GTA “Not As Good As Dickens,” But Red Dead Redemption 2 Captures Victorian Novel Feel, Says Former Rockstar Boss

Is Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and former lead writer on Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, on the level of literary legends like Charles Dickens? Perhaps history will decide, but Houser himself has acknowledged clear influences from Victorian literature in Rockstar’s open-world storytelling, especially in Red Dead Redemption 2.

During a press tour for GTA 4 over a decade ago, a journalist remarked that the GTA series was “just like Dickens,” a comparison Houser fondly recalls in an interview with The Guardian. “I was like, God bless you for saying that! But I thought about it afterwards… well, they’re not as good as Dickens, but they are similar in that he’s world-building. If you look at Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy, or any of those authors, there’s that feeling of all the world is here – that’s what you’re trying to get in open-world games. It’s a twisted prism, looking at a society that’s interesting in one way or another.”

Houser points out similarities between 19th-century novels from Thackeray onwards and Rockstar’s open-world narratives. Both feature sprawling, interconnected stories that maintain a sense of realism and passage of time. “They are quite physical in that sense, and games are very physical,” he notes.

Later, during the development of Red Dead Redemption 2, Houser drew more direct inspiration from Victorian literature. “I binged on Victorian novels for that,” he says. “I listened to the audiobook of Middlemarch walking to and from the office every day. I loved it.”

His goal was to make Red Dead Redemption 2 feel slightly more novelistic in its writing. “The game was going to look so pretty, the art was so strong, I thought the story had better really set it up. We were trying to fill out the three-dimensional lives of the characters, and also to capture that 19th-century feeling of life and death, which was very different from ours.”

Whether or not the plot measures up to the titans of classic literature, it’s clear that Red Dead Redemption 2 represents Rockstar’s best narrative work. Houser left Rockstar in 2020, but perhaps reading classics like Crime and Punishment or Great Expectations might be the perfect preparation for GTA 6. Actor Steven Ogg, who played Trevor, would surely support the endeavor.