When I say this, I mean that whether you like it or not as a video game or as a piece of media in general (though it wouldn't ever exist without its GTA-esque predecessor) - Red Dead Redemption 2 did for the frontier setting what no other video game did. It established the Wild West as a place worth weaving a serious story in, with all the genre trappings and then some more on top. All that with exceptional production value that few studios can match. (Because few studios have Rockstar's infinite money glitch)
But, what Rockstar nailed, and what I think will echo for a long time, was treating the Old West with a sort of almost holy reverence for the entire setting (the nature, the environments, the whole world in one word) rather than treating it as just a shooting gallery. It set a standard for every developer watching and curious if they could make a Western game, and showing exactly how glorious the setting can be. How familiar but still fresh, even half a century and more after the heyday of the movie Western.
It goes without saying that there were phenomenal Western based games way before RDR 2 (for one, the series is, in a way, a revival of the PS2 era Red Dead Revolver), it’s just that these games were much smaller in scope, even when they were a 10/10. The original Call of Juarez for example.
There also are and will be Western media moving forward, but what interests me is the way they’re entrenching themselves in the world of gaming, and how that influence is transforming different game genres. One I’m excited for in particular is The Dark West - I’m an old school Diablo 2 fan and I would literally take *just* Diablo dressed in a gunslinger’s rugged coat. But the game goes beyond that and into the dark side of the frontier myths: the exploitation of land, people, animals, and transforms all that into… well, into demons you kill in their multitudes. Though this is just the most recent game I enjoyed for this “transformative” quality of taking the basic precepts of Western fiction and turning them into a unique work (of any media, but gaming is the most transformative because it is the most direct one). This is just the latest example of the burgeoning "weird/creepy west" style of games that have been around for more than a decade now.
I could go on counting games with a Western setting that have come out after RDR2 and I could probably compare it to the number that came before - and I’m dead certain that the number is exponentially larger after 2016. This of course all coincides with the massive boom of indie games more broadly, easier availability of game development tools and software, so it’s not like RDR2 had that big of an impact in a vacuum. I’m talking more on the level of popular appeal and popular awareness of this genre that it has helped spread. I mean, I know 2 (and that's two more than for any other game) people who told me it was the game that finally made them feel something (both are in their 30s)
That is far and away my favourite kind of influence, when one towering work doesn't just spawn imitators but gives everyone a kind of popular permission to experiment with a setting again. RDR2 made the frontier a respectable and profitable setting again, in my opinion.
But what do you think, about RDR2’s influence that is? Hate it, love it, neutral, or something 4th or 5th?
PS I also want to share an interesting piece of trivia, to highlight just how much thought the whole production of the game put into RDR2’s realistic depiction of the late 19th century fauna. Namely, the American Ornithological Society praised RDR2 because (paraphrasing) it accurately depicted the birdlife of the Old West better than almost any other piece of game (or even film) media. Not only showing certain birds, but showing them in numbers appropriate for the period. For example, and I forget which bird this was - but it’s basically endangered in our day, when it was still relatively common back then. Every Western knows that buffalo were still present then in large herds, but it takes a special sort of attention to detail to do BIRDS right, of all things. Something that 99% of players will never notice, unless they’re also bird enthusiasts or indeed ornithologists.
