Across my three playthroughs of Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games’ profound and soul-shattering Western has never failed to stir my heart and bring tears to my eyes. Its intimate, human storytelling and weighty, believable characters have stuck with me years after the fact; their trials and tribulations are forever etched into my memory.
This had an unexpected side effect. Previously, I’d slept on Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Sure it looked like a laugh, but as a lover of story-driven games, it never occurred to me to see the series in those terms. Friends would always tell me how, in the GTA games, you could “do anything” and “go anywhere.” To me, they were always sold as fun open-world power trips rather than anything more narratively substantial.
