Head to a telegraph pole along the railway track between Citadel Rock and Heartland Oil Fields between 3am and 4am in Red Dead Redemption 2, and you'll find a spider and its web. Place the spider on your map, and you'll find one such location for each of its legs. Right at the centre of the arachnid outline's body, a larger web sits nestled in a tree. It directs you north.
Following that direction will lead to more clues. Guitars and bird carvings, question marks left in an unclimbable mountain near the Calume Ravine. The trail continues from there, continuously pulling you onward in the most indirect fashion. It's compelling and maddening, in equal measure. None of us treasure hunters are even sure we're going in the right direction. We somehow skipped over a glowing pentagram, and a heart left on some scaffolding seems to be part of the pattern? It's all in the air, still.. Sounds remarkably Twin Peaks, doesn't it?
Eight years since Red Dead Redemption 2's launch, players have stumbled on its most esoteric mystery. An enigma so obscure, it hid in plain sight for nearly a decade, blinking on and off at particular intervals during the day/night cycle. Now, those players are banding together to see where this particular path leads. I've become enamored with the puzzle, re-installing Rockstar's epic recreation of the Old West and taking Arthur Morgan around to see it all laid out for myself. The biggest surprise of all, though? It finally made me excited for Grand Theft Auto 6.
This web we weave
It's miraculous how nobody put this together publicly before now. I've no doubt players noticed some pieces of this jigsaw while roaming around; it's hard to miss the question mark blasted into a distant summit's otherwise empty canvas, but without context, it's easily written off as another in-joke or eccentricity of Rockstar. After all, these are the same devs who put a church with a black-winged angel in San Andreas with no other context and created a serial killer for the sake of the lore in Grand Theft Auto 5.
The timing of these digital cowboys putting two-and-two together couldn't be better, because we're staring down the latest and biggest of Rockstar's playgrounds to date – the mammoth GTA 6, due this November. But despite clocking hundreds of hours across past GTA games, I haven't been all that pushed by 6. It'll be impressive, sure, and there'll be tons to do across Leonida, but even the best open world games leave me slightly cold these days.
Open world maps often feel like an elaborate cross-stitch of collect-a-thons and flavor text, all without much compulsion to go anywhere. My tastes now lean towards Soulslikes and roguelikes, preferring exploration within a more limited but finely curated space. Based on GTA 5, and how the mainline entries one-up each other, the scale and scope of GTA 6 already seems exhausting without even seeing the world map yet.
But watching this sliver of mystery emerge from the fading vestiges of the American frontier has invigorated my curiosity. It's reminded me of the hidden magic in Rockstar's games. Six-shooters and machine guns and fast cars might be the default and expected way to enjoy these games, but don't let them distract you from all the intrigue and charming side quests you can uncover.
GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 have all sorts of little easter eggs that you can spend your time roaming around for, from Dreamcatchers and Peyote Plants to packages lost at sea. Roleplaying is a central facet of their longevity as well, whether as an added challenge in single-player, or through Red Dead Online and GTA Online RP servers.
Piggybacking
The scale and scope of GTA 6 already seems exhausting without even seeing the world map yet.
I hesitate to say they're out-and-out RPGs, but they're certainly RPG-adjacent, letting you mold a significant amount of the experience to your preferences and ideals as a player. Yes, one can play into the prescribed narratives of drug dealing and bank heists and whatever else GTA 6 brings to the table, or you could be a small-time private investigator, looking into bizarre clues in the area for something that seems increasingly mythical.
That's what gets me giddy. I've spent my time spawning tanks using cheat codes and seeing how long I could last at six-stars of wanted level, the in-game radio at full blast through my CRT TV. Now I'm drawn to becoming the franchise equivalent of Twin Peaks' Dale Cooper, FBI Special Agent, taking on strange, scary cases and seeing what I'll find. Or combining the conspiratorial open-mindedness of The X-Files' Fox Mulder and the cynicism of Dana Scully into one conflict, but no-less driven detective.
Either way, I'm coming for the feathers, spider webs and forest signs of Grand Theft Auto 6. This has given me a whole other perspective on Red Dead Redemption 2. Suddenly, the Wild West seems like a byzantine storybook waiting to be excavated. Any equivalent in the new Grand Theft Auto will prove more challenging, no doubt. But I've got time. If anything will keep me playing for seven years, it's the potential of finding clues paved into the ground beneath our feet, and seeing where they go. What could be more enticing?
We've ranked the best GTA games of all time right here to help you plan your replay schedule in 2026
