The Red Dead Redemption franchise has essentially been a dead video game franchise for a long time. The last main entry came with 2018’s award-winning Red Dead Redemption 2, a game beloved even to this day. Talk of a third installment or a television/film adaptation of the story is mostly restricted to idle chatter as the development of the third game has only been speculated, but that’s it.
Fans who’ve been waiting for a revival might be pleased to know that Rockstar Games have done something in 2025, but it may not be quite what they want. The franchise isn’t totally dormant, but the latest update might not change much.
Red Dead Redemption Online Gets Update
It’s been almost seven full years since Red Dead Online, the multiplayer online counterpart to RDR2 was released, and it still has enough of a player base to warrant an update with new missions and such. Rockstar just released the Strange Tales of the West update.
In it, there are “strange tales” for players to explore regarding the plague, modern science, the bayou, and the wilderness. In Strange Tales of The Plague, the people of Armadillo have become an army of the undead. Players must collect undead corpses for scientific examination, avoiding infection and fighting off local cultists.
Strange Tales of Modern Science tasks gamers with investigating the claims of a local “man of science” who believes he has created artificial life at Braithwaite Manor. The life is particularly violent, killing anyone it comes into contact with.
In the Bayou, “something unholy lurks in the swamps of Lagras,” and it’s up to you to find out what. In the Wilderness, you must locate a missing scientist last seen doing some strange research on a crew of murderers in Tall Trees. All of these missions come with three times the gold, XP, and Red Dead Online money.
It may be a bit surprising to see Rockstar return to this franchise while they’re ramping up for Grand Theft Auto VI, but they don’t want fans of the Red Dead Redemption franchise to go wanting. Of course, what fans really want is a new game. But that’ll have to wait.
What’s Next?
It is a bit surprising to see that neither Red Dead Redemption nor Grand Theft Auto has gotten a live-action adaptation in television or film yet. So many games have, yet these remain untouched. For now, that’s going to continue to be the case, even as Mario, Sonic, Metal Gear, Zelda, and so much more get adaptations. The comic book movie has given way to the game adaptation, but these games remain out of it.
What’s next for Red Dead is potentially a third game, about which we know very little, and even if there is one. Based on the typical development cycle, it would probably arrive sometime between 2028 and 2030, so it’s still a long way away if it even exists. For now, this update will have to tide folks over, because there appears to be nothing on the horizon. It’s not totally dead, but this update won’t do much to dissipate the calls for more content from Red Dead Redemption.
Wrapping Up
The very fact that Rockstar Games has released a new mission update for Red Dead Online seven years after the game’s launch, which is well beyond the normal shelf-life of a game (Fortnite notwithstanding), is encouraging. It means the franchise is still on their radar and it could be a tease that more is to come. The alternative is that I am just a delusional fan of the game that would like to see more from the team, which is just as likely.
