Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser says Red Dead 2, not GTA, was ‘the best thing I worked on’
Houser was the lead writer on almost every Grand Theft Auto game to date
Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser says Red Dead Redemption 2 is the “best thing” he ever worked on during his time at the studio.
Houser – who, along with his brother Sam, co-founded Rockstar Games in 1998 – wrote 12 games in the Grand Theft Auto series starting with the first game’s expansion spin-off Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and ending with Grand Theft Auto 5.
He also wrote Bully, Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, Max Payne 3, Midnight Club: Los Angeles and Red Dead Online, but left Rockstar in 2020 to form a new company, Absurd Ventures.
In a new interview with IGN, Houser was asked which of the games he worked at during his time at Rockstar was his favourite of all.
Although he replied by citing numerous highlights in his Rockstar career, Houser stated that Red Dead Redemption 2 was, in his eyes, the best game he was involved in.
“Red Dead 2, I think, was the best thing that I worked on,” he replied. “The best single realisation of open-world storytelling, thematic consistence and understanding how the games are assembled to take you on an emotional journey.”
Houser then went on to list his favourite parts of other games, including previous Grand Theft Auto titles.
“I also think GTA 4, because we did try and evolve how we did the storytelling and did it in a fundamental way. I think the middle section of GTA 5 is amazing when we got the three characters working. I think it was not flawless, but it was so smooth. That middle section, I thought that was really amazing. And then the end of Red Dead 1. Those are sort of my favourite bits.”
He also noted that Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Bully were all important to him “because they were all essentially new (or nearly new) IP – doing that for the first time and assembling something strong, that’s a really gratifying experience that I’m trying to take into what we’re doing now.”
Earlier this year Absurd Ventures, the new transmedia company founded by Houser, revealed its new game and animation universe, the ‘Absurdaverse’.
“Prepare to meet some new kinds of heroes (and watch them suffer),” reads an announcement in February, accompanied by an image of twenty colourful characters, ranging from familiar GTA-style protagonists to a Viking and a hooded ghoul.
More information on Absurd’s plans for Absurdaverse will come this year, including animation projects and an “original story-driven action-comedy adventure game” set to star some of the characters revealed.
In addition to Absurdaverse, Absurd is also working on two further fiction ‘universes’: American Caper, which will begin life as a graphic novel, and A Better Paradise, which is an audio fiction series.
