Representation of people and genders is a very important issue right now. Not just in real life, but in movies, TV shows, and video games. For Rockstar Games, they haven’t always had the best record when it comes to the females in their titles, especially given how they’re used in their Grand Theft Auto series. Red Dead Redemption did better, but some still called out the company for its “policy” on how women are used. Red Dead Redemption 2 though will apparently break that stereotype.
Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, pointed out to Vulture that there are going to be some really strong female characters in Red Dead Redemption 2 that people are going to want to pay attention to.
“[There is] This old intellectual called Lillian Powell, who’s come back to the South from New York, who’s almost like a Dorothy Parker character,” said Houser. “There are also ones who are weak and ones who are weak and become strong and ones who think they’re strong but are not. And that goes for men, too.”
It’s good to see that Rockstar is going for the “wide net” approach when it comes to characters both male an female. Especially given the news that the game had thousands of actors recording lines for various characters both big and small. Thus, there needs to be a wide variety of personalities in the game.
But more than that, Houser acknowledged how history played a big part in making these female characters who they were:
“It was a time when women were beginning to question [their roles], and the Wild West was an area where people could invent themselves for the first time; many of the people who were inventing themselves were women,” said Houser. “They were no longer constrained by society, because there was no society.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 arrives on October 26th.
