Red Dead’s Shocking Twist Ending Angered A Lot Of People, But It Was The Right Call, Rockstar Co-Founder Says

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser has recalled the controversial ending to 2010's Red Dead Redemption in which the main character, John Marston, is killed.

He said in an interview that the game's lead designer, Christian Cantamessa was on board with the idea to kill off Marston, but Houser wondered about the production realities of, "How does an open-world game work if you've killed the protagonist?"

"So I said, ‘I think maybe we have to kill him.’ And he goes, ‘That's a great idea. Got to do it.’ I said, ‘I don't know if… let me just think about this,’ because we're just dealing with audio and dialogue," Houser told IGN "The nature of an open-world game is you finish a story, then you go back into the world and wrap up all the side content if you want to. We'd have to play as someone else for that. We could play as Jack, but what does that mean? …