In a not fully packed theater at New York Comic Con, the voices that never leave my head spoke about the game I can’t stop thinking about. A full cast of the main actors from Red Dead Redemption II came to New York Comic Con this year to talk about a game that hit store shelves for the first time in 2018. For fans who played it at that time, and maybe still play it now, these characters are truly real, and the people who spoke in this dialogue and – in some cases, even threw each other around on stage for mocap, look somehow and like fantasies.
Why is a crew of a nearly six-year-old game still at Comic Con 2024? It’s likely because Rockstar hopes to promote the original version of Red Dead Redemption alongside the downloadable content (DLC). Undead Nightmare is finally coming to PC. It took Rockstar just 14 years to bring the original open-world cowboy game to a platform where PC players can officially play it, but I appreciate that there are still many people enjoying these games after years or even decades since their release.
Because I sure as hell can’t stop thinking about Red Dead Redemption II. In my head, I’m still living the scene of Arthur Morgan, played by Roger Clark, and Sister Calderon (Erin Debari) sitting on a bench in front of the train, talking about the essence of a good person and what we can do in our lives when we know our time is coming soon.
Clark told the crowd, “This was the first time I’ve seen a cowboy admit he was afraid of dying.”
It seems that every other member of the acting team who rolled the theater coach at Comic Con greatly resembles their character, which is weird. Most of them didn’t have to do more than raise their voices to highlight the perfection of Holland Van Der Linde (Benjamin Byron Davis) and the evil and deadly father – who was ultimately redeemed – John Marston (Rob Wiethoff). Clark doesn’t look like his character. His accent was born from a friend mimicking his father’s weak western tones.
Rockstar is known for incorporating relatively unknown characters in its games. The developer also hires hundreds of them, but the VO host for the main characters on stage couldn’t delve much into their characters, or even remember most lines from the game, as many of them started working on it for the first time in nearly 11 years. They are actors, but that doesn’t necessarily make them as sharp and eloquent as the characters they portray.
When a prominent fan asked the Red Dead fans about themselves while playing the game. “What’s the plan?” Of course, the answer is that there wasn’t a single plan. There couldn’t be a plan when the world was telling Dutch and the Van Der Linde gang as a whole that there was no longer a place for them, not with their upper-class standing – although it was slim.
Davis quotes from the game: “Make a lot of noise, make a lot of money, and get the hell out of here.”
What’s the plan for the future of Red Dead? “Red Dead III already said Clark. “It’s already out yesterday, after lunch.”
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