Rockstar has developed two of gaming’s most beloved franchises, Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. Both games throw players into a large open world with great stories, strange side missions, and a myriad of memorable moments players can make for themselves.
Bethesda Game Studios has a lot in common with Rockstar, despite being known for very different kinds of game. Like Rockstar, Bethesda has relied on two very well known franchises – The Elder Scrolls and Fallout – at least for the most part. Both studios use the same rough format for their two main franchises including their mechanics and the way they handle quests and open-world game design. However, Bethesda is making a move that Rockstar should ‘steal’ as gaming settles into a new decade. In fact, there are some strong reasons that Rockstar could benefit from this move in a way that Bethesda may be less likely to.
While fans still don’t know when hotly anticipated titles like Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 6 are set to be released, the studio has revealed a lot about its schedule for the come decade. Currently, Bethesda is working on a new IP, the first since the company took on Fallout 3 back in 2007, a franchise which was already 10 years old at that point. Bethesda’s next game will be called Starfield, a space-set RPG which takes place across multiple planets.
It isn’t known if Starfield will have all the staples of a traditional Bethesda RPG. These features include a first-person perspective, a large open-world, and a greater focus on roleplaying freedom and exploration than a strong central narrative or character development. There are some images reportedly leaked from Starfield‘s development, however, which show a character in a space suit standing before their ship.
These Starfield leaks also show a meter in the corner which appears to measure oxygen, CO2, and gravity, though how much each of these which actually come into play as mechanics remains unknown. There has been speculation that Starfield will include a variety of alien races for players to meet, but ultimately, just where on the soft to hard sci-fi scale Starfield will sit has yet to be revealed.
What is known, however, is that The Elder Scrolls 6 will not release until after Starfield. As such, players can likely expect Starfield to come out at some point in the next three years, while The Elder Scrolls 6 could be looking at at release around 2026. The most important thing, however, is that Bethesda is tackling a new IP at all.
Rockstar could deeply benefit from tackling a new IP, perhaps more so than Bethesda. There’s no doubt that The Elder Scrolls and Fallout play a lot with their respective fantasy and post-apocalyptic genres. Nonetheless, Rockstar games have always been far more invested in exploring the depths of their genres than Bethesda’s open-world and narrative-light games have been able to.
Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, isn’t just an open-world game set in the Old West. It’s a game that’s deeply invested in drawing out the implications of its genre. Throughout Red Dead 2, players are constantly confronted by the idea that the Old West is dying, and that the future will hold no place for the Van Der Linde gang and their way of life.
As the game goes on, players are encouraged to question whether or not the Old West that Dutch Van Der Linde claims is dying was ever real to begin with. Dutch touts a philosophy of freedom and supposed-nobility, but when the tide turns after a failed bank robbery in Saint Denis, it isn’t long before the gang members are at each other’s throats. Throughout Red Dead Redemption 2, players are encouraged to consider the myths the Van Der Linde gang members tell themselves in order to justify their actions. These myths range from songs based on the Ballad of Jesse James to Red Dead 2‘s constant references to Arthurian mythology and the Knights of the Round table.
There’s another meta-level to the game’s exploration of genre as well. Red Dead 2 insistently uses fictionalized locations such as Saint Denis as a stand-in for New Orleans to the point where there’s almost no room for the real USA to exist at all in the game’s universe. This forcibly reminds players that not only are the characters presenting a fictionalized version of the Old West to one another, but they exist within a totally fictionalized version of America which is also a far cry from the reality.
Grand Theft Auto has always been invested in its genre, particularly satirizing American consumerism, and especially when it comes to fictional violence. The violence in GTA becomes increasingly over-the-top as the games go on, while characters like Grand Theft Auto 5‘s Trevor remain likeable simply because they are enjoyable to watch and play as, becoming consumer products in and of themselves. Like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto is an extremely self-aware series that plays with its genre’s implications both in and out of universe.
It is for that reason that a new IP could benefit Rockstar’s style of storytelling and game design far more than it might Bethesda. A new Rockstar IP wouldn’t just take players to a new setting, but would allow the storytellers to explore the new IPs genre as deeply as the exploration of genre seen in Red Dead and GTA. The new IP could still feel like a Rockstar game, with a large open world populated with strange side missions and driven by a character-focused main story.
However, it could also allow Rockstar to explore a completely fresh set of genre tropes and the underlying ways players interact with the game’s genre. There is a risk, for example, that a hypothetical Red Dead Redemption 3 would simply struggle to add to the points already made across the first two games with the same level of depth. If Rockstar takes a page from Bethesda’s book and tackles an all-new IP, fans of Red Dead and GTA may find that the new game ends up feeling more like a worthy spiritual successor to those two franchises than a sequel ever could.
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