The Battle Royale genre, which sees 100 players dropped into a giant free-for-all until there’s a last man standing, has taken the gaming world by storm over the last year or so with the massive popularity of games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale. These two titans have been battling back and forth for months, with Fortnite more recently surpassing PUBG thanks to its free-to-play model and availability on pretty much every device capable of playing video games. But even with these two games dominating Twitch streams and the like, it still feels like we’re currently in the calm before the storm, so to speak, as the success of these games is still too recent for other publishers and developers to have had time to produce their own take on this emerging genre.
Much like the plastic instruments and motion gaming crazes of years gone-by, we’re not far away from being inundated with a bunch of PUBG and Fortnite clones eager to get a slice of the pie. Most of these games are going to fail miserably, but a few are likely to not only succeed, but improve upon PUBG and Fortnite. While I don’t think all of the following 12 franchises should adopt a Battle Royale mode, they are arguably the ones best positioned to do it right and actually give PUBG and Fortnite a run for their money.
12. Red Dead Redemption 2
This one feels like a no-brainer, but it’s unclear at this point if Rockstar has any plans to implement a battle royale mode into Red Dead Redemption 2, which launches later this year. Rockstar already added something similar to the massively popular GTA Online in 2017’s Smuggler’s Run update, so it would make sense for the developer to follow suit with Red Dead Online, which is set to be a major focus of the game. With its large open-world environment and third-person shooting mechanics, Red Dead is ready-made for a large-scale, PUBG-like game mode, and the western theme would certainly help differentiate it from the competition.
Considering parachutes weren’t really a thing in the late 1800s, I’m not sure how players would drop in from the air to start each match, but perhaps Rockstar could toss in some sort of turn-of-the-century mini-zeppelin flying device to give the mode a more zany feel. While Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has cautioned that Rockstar doesn’t want their games to be derivative, he could see a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 adopting a battle royale mode if there is demand for it. In other words, there’s like a 99% chance of it happening.
Rockstar Games