Red Dead Redemption 2’s Proposed Battle Royale Mode Won’t Be Like Fortnite

There’s still so much that we want to see from Red Dead Redemption 2, but Rockstar Games is being cool with taking the cautious route so that it doesn’t give too much away about the highly anticipated sequel.

But one feature that has been heavily discussed is the game’s proposed Battle Royale mode. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently spoke out about it, saying that if it did happen, it definitely wouldn’t take a familiar route.

While speaking with GameDaily, Zelnick stopped just short of confirming the mode. But he did note that if it were included, it would not be like Fortnite. “No one wants to be a Fortnite clone,” he admitted.

“We’ve used battle royale mechanics before,” he explained, pointing out such a mode being introduced to Grand Theft Auto Online earlier this year. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but any mechanic you use would want to be in service of the core entertainment experience and would be consumer-focused. It wouldn’t be driven by revenue focus in our view. And if one is overly derivative of another’s success, you pretty much guarantee you’re not going to have your own success, because no one is looking for a clone of Fortnite. I wish we had Fortnite — we don’t — so wishing we had Fortnite is not going to help me.”

He continued, “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t use a mechanic that’s in other games. We’re certainly not averse to using something created by someone else in service of a good experience in our own games. So there are moments when you might choose to be derivative for some small portion of a game, but I think there’s a lot of emphasis on questions that have been posed more pointedly by some which is, ‘Hey, look at Fortnite, shouldn’t everything you do be some example of Fortnite?’ The answer is absolutely not. If we turned an upcoming release into a sad, diluted version of Fortnite, I can assure you it would fail, in addition to being embarrassing [for the brand].”

It would make sense for Red Dead 2 to strive out on its own with a Battle Royale mode that fits into its world, sort of like how Blackout will do for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. Now we just have to wait a few more weeks to see what Rockstar is up to.

Red Dead Redemption 2 releases on October 26 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.