•According to a report by IGN, Dan Houser, the former vice president of Rockstar and writer of Red Dead Redemption, has recounted the deliberations behind one of gaming’s most debated endings: the death of protagonist John Marston.
The 2010 game places players in control of Marston as he pursues revenge against his former gang leader, Dutch Van der Linde. After achieving it in a snowy showdown near the end of the story, Marston is gunned down by army members at his family farm’s barn—an ending that initially split opinion but has since been regarded as a masterstroke in narrative design.
Houser spoke with IGN as part of its IGN30 Icons Series. He recalled discussing the decision with lead designer Christian Cantamessa, who was “into it,” though production realities raised questions about how an open-world game could function once the protagonist is dead.
I remember discussing it with the lead designer, Christian Cantamessa, and he was into it, and I was into it… So I said, ‘I think maybe we have to kill him.’ And he goes, ‘That’s a great idea. Got to do it.’
Dan Houser
Houser noted that the nature of an open-world game meant finishing the story and then returning to complete side content—requiring players to control someone else. Jack, John’s son, was one option, but he is only 16 for most of the game’s runtime. To make the transition work, the team introduced a three-year time jump to 1914, allowing players to take control of a 19-year-old Jack after his father’s death.
“Did we have the skills and the bandwidth to play as Jack?” Houser recalled questioning. “Would it work? Technically, not story-wise. We’ll figure out the story aspect.” He also considered how returning to side characters with existing mission arcs would function, concluding the team could probably make it work but was “still scared.”
The final story mission sees Jack carry out his own act of revenge by killing the person responsible for John’s murder in a duel—an ending Houser said tied together the game’s story.
“I think people really loved that moment when you killed them and found it so powerful internally,” he said. “I think there was broad consensus that it was the right decision… I think we were surprised when the game came out by how angry some people were about that decision.” He added that players felt ownership over what they co-create in a game, unlike someone viewing a painting.
“As a writer, it was like he had to die for the story to have any weight, and I had wanted that in several GTAs. We’d never done it really for the technical reasons we just discussed.”
A similar decision was made in Red Dead Redemption 2, whose prequel bound players to Arthur Morgan before Marston once again took over.
In a post-RDR2 world, Rockstar will look to push its storytelling forward with GTA 6, which lets players control a couple on the run, Jason and Lucia. Whether both remain playable by the end of the game remains unclear.
For more on GTA 6, read IGN’s full interview with Rockstar co-studio head Rob Nelson, how the game will tackle the current political climate, and why Dan Houser says he won’t be playing it.
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