Rockstar has long been one of the foremost pioneers in open-world games, and Red Dead Online doesn't use the facility, either, as players only see it in the now-standalone game's introduction.
As such, Red Dead Online's world has a large, meticulously crafted chunk of the map that is just there for aesthetics, making it a prime spot for a new expansion. Rockstar can open up Sisika Penitentiary via a series of missions, also introducing new activities, free roam events, and random world encounters. Borrowing from the single-player story and integrating Online's components, Rockstar can create a prison break narrative that focuses on the gangs and outlaws of the Wild West to create a more nuanced world.
Aside from a glitch that can be exploited during Legendary Bounties, players can't even access the island in RDO, despite it being fully rendered in-game. Fortunately, Rockstar has already laid the foundation to utilize this area with the introduction of specialist roles - specifically, Red Dead Online's Bounty Hunter. The role is built around tracking down dangerous fugitives, and who else would occupy a massive island penitentiary? A Sisika Penitentiary prison break would set the stage for a grand adventure between outlaws and bounty hunters.
How Red Dead Online Can Create A Sisika Prison Break Expansion
The easiest thing for RDO to do with Sisika Penitentiary already has its seeds planted, thanks to a Red Dead Redemption 2 mission in which solo, like GTA Online's Cayo Perico Heist, would give them full access to play as they want.
The missions could start with players being ed by an anonymous source, similar to the recently introduced RDO Telegram Missions. They would then have to meet up with an NPC to get details about their fellow imprisoned gang . Players would go about assembling a crew, eliciting the help of other NPCs to fit their strategy. If they wanted to go loud and wild, they could contract a demolitions expert. For a stealthier approach, they could find a mole within the prison to grant them access. An even more fun alternative could be a high-risk plan, where players get themselves captured to launch a breakout from the inside, granting an even bigger payout.
Added replay value would come from the variety of breakout options, all of which could be playable with a posse or alone. Smaller, additional prison breaks could be done with little prep or strategy, with each one getting increasingly more difficult as the prisoners in question became more notorious. This would culminate in the most intricate breakout to free an entire gang, requiring significant planning and preparation, heavy firepower, and coordination. Rockstar could then easily add new prison breaks at any time to keep Red Dead Online's missions fresh and exciting.
How RDO's Prison Break Could Give Bounty Hunters More Missions
With notorious criminals being sprung from the penitentiary, there would be even more fugitives roaming the frontier and awaiting justice; enter, the Bounty Hunters. This expansion would perfectly set up new jobs for the Bounty Hunter specialist role to hunt down the fugitives, a concept players have already created themselves in Red Dead Online roleplay servers with prison systems. In addition to Bounty Hunter missions, there could be random Prison Break Free Roam events, where players would jump in as individuals or a posse to see who could round up or put down the most fugitives in an allotted time. Bounty wagons be spaced throughout the instanced area for an easy drop-off, and players could choose between hauling a target in for a maximum reward or opting for the quicker alternative and a lower reward.
This expansion could also introduce new Bounty Hunter missions like the potential prison break missions. Players would gather intel about an escaped target, then decide on their approach. They could skip the intermediate information gathering missions and go straight for the target, but doing so would increase the likelihood the target wasn't at the expected location or manages to escape, giving weight to players' decisions. Similar to Red Dead Online's Moonshine missions, as well, players could decide how to execute the apprehension of the target: Do they go in, guns blazing, and lasso them? Poison the water supply and take out the whole gang? Set a wagon on fire to force them out of their hideout? The methods chosen could all have different sets of challenges and rewards to keep things fun.
As with the breakout side of "The Sisika Situation," the bulk of the expansion's replay value for Bounty Hunters would come from increasingly difficult and complex targets, much like that of Red Dead Online's Legendary Bounties. The most difficult ones would require players to build a crew of NPC bounty hunters to assist in the takedown, with their various specialties giving the missions variety akin to 's Client Jobs. This would ensure that, however players want to plan their setup, there would be ways to fit their playstyles and maximize payout.
There are any number of smaller updates Rockstar could roll into a Sisika Penitentiary expansion, too, from random bounties appearing that have to be returned to Sisika instead of a local jail to Moonshiners getting raided by the Bureau of Internal Revenue and having to break out. More importantly, though, this is one region of the game that is already fully built but has no purpose, thus making it one of the smoother possible expansions Rockstar could produce. Red Dead Redemption 2 used Sisika Penitentiary for a key but simple bit of storytelling. Red Dead Online could actually give Sisika purpose and substance.
