Summary
- Few open-world games put bounty hunting front and center, but Starfield offers a space western bounty hunting experience.
- Gun captures the spirit of frontier bounty hunting, providing players with arcade-style gameplay.
- Red Dead Online turns bounty hunting into a full profession with new missions, gear, and rewards, including player-hunting.
Is there a more striking image than that of a bounty hunter? Masked, hatted, and armed to the teeth, these freelance fugitive trackers wield deadly weapons to eliminate the unrelenting and clever gadgets to subdue the slippery. Bounty hunters make for effortlessly cool protagonists, perfectly suited to sprawling open worlds built for exploration, traversal, and sandbox-style problem solving. The "kill-or-be-killed" loop is a cornerstone of game design.
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However, bounty hunting puts a spin on the concept that involves a mastery of pursuit, strategy, and restraint. It's the art of tracking a human target to their hideout, taking them down, and hauling them (or an identifiable chunk of them) back for a reward, and sometimes, the quarry needs to be delivered alive. Despite the cinematic appeal, few open-world games put bounty hunting front and center, but these games do it well, each putting their own spin on the life of a tracker-for-hire.
6 Starfield
Space Western Justice At A Stellar Scale
Starfield
- Released
- September 6, 2023
WHERE TO PLAY
Bethesda’s interstellar RPG includes a faction called the Freestar Rangers, essentially space cowboys with badges. The game doesn’t focus solely on bounty hunting, but between the job boards, procedurally generated targets, and branching morality paths, it allows players to carve out the life of a professional tracker for as long as they like.
Such a life typically involves ship combat and zero-G shootouts. The good and bad news about bounty hunting in Starfield is that each bounty is a procedurally generated quest. This means no end to new contracts, but targets can feel somewhat faceless and interchangeable. Bounty hunters who look beyond that will find just enough of a framework to enjoy interstellar fugitive chasing.
5 Gun
An Old-Timey Bountyhunting Adventure
Gun
- Released
- November 8, 2005
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure, Shooter
This early 2005 open-world game is a little time-worn, and it is often overshadowed by the Red Dead series, but Gun moseyed so Red Dead Redemption could ride. Colton "Cole" White begins his life as a simple hunter in the verdant wilds of old America. Through a series of turns involving a shady deal and a corrupt preacher on a boat bound for Dodge City, he finds himself enticed into a life of porting, prospecting, and, more importantly, bounty hunting.
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Gun takes no time to chew the fat, as there are no drawn-out conversations or convoluted morality systems, just a poster, a name, and a direction. Bounties can be tackled on horseback or on foot, and they frequently involve shootouts in canyons, ambushes in camps, or dusty duels in the middle of nowhere. This old-timey mid-2000s open-world game captured the spirit of frontier bounty hunting with grit and style, and its stripped-back, arcade-style gameplay delivers the fantasy without too much filler.
4 Elite Dangerous
Track or Be Tracked in a Ruthless Galaxy
In Elite Dangerous, players assume the role of a green pilot in a fully open Milky Way galaxy, charting a personal course through trade, piracy, exploration, or, as many players do in the early game, the bounty hunter’s path. Bounty hunting is player-driven. Contracts can be taken from various factions or collected by scanning wanted ships in unregulated systems, and players cash in on their bounty vouchers with the individuals or factions that issued the jobs.
Identifying the right target, surviving the dogfight, and turning in the kill for credits is easier said than done, especially when everyone else is armed and scanning right back. Elite’s galaxy is a brutal and indifferent place, and while there’s no shortage of marks to chase, most bounties boil down to names on a list and hulls to reduce to scrap.
3 Red Dead Online
Realizing The Bounty Hunter Role In The Closing Frontier
Red Dead Online
- Released
- May 14, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
Red Dead Online turns bounty hunting into a full profession pretty much from the get-go. After purchasing the Bounty Hunter License, players gain access to an entire progression track complete with new missions, gear, and rewards. Targets range from petty bandits to infamous fugitives, with legendary bounties offering set-piece pursuits full of ambushes and cinematic standoffs.
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Bounty hunting means tracking someone across multiple states or hogtying a slippery runner just before they dive into a river. As well as punching iron into any varment's skull worth more than five bucks, bounty hunters have the "alive" option available to score extra dollars from the authorities, as well as the means (and rope) to do it in a satisfying, realistic, and immersive way. After reaching a certain level, players can ruin lives for fun by bounty hunting other players across the open world, should they so wish.
2 Mercenaries: Playground Of Destruction
Stacking The Deck (With Explosions) And Playing For Keeps
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
- Released
- January 11, 2005
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Action
Set in an alternate history version of North Korea, Mercenaries: Playground Of Destruction casts players as a private military contractor working for the highest bidder. The target and prize is "Deck of 52," a rogues’ gallery of high-value targets that must be captured or eliminated. Each target comes with its own complications, be it their armored escorts, random civilian cover, or good old-fashioned heavy defenses.
In true open-world fashion, the player is free to approach the mission with stealth, firepower, or full-blown airstrikes. Bringing in targets alive is often more lucrative, but far harder to pull off. While it may not be one of the most influential classic open-world games, Mercenaries still made hardcore fans, who are still desperate to see the series return, out of all who played it back in 2005.
1 Red Dead Redemption
Dead Or Alive In The Fading Wild West
Red Dead Redemption
- Released
- May 18, 2010
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Adventure
Hunting down the former members of John Marston's old gang may be the driving narrative, but bounty missions in Red Dead Redemption are highly replayable, rewarding, and full of variation. Although its sequel arguably does just about everything better and on a grander scale (although some may disagree), the original certainly provides just about the best bounty hunting missions and mechanics a would-be criminal wrangler could wish for, even above the sequel.
Bounty posters line the walls of sheriff’s offices, each pointing to a wanted man with a price on his head. Bringing them in alive pays better, but it’s riskier, requiring players to close the distance without getting shot off their horse. Whether John captures, kills, or lets his targets go, Red Dead Redemption hands over the reins and lets players decide what kind of hunter Marston really is.
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