Rockstar hasn’t said a single official word about Red Dead Redemption 3, and fans are already in a full-blown civil war over who should star in it.
The latest spark came from a Redditor who described a dream where they were playing Red Dead Redemption 3 as Lyle Morgan, Arthur Morgan’s outlaw father, a character who only ever gets mentioned in Red Dead Redemption 2 and never actually appears.
“I had a dream I was playing RDR3 as Lyle Morgan.” The post that kicked off the latest protagonist debate.
The thread spread fast across gaming forums, and it reignited a debate that’s been simmering since GTA VI finally shipped this past May and freed Rockstar’s fan base to start obsessing over what comes next.
Why Lyle Morgan is a weird pick on purpose
In Red Dead Redemption 2, Arthur barely has a kind word for his father. He mentions Lyle a handful of times, and almost never positively. At one point Arthur says his father’s death “weren’t soon enough.”
That’s exactly why the theory has people fighting. Building a prequel around a man the franchise’s most beloved protagonist openly despised puts writers in a bind: either ignore what Arthur said about him, or ask players to spend 60 hours rooting for someone Arthur himself had no use for.
Commenters are picking sides
The Lyle Morgan idea has support, mostly from people who want RDR3 to break completely from the Van der Linde gang’s orbit.
“The only right way for a new Rockstar western is a completely new story. No lore restrictions.” A Reddit commenter arguing against tying RDR3 to existing characters.
Others want the series to go forward instead of back, pushing for Jack Marston, John Marston’s son, who’s still alive at the end of Red Dead Redemption 2. A smaller camp wants Sadie Adler, the widow-turned-bounty-hunter from RDR2, to finally headline her own game.
Rockstar still hasn’t said anything
None of this is based on confirmed plot details, because there aren’t any. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has called Red Dead a “permanent franchise,” and Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has said the series will probably return. Beyond that, there’s no announcement, no teaser, and no official protagonist.
Industry chatter points to a release sometime around 2029 or 2030, since Rockstar’s development cycles run long and the studio is still fully focused on supporting GTA VI. That leaves years of room for fans to keep arguing in the meantime.
The wait is becoming its own story
This is quickly becoming the pattern with Rockstar’s biggest franchises: the gap between games is so long that fan speculation fills the void and becomes a recurring news cycle of its own, with zero input from the studio required. GTA VI spent years as a meme before it ever had a trailer. RDR3 looks like it’s about to do the same thing, one viral Reddit dream at a time, the same way fandom backlash and speculation has kept other franchises in the headlines between official updates.
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