The ending of the 2008 game could have been different, but Rockstar only realized this with a later product.

The ending of Red Dead Redemption is famous for a reason. It was, and still is, very rare for an open-world game to not return to the protagonist after the credits rolled, allowing players to complete any remaining side missions and activities. The game defied this expectation by killing John Marston at the end. Of course, players could still control Marston’s son, Jack, but the character they had grown to love over dozens of hours of gameplay was now dead.

However, it turns out that Rockstar had wanted to subject players to this emotional trauma even earlier. In a conversation with Lex Fridman, Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar who has since left the company, said he really wanted to break players’ hearts in Grand Theft Auto IV. He wanted Niko Bellic to die at the end of the game, but that didn’t happen. They had an idea they couldn’t realize, so they thought about how to make it happen in their next game, Red Dead Redemption.

This makes sense to a certain extent. In Grand Theft Auto IV, there were no other playable characters if Niko had died. His cousin Roman wasn’t suited to the gangster lifestyle, and he didn’t have children. What about Brucie or Little Jacob? When Grand Theft Auto IV was released, Rockstar probably didn’t feel confident enough to kill off the main character. They had already released several popular games, but Grand Theft Auto IV was the one that really established their narrative credibility. Perhaps the praise for the story of Grand Theft Auto IV gave the writers the push they needed to feel confident enough to kill off John Marston in 2010.

After all, Houser recalls people being very upset and angry with them for doing this in Red Dead Redemption because it was unexpected. It was technically a big risk, but it paid off in the end. He thinks it was scary for Rockstar, but it worked out well.

Source: PCGamer