Rockstar has been neglecting Red Dead Online in favor of Grand Theft Auto Online, but there are many ways in which new expansions for the former could be better than those released for the latter. The popular open-world game studio is rather ambitious when it comes to its online offerings, with recent leaks alleging a major Liberty City GTA Online expansion. One of the biggest parts of GTA Online is its many heists, which continue to grow and expand with regular updates, even almost nine years after the game's initial release. This level of attention has not been given to Red Dead Online, despite it arguably having more potential.
GTA Online seems to grow more and more with each passing year, as Rockstar brings new story content and questlines through various patches. One of the more recent and notable examples of this would be the VIP Contract featuring the motion-captured likeness and voice talents of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, which added a novel quality to the heists delivered with the content drop. Red Dead Online's live-service elements have been comparably minor and stripped-back, with a recent GTA Online update post getting spammed by fans urging Rockstar to put more time and resources behind the wild west MMO.
While it's undeniable that Red Dead Online is far behind GTA Online when it comes to the regularity and scope of its new content, things don't have to be this way. Rockstar has demonstrated that it is capable of producing and delivering satisfying activities in the form of GTA Online heists, and this same design philosophy and approach could be applied to Red Dead Online. In fact, there is reason to believe that Red Dead Online's future expansions could be even better than the heists in GTA Online.
RDO's World Can Offer More Unique Activities Than GTA Online's
The GTA heists that Rockstar has been able to offer have certainly been enjoyable, and new GTA Online players starting with heists can earn coveted in-game rewards, which helps fuel a gratifying gameplay loop. However, the urban crime backdrop is one that has been thoroughly explored in the world of gaming already, with franchises like Payday tackling cooperative heist/robbery-themed missions to great effect alongside GTA Online. Red Dead Online could take this general framework and offer something more interesting by leveraging its setting.
Red Dead Online added a suite of new activities as part of last year's Blood Money update, allowing players to engage in classic Western crimes like train robberies and stagecoach stickups, but these opportunities have been marred by microtransactions and are generally underwhelming. Players can only approach these crimes in the most straightforward ways, with little room for preparation, planning, or clever problem-solving. For Red Dead Online to avoid wasting its potential, these activities should be expanded, which is something that Rockstar could do in a number of ways.
Making Opportunities and Crimes less linear is one way to accomplish this. As it stands, most of these missions will allow players to approach them stealthily or aggressively, but both approaches culminate in much of the same gameplay. If these missions could go off in different directions or have more variations based on the approach the player chooses, it would go a long way toward making them feel more complex and rewarding. For instance, when approaching a train robbery, a player could choose to be reckless and rush in guns-blazing, or they could be more careful, studying the routes of the trains, the schedules, and the passengers. If the stealth option were more methodical and intensive, it could help rectify the problem of RDO's Blood Money missions being nothing new, as the meticulous and strategic gameplay opportunities would be a breath of fresh air for players.
Red Dead Online is in a unique position because, unlike GTA Online, players and NPCs are far more restricted when it comes to the technology and resources at their disposal. Instead of resulting in boring or lackluster gameplay, this could actually force players to think more about each plan and how to make use of rudimentary tools like bows and knives rather than automatic weaponry or vehicles. The limitations imposed by the game's setting could also open the door to different heist strategies, as players could do things like plan their attack around factors like time of day, location, and weather conditions, all of which served as greater impediments for law enforcement in the late 1800s.
Technical Advancements Can Make RDO Activities More Immersive
RDR2 can make GTA 5 feel obsolete due to the major differences in technical performance and visual fidelity between the two, and this is something that can translate to Red Dead Online's missions. Heists in GTA Online will often be backed by a narrative, and individual missions are regularly connected by cutscenes involving the player character and NPCs. Despite regular updates, GTA Online's cutscenes still look more like something from a 2013 game than a modern, graphically impressive title. If Rockstar were to get a bit more ambitious when developing the stories and cinematics behind Red Dead Online missions, the game could serve up gripping narrative experiences of the quality gamers expect from a contemporary Rockstar game.
The more advanced technology underpinning Red Dead Redemption could also affect the missions themselves. Instead of the basic mission structure of going to one location, completing a simple task, and then leaving that location, missions could be far more exciting. Red Dead Redemption 2's epic story was filled with high-octane, intense missions for the player to sink their teeth into. The stakes of these events were elevated through these playable set pieces, as the game's breathtaking visuals, animations, and soundtrack formed an aesthetic deluge that rivaled most of what was offered through missions in GTA 5 and GTA Online. This same attention to detail and commitment to a cinematic experience could be carried over to Red Dead Online to great effect.
Red Dead Online features a gorgeous, massive map, iconic wild west setting, and some of the most impressive visuals in a video game to date. All of these factors and more should contribute to an online role-playing experience that far surpasses that of Rockstar's other leading series. This, unfortunately, has not been the case, as there are campaign features missing from Red Dead Online, and the content that replaces these missing features is lackluster at best. Luckily, Rockstar has plenty of experience creating popular content for Grand Theft Auto Online in the form of heists. If the developer can make the same level of commitment to its newer release, then Red Dead Online's expansions can be even better.