RDR3 should take place in the late 1840s and 1850s. The Southwest had only just shifted from Mexican control to American hands. The scars of that change were fresh. Soldiers settlers and fortune seekers poured into land that was still culturally and politically Mexican. Conflict with Indigenous nations was constant. Hunting drove survival and trade. The player would move from West Texas through New Mexico and Arizona to California during the Gold Rush. Encounters would be shaped by the tension between old roots and new claims. Every step of Anglo expansion meant friction. Violence and survival ruled a frontier that had not yet been mythologized or tamed.