I love video games. Video games do what movies, television, books cannot; they give the power of the protagonist to you. With the right story or gameplay or atmosphere or all of the above, you can easily get lost in one.
Sometimes, after a long day of work, it’s just what the doctor ordered. So, three nights ago, after a particularly arduous Monday back in the office, I returned home to take a load off. I scarfed down whatever leftovers I had from the night before and booted up my PlayStation. I had just recently completed my first ever playthrough of Resident Evil 4 from 2005. And while it was utterly fantastic, tonight, I wanted to indulge in something familiar, something chill.
Flipping through my old games, I came upon one I hadn’t played since it first came out: Red Dead Redemption 2. I had all my old save files so I decided, why not? I popped in the disk and launched the game, loading a save file from 2018. Just like that, I was back in my old game, with all the items and skills I had procured along the way.
To the dozens of you who don’t know about Red Dead Redemption 2, it is a game set in 1899, in the American Old West. The player character is one Arthur Morgan, who runs with his gang of outlaw buddies doing outlaw shit in the waning days of the unchecked outlaws. Super realistic, super immersive. The amount of things you can do and find continues to blow people away. To this day, I still see new YouTube videos pop up, gushing over some recently discovered detail for a five year old game.
My game loaded in to reveal my Arthur, sat upon a bench in the busy town of Saint Denis. It was a bright, dewey morning and the townsfolk were out and about, exchanging pleasantries. The town bustled with sights and sounds; life. I pushed forward on the controller’s directional stick and my Arthur stood to his feet.
And we were off. I had set out to play something familiar and chill. And “chill” was exactly what I was going to do. It was early morning in the game, so I set out to have the best day for ol’ Arthur, starting with a shave and a haircut. His beard was a little scraggly and his head of hair was somewhat disheveled. But after a quick visit to the local barber, we were clean-shaven and well-coiffed. Next, I purchased a new outfit for the man. A real fancy man’s outfit, for a civilized individual. My guy Arthur was looking slick and clean as a whistle.
Throughout the day, I casually walked Arthur around town, greeting folks and petting dogs and tipping the homeless and fishing and sharing a drink with some bar patrons. We saw the church and the theater and the market and the boat docks and we just lived. Casual as a man would or could, in that day and age and time and place.
Then, night came. The streets of the town became quieter, less busy. Arthur walked through the muddy streets, saying his hellos to a young couple passing by. I figured I’d walk him to the big saloon, where he’d get a hot meal, a hot bath, and a place to stay for the night. The next morning, we’d ride off on our horse and set about a new adventure. The walk to the “room for rent” circled us back through town, a silent victory lap in celebration of a most relaxing day.
As we got closer to the saloon, I started to realize we hadn’t seen any townsfolk out for a while, no NPCs anywhere (“Non-Playable Character”, for you dozens out there). Arthur and I trudged up the lonely road when we finally saw someone: a person, standing still in the alley-way just beside the Lamarque Hotel. We greeted him with pleasantries but the man did not respond.
This NPC, he seemed to be dressed…differently, than any other non-playable character I had encountered. He wore a checkered flannel tucked into blue jeans, holstered by a brown belt. He wore brown loafers and brown Aviator-seeing glasses. He sported a crude combover atop his head. Now, I hadn’t played this game in almost five years, so I wasn’t positive I knew every single outfit or accessory in this game, but there was something about him…I’d just never seen the look before. It didn’t fit the era, the late-1800s. Felt about eighty years too early.
Arthur acknowledged the man again, receiving nothing. Though his focus remained trained on Arthur, the NPC hardly moved. I walked Arthur closer and tried speaking again. See, in this game, when you encounter any random, you’re given the option to either “Greet” or “Antagonize”. This time, the option for both was disallowed.
Upon closer inspection, I found that the NPC wasn’t quite on-par with the graphical resolution of any of the other townsfolk. The NPC looked…pretty good, but from afar. Once you got in close, you could see the disparity in graphics. It was like this NPC was plucked out of a game from 2007; not so bad at the time, but certainly not the caliber of quality the in-game models looked like these days. It was like someone lifted a “non-playable” out of Assassin’s Creed 2, dressed him in clothes from 1970s Idaho, and dropped him in my game.
And his eyes…they were like an unfinished asset; so pixelated, they looked almost entirely black.
His whole aura, his essence, his veneer…was just a few feet too deep in the uncanny valley.
It was strange but surely there’d been several updates to the game since I had played. A weird glitch in fidelity? Some sort of developer joke/easter egg? Who knows. It was a slightly strange, if not somewhat boring, juncture on an otherwise normal day. Arthur and I walked to the big saloon, nearing its front doors. I couldn’t help but turn the camera back towards the NPC, who’s gaze remained focused on Arthur. We stepped through the entrance doors and left the scene behind us. I decided to skip the meal and bath and just rented the room, where Arthur crept into bed and we slept it all off.
The next day, the town was back alive. After a quick breakfast at the bar of prime rib, we hopped on our near-golden horse and rode out of town, just as I said we would. Today’s casual activity would be hunting, of whatever animal we should set our sights and minds on. By mid-afternoon, we had the skins and meats of at least two bucks, three birds, and one mighty buffalo. Arthur set up camp in the middle of a nowhere field and began cooking his meats over the fire, sipping a cup of coffee as he did. It was a long, productive day. The sun was just beginning to set over the horizon. It was calm; peaceful out this way. The treeline not 100 meters away stood so still.
And that’s when we saw it…standing there at the edge of the forest…a figure. It was sorta hard to tell who it was, but…you know. Arthur whipped out his binoculars and zoomed in on the spot where the figure stood and, sure enough, it was that NPC, just staring back at him…at me.
“What the fuck?”, I said to myself.
The figure remained unmoving. I must’ve just stared at it for a good minute. Finally, I put away the binoculars and pulled out my Rolling Block rifle, a high-powered weapon equipped with a long-range scope. When I entered the sights and took aim at where the NPC was, he was gone. I scanned left and right and all through the treeline and found nothing. Weird.
It was dead silent when I heard the screeeeeeee; neighing screams of my horse, startled and petrified. I dropped my sights and whirled around to see my fleeing horse. Something had spooked the ol’ girl, sending her racing away in terror. I scanned my surroundings and found only empty fields, losing light in the setting sun. I took off after my horse and eventually got her to calm down. I checked all around me once more. The horse’s darting eyes appeared as if she was doing the same. As we both calmed, I thought it best to get out of the countryside for the night. Arthur jumped onto our horse and rode back towards civilization.
Along the way, I couldn’t help but ponder the two incidents. The look of the NPC itself was already peculiar, now it was appearing as if at random. Was this some sort of gag? An easter egg via the games developer, Rockstar Games? What was the joke that I was missing out on? I paused the game and took to my phone, Googling for “recent Read Dead 2 events” and “recent Read Dead 2 easter eggs”, “Red Dead 2 flannel and glasses NPC”, “Red Dead 2 combover NPC”, all sorts of permutations. Nothing. No results regarding the matter.
Maybe, somehow, I was the first to encounter this easter egg/event/NPC, whatever it was. I know in the past, you’d have to go through a series of actions in order for a scripted sequence to even occur, so maybe, I had accidentally done the right combination of moves, inadvertently hit all the right triggers, and prompted the appearance of this NPC.
Unpausing the game, I finished journeying to Saint Denis and spent another night at the saloon. The next morning, I left town and decided to make my way to the second best town in the game, Valentine. It was about half the game-map away. Arthur, me, and our horse carried off into the wilds of the world, encountering fauna and folk along the way. Nothing out of the ordinary. At one point, I stopped off to help a man bitten by a snake. Saving his life and bidding him adieu, I proudly trotted my horse down the road. It wasn’t long before I spotted a figure, just up ahead at a crossroads, staring at a sign on the edge of the junction. And as I neared, I recognized the figure as that same NPC.
Once more, I tried greetings. And once more, the NPC said nothing, merely turning to stare at me. It was kinda creepy…but I liked that. Horror is perhaps my favorite genre, of anything. And if this was some sort of weird Rockstar/Red Dead update that I’d been the first to uncover somehow, well, that was just awesome. Like planting your flag in a monstrous moon.
I jumped off my horse and studied the NPC. “Greet” hadn’t work so what were my options? “Antagonize”? Maybe rob? Pull a gun on? Hogtie? All these avenues seem aggressive, especially when I set out to just chill in this game. And who knows if violence would simply end this unique encounter. I couldn’t be sure. So, I just stood there for a while. Waiting for something, anything to happen. I even set up a camp, at one point, hoping it would initiate the next scripted event.
But, the sun started to dip and night slowly crept in. Arthur rested at his camp, marking time, while the NPC just stared. He hadn’t moved from the spot he stood, even a little. I tried Googling for the way forward, which proved fruitless. Whatever. This was getting kinda boring. It was mildly creepy at first but now…now, I was just a sitting duck.
Arthur and I stomped out the camp and approached the NPC. And we did the next best thing we could think of: “Antagonize”. Arthur spewed out some sorta insult and the NPC just took it, responding in no way. We threw out a few more insults and received absolutely nothing. Maybe I was tired at this point, but I pulled out my sawed-off shotgun and aimed it at the annoyance. Arthur said something about messing with the wrong man. The mute remained mute. And Arthur and I both pulled our triggers, blowing the NPC’s head off.
The corpse hit the ground with a thud in gory fashion. And it was just dead. I immediately went to loot its corpse; check its person for items, evidence, prompts for something to come. But there was no option to “Loot”, the NPC simply had nothing on it.
Fuck this. I didn’t get what this side mission even was but I didn’t really care anymore. I just abandoned the body and finished my journey to Valentine without further incident, spending the night trying to enjoy the local scene. Even still, I couldn’t get the visage of that NPC out of my head. It was late enough in real-life, anyway, so I decided to put Arthur to bed right before doing so myself.
That night, I dreamt I was in a dark cabin, locked inside a barren bedroom. I tried the only door, jiggling the knob, to no avail.
When I awoke, I readied for the work day and went into the office. I worked and then, I went home. I made dinner and ate half of it. Then, I jumped back into my PlayStation.
All in all, playing Red Dead was more relaxing than unnerving, so I returned to it. Awakening in Valentine, I decided to take a train to the town of Strawberry, maybe find some bounty hunting work. Perhaps, the previous night’s end had made me crave a little more shooting, a little more action.
The train was full of busy-bodies, regular folk just trying to get to where they were going. It was nice and scenic…and a little slow. I decided to “skip” the trip, opting to arrive instantly. When the game faded out and loaded back in, I found I wasn’t at my destination. We were stopped in the middle of nowhere at dusk. No train station in sight. All the people who were in my train car were now gone. Arthur got up and searched the rows of seats, moving up to the next attached carriage. No one here, either. We strode forward to the connecting car, finding it empty. As we pushed up to the very front car, Arthur and I both let out a small gasp.
Each and every seat was filled by a traveler.
And each and every traveler was missing their head.
Typically, in this game, a shotgun blast would blow a person’s head off, leaving behind a mangled mess. There’d inevitably be leftover viscera and hanging carnage in the head’s place. Not these bodies, though. Each one was carved cleanly along the neck, where the appendage was removed. Nary a sight of blood or trace of anyone’s face. Just a sea of lifeless corpses, men and women made shells of their former selves, devoid of what once made them human.
This was insane. This had to be a new update to the game or some crazy event I missed before. But just as I had turned to Google before, I again came up with no results. No one on the internet talked about “taking a train and skipping the trip and waking up, alone, in the middle of nowhere, only to find the front car packed with decapitated bodies”. Nah, there wasn’t anything like that online. How? I kinda just sat and stared at the pause screen for a little. I mean, good job creeping me the hell out, Rockstar. Even better job hiding this event so well that, somehow, only I had encountered it. So, like an explorer in uncharted waters, I pressed on. Unpausing the game, Arthur and I walked through the massacre.
Like the NPC from before, the bodies had no “Loot” option; no items on them, whatsoever. Reaching the front of the passenger train, there was only the coal-car and front cab left. I hopped out of the train and made my way towards the operator’s booth. Investigating, I found no clues…except a trail of blood, leading from the cab to a field a few yards to my left.
That’s where we found the engineer, or what was left of him. From his feet to his waist, he was very nearly intact. But everything else above was scattered across the ground. One arm was over here, the other arm over there. His chest was pulverized into pieces. And his head, the one and only head I could find, was caved in at the front, exploding brain out the back.
Arthur and I approached the mangled corpse and, wouldn’t you know it, the option to “Loot” appeared. So, I did just that. And I found only one item: a cigarette card, collectibles akin to baseball trading cards but with Old West legends and the like. Usually, they’d have a colorful and artistic representation of said legend along with their name; like “Black Belle”, “Billy Midnight”, or the “Butcher Bros”. But this one had no name, no color, just a crude drawing of that NPC. Yeah, the very same.
Just then, I heard something…a chortle, almost. From far away, like a guttural, choking laugh. The noise startled me so much I fumbled the controller, pausing the game. I nervously laughed; the game had got me good. Even still, I was hesitant to unpause. When I did, I immediately scanned my surroundings, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Well, nothing else out of the ordinary. The dead engineer had no other items on him, so I went back to the only other place I could think of, the scene of the crime.
Surely, I had missed a piece of the puzzle. I moved past the first row of bodies.
Some sort of prompt or unseen item, perhaps. I moved past the second row.
Maybe, there was something at the very back of the train. I moved past the th –
There he was. Sitting there, in the last seat of the car, was the NPC. Staring silently at me. Every now and then, his head would tilt just a touch. I was paralyzed. This was single-handedly the most immersive and creepiest piece of video game content I had ever come across. It must’ve been thirty seconds or something before I finally got the courage to approach the NPC. Our last encounter had ended pretty violently. How was I going to play this one?
When I got near and targeted the NPC for conversation, I wasn’t given the option to “Greet” nor “Antagonize”. I was simply given one choice: “Reason”. What? I had never seen “Reason” before. It never came up on my first run of the game and something tells me, if I had Googled it, I’d find nothing about it. It was a game mechanic that just didn’t exist. I sort of stared at the choice for a moment or two, weighing what to do. Maybe, I shouldn’t have done anything. Had I just turned the game off at that point, crept into bed, and chalked it up as “man, video games are getting crazy innovative”, things might be different now.
But I didn’t do that. Curiosity got the better of me. So, I chose “Reason”.
Arthur stammered out, “Okay, easy…Easy, we’re okay. I didn’t see nothin’. I…I can just go.”
I had never heard Arthur back down like that. In the face of an adversary, he was the quickest gun in the West. The NPC spoke naught. The “Reason” prompt returned. I clicked it.
“It don’t need to be done. I just…” Arthur stumbled on his words. He barely got out, “You, you…you ain’t got to do thi –”
The NPC twitched. And suddenly, the game went black and all sound ceased.
“What the hell?”, I questioned out loud. Power hadn’t gone out, the TV was still on as was my PlayStation. I clicked some buttons and nothing happened. Goddamnit, had the game frozen? I almost shut off the game console, as a good minute had passed, when I started to hear the faint sounds of morning; birds and insects chirping, a calm breeze. The game’s volume gradually returned to normalcy. That normalcy was cut down when the game’s image returned, though.
On-screen was a lonely tree, in the middle of an open field, in broad daylight. And leaning against that tree was Arthur…pieces of him, at least. Everything from his waist down was there but his chest and his arms, they were scattered about. Chunks of meat decorated his lap and the tree’s roots. And his head…it was bolted onto the tree with what looked like a railroad spike between the eyes. Most of it was caved in, anyway. Everything but his mouth, which was frozen in a silent scream.
“Jesus fucking…”, I faltered.
What kind of death-screen was this? Usually you’d get shot or stabbed or whatever and the words “DEAD” would flash momentarily on a black screen. Nothing drawn out and excessive like this. And yet, the screen remained on this image. The day and time proceeded on normally in the background as poor Arthur lay absolutely mutilated. I clicked any and all buttons, but nothing seemed to get me out of this screen. Couldn’t “retry”, couldn’t pause, I couldn’t even get the PlayStation menu to come up. Nothing worked. I was just stuck staring at this horrible scene.
Finally, I gave up and turned off the console. I had only been playing the game for just over half an hour and I was already done with it. I sat there, pondering what the hell that all was for the better part of the next half hour. Either way, tonight wasn’t the night. I restarted the system and booted up a different game, Rocket League. It’s like soccer, but with cars. It was a far-cry from Red Dead and pretty much exactly what I needed. Still, while mindlessly scoring goals in that game, I couldn’t shake the image of Arthur and the things that we saw and the things that were done to him. The evening ended on an unceremonious loss and I quietly went to bed.
That night, I dreamt I was back in the cabin bedroom. The room looked smaller. The wooden walls seemed to be angled slightly. Again, I tried the door. Nothing. When I pressed my ear to the panel, I heard the low noise of something churning. Like a washing machine or something, twisting its contents with a rhythmic ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk.
The next morning (yesterday morning) I felt more tired than the day before. I pushed past this, readying for the day and heading to work. The day passed. I went home. After dinner, I accidentally fell asleep on the couch watching a documentary about some woman who drove her van in the wrong direction on a freeway. I recall a lot of people died but not much else. Anyway, I’d pick it up some other time. Before retiring for the night, I did want to get some game time in. And hey, maybe I could uncover the mystery of that Red Dead event. This time, I could save Arthur and do it right.
When I booted the console and launched the game, I waited for it to load me in. But instead, it loaded a brand new game, from the very beginning of the story. Strange. After skipping some cutscenes and finally being given player control, I paused and searched for my save game…but it wasn’t there. I had at least six separate saves, one at the start of each game chapter before the epilogue. And yet, all six were gone. There wasn’t even an autosave, which it had been doing just last night. I navigated to the PlayStation menu and manually searched for my save files. Gone. I searched the Cloud. Gone. It was as if they never existed.
“You have to be fucking shitting me”, I cursed. It sucked. I mean, I had already completed the game and had done everything I wanted to the first time, but now, if I ever wanted to repeat some point in the story or just play the game, fully-kitted, it’d be impossible. I was reduced to zero.
My mind was racing. How could this have happened? Was this some shitty update in the game that erased your data? Had the developers accidentally input some corrupting trigger to go alongside their weird, horrific event? I knew better than to look it up. Maybe in due time, once the anger had subsided, I’d give Red Dead another whirl. And maybe by then, other people on the internet would start to chime in.
Rocket League was fun but I was looking to play something a little more “free-in-nature” and a little less multiplayer. Scanning through my catalog of games, I decided on Spider-Man from 2018. Literally jumping into New York City was a blast, swinging and zipping around like the real Spidey would. I dove from the highest heights, climbed the curviest constructs, fought and foiled the feeblest foes.
I was the hero and the people of New York loved me. They hooted and hollered as I walked down the streets, where I met as many folks as I could. It was a little more streamlined in this game than Red Dead, but the mechanics were similar. Every now and then, a prompt appeared above random civilians’ heads that allowed for a unique animation, something akin to a fist-bump or cool guy handshake. The setting sun cascaded a golden gloom across the city street as countless citizens eagerly conversed with a genuine superhero.
But past the crowd of Spidey-fans, just across the street…it was him. How? It was that NPC. How? There was no mistaking that look; that flannel and that combover and those glasses and those eyes. While swarms of people gawked at me and Spider-Man, the only gaze I felt was from that NPC, silently staring from the other side of the road.
I had to Google it. I didn’t even bother to pause the game. Away in my browser I went, piecing together the most detailed and specific of searches. There were about 19 images and even fewer articles. Nothing to do with what I was looking at and experiencing. I tried looking up anything about cross-game promotional material or easter eggs or just something. Alas, it was all moot. I was so absolutely bewildered by it all and I couldn’t have possibly predicted the implications of it in totality.
Suddenly, the idea that I should be recording all this popped into my head. I clicked the PlayStation’s video capture button but was met with the notification “Gameplay recording paused because you entered a blocked scene.” That usually comes up during copyright scenes or information the developers felt need be redacted. But this was just a random event in the game. Wasn’t it?
I steered Spidey through the pack of New Yorkers and towards that man. With the click of a button, Spider-Man will usually greet whoever in his cheer-y, friendly-neighborhood way. But when I tried it on this “whoever”, Spidey sounded almost hesitant to say hello. Even when he did, the NPC responded in no way. Again, ol’ Peter Parker did his best to exchange pleasantries, stifling the uncertainty in his voice. The NPC was mum…but something appeared above his head.
A prompt. For a unique animation. I watched the button hover above the NPC, glowing and baiting me to press it. I, of course, hesitated. But I, of course, eventually relented. Upon pressing the triangle key, the prompt vanished and there was a pregnant pause. Awkwardly, I turned the camera and watched Spidey’s fans disperse down the street, perhaps more briskly than a casual stroll.
Turning back to the NPC, he was already walking off in the other direction. I considered following but I was entirely unsure of how to even progress. The NPC turned a right, into a nearby alley-way and disappeared. I just stared at the spot as I wondered what the hell was going on. There were considerably less people on the streets, nothing compared to the swarms of civilians before. A single car drove past, heading the opposite way. The sun had started setting a little faster than its original pace.
Whatever was going on, it was time to get out of here. But when I tried to move my character, he just stood in place. Had my controller died? No, still on. Battery level was still good. Was the game soft-locked or something? Trying all the buttons, they all seemed to work except the ones that gave me movement; no running, no swinging, no attacking. As I tried pausing and unpausing and mashing buttons for the tenth time –
“Hello?,” Spidey asked aloud. I steered the camera and searched for anyone nearby. The closest person was several blocks behind. Before I knew it –
“Hello?” It was Spider-Man’s voice, but it didn’t come from him. It came from further ahead. And it wasn’t quite the same, it was garbled and pitched down. We both stared at the spot we believed the voice came from, the alley-way. The city was quiet, impossibly so. All we heard was a hushed clicking, echoing from the alley-way.
And from around the corner, the NPC’s quivering face peeked out.
Then, the game crashed, followed by a more violent console crash. The innards of the game system came to a crumpling halt, wheezed, and finally shut off. I was bathed in the blue of the “No Input” screen.
“Come the fuck on,” I let out, wearily. After rebooting the console and relaunching the game, I made it to the main menu, half expecting my save file to be deleted. But thankfully, it was still there. I selected the file and waited for it to load. And waited. And waited. This load time was longer than usual, especially for next-gen hardware. After probably double the regular waiting period, the game-world of New York appeared. The familiar frame of the Chrysler Building filled my visage. And sitting atop one of its highest perches was none other than Spider-Man.
No. Not sitting. Splayed out; cut down and eviscerated. The legs and feet were whole, but the stomach and up were a mess. Arms, hands, fingers…everywhere. Chest, obliterated. It was Arthur all over again. And just like Arthur, Spidey’s head was webbed to the building wall…caved in and hemorrhaging brain. Part of his mask was shredded, allowing for his gaping maw to peer out, trapped in a perpetual shriek.
This…this was absolutely wrong. There was no amount of excess blood, let alone gore, in this game. This would never, ever fly for the game’s developers, not to mention the goddamn publishers who’d have a shareholder’s nightmare over extremely explicit content in a fucking Spider-Man game.
I don’t know if it was stuck on that screen like in Red Dead, but I didn’t even try. I just turned the game console off, I didn’t even want to look at it. I must’ve sat in my chair for the rest of the night, puzzling things over in my head. Far too many questions flooded my mind but chances are, if you’re thinking ‘em right now, I was too. I still am.
I’m kinda at a loss, at present. I’m not sure how to proceed. On paper, this seems like a nothing occurrence. Maybe a group of rogue developers got together and coded some weirdo shit into their games. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know that I’m too chicken shit right now to go back into either game. I know the Red Dead save is gone but the Spider-Man one is still there, I just checked. What does that mean? This all started with me wanting to play a game that was familiar and that was chill. I’m not chill, ladies and gentlemen. I feel uneasy. Sick, almost. But again, on paper, this all sounds so stupid. What, am I afraid of a video game? I mean, I love video games…
Last night, I dreamt I was back in the cabin bedroom. The room was even smaller. The walls, angled ever so closely into a triangle, almost. Once again, I tried the door. Jiggled the knob. Pressed my ear to the wall. Listened closely for the subtle sounds of something spinning succinctly until…
Knock-knock.