There's nothing wrong with this in isolation, but we already have a whole host of fantasy games. Likewise, Bethesda is leaving its fantasy setting behind for now, along with its post-apocalyptic world, to take us to space. I'm sure Starfield will be great, but I've already been to space several times.
The Wild West has always been my favourite genre of storytelling. Of course, there are obvious problems with the original stories being highly problematic, painting Native Americans as savages and featuring racist and misogynistic language. River of No Return, one of my least favourite Marilyn Monroe movies, depicts her falling in love with her attempted rapist. However, this does not need to be a cornerstone of the genre. Even in its heyday, films like Shane, High Noon, and The Searchers challenged these ideals, although The Searchers created as many problems as it solved. However, we are seeing Westerns come back with a modern verve to them, be they the exploration of homosexuality in a world of toxic masculinity in The Power of the Dog or the celebration of Black history in The Harder They Fall.
Cinema is realising that Westerns, a genre rich in Americana, one that exists at a time in history of great technological upheaval threatening the livelihood of the working class, where politics are black and white and no deviation from that view will be tolerated, are the perfect framework for thoroughly modern ideas. And, as is especially the case with The Harder They Fall (go check this out if you recently fell in love with Jonathan Majors), they're also cool as f***.
Considering how much both video games and Westerns rely on violence as a way to propel the narrative, I'm amazed we're not seeing more pixelated cowboys. Gaming loves morally compromised heroes who win through a might is right philosophy yet question the violence they bring - a fitting description of 75 percent of movie cowboys. Is it just that Red Dead scares them off? I understand not wanting to start on the back foot by having to live up to one of the greatest video games ever, but I'm not sure it would be compared. I'm not going to judge Starfield by Mass Effect, I'm going to judge it by Fallout and Skyrim, because the studio informs what I think way more than the genre.
Of course, Red Dead is not quite the only game in town. Last year we had Weird West and Evil West, both of which were mid-tier releases that merged fantasy with Wild West tropes. Weird was an isometric RPG and Evil was a hack 'n' slash, but both were a little too distant from the sort of cool, narrative driven Western adventure I'm looking for. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is the most recent, non-Red Dead game to scratch that itch and that came out ten years ago. Prior to that and the rest of the series, it would be Gun in 2005.
The Wild West is a genre that provides a solid platform for ‘turn your brain off, cause carnage’ violence, as well as more introspective narratives that explore people out of time, the cost of death the living are asked to pay, and reflects modern life in stark and thematically interesting ways. It'll be another decade before we get Red Dead Redemption 3, and that's if Rockstar starts right after GTA 6 instead of doing its own fantasy project, as everyone else seems to. Someone surely is going to release a played straight, triple-A, narrative action adventure in the Wild West at some point in the 2020s, right? Please?