dan houser says he wanted a red dead style protagonist death in gta but tech stopped it

Saw the IGN interview with Dan Houser making the rounds and the RDR ending talk got me thinking about GTA 6. He said when they decided to kill John Marston in Red Dead Redemption, the lead designer was immediately on board but Houser had to figure out how an open world even works after the main character dies.

They ended up doing the epilogue as Jack years later. Houser admitted that created a bunch of production headaches. Multi-stage missions where you start as John and finish as Jack, dialogue and audio implications, all that stuff. He said they were scared but made it work. The vengeance angle with Jack hunting down his dad's killers really landed with players.

What surprised him was how livid some people got. He said part of him thought that was fantastic because it meant the story hooked people, but he also thinks it was the right call because John had to die for the story to carry weight.

The part that actually matters for this forum: Houser said he wanted to do something similar in GTA but it never happened because of technical reasons. He didn't go into specifics, but that's a pretty big what if. RDR2 pulled it off again with Arthur Morgan and the epilogue as John, so Rockstar clearly isn't afraid of it.

GTA has always kept its protagonists alive through the credits, even when the story gets dark. With Lucia and Jason both playable in GTA 6, I keep wondering if Rockstar might finally try a death ending for one of them. The dual protagonist setup could actually make it easier to keep the open world going after a loss, since the other character could take over. But Houser isn't at Rockstar anymore and the technical side might still be a nightmare.

Would you want GTA 6 to kill off Lucia or Jason at the end, or does that mess with the post-game sandbox too much?

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Source: GameSpot · Curated content.