Red Dead Online’s Halloween update finally emerged earlier this week, and despite the addition of some nice new cosmetics, it’s fair to say the community was hoping for a slightly spookier experience than what it got. Yet it’s always possible to make your own fun – particularly in a game that’s already quite creepy at times – and that certainly seems to be the case on the Red Dead Mysteries subreddit, where the community has decided to go on a monster hunt.
The target of this search appears to be some sort of Loch Ness monster – or at least, that’s what players are guessing from listening to the sound files. Back in July, YouTube channel Obsidian Sky Studio uploaded some mysterious recordings they’d found in the game files using modding tool Open IV. I had a look myself, and sure enough, the batch of creepy sounds is there. Titled “rivermonster”, the files can be found in an audio SFX folder, and feature about a minute’s worth of harrowing noises that sound like a dinosaur got frisky with a steam boat.
Speculating that the sounds could actually belong to the legendary bull gator, Obsidian Sky Studio included them at the end of the video for comparison, and I think it’s clear this is something else.
River Monster? | RDRII [Game Files] Watch on YouTube
The discovery was significant, but further investigation efforts didn’t kick off until earlier this week when Reddit user jackruppert17 decided to take things a step further. “Someone needs to investigate this – I think that there is a river monster somewhere in the game,” they said in an extensive Reddit post. “There most likely isn’t a monster in the game, but if we can at least find a way to trigger the noises, then I will count that as a success.”