Since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, players have been working to decipher puzzles. Some remain unresolved even more than a year after the release. We present a selection of them.
What kind of puzzles are these? On the vast map of Red Dead Redemption 2, you will find many mysterious villages and difficult characters. Even ghosts, robots, and UFOs appear. However, the reasons why some of these elements are in the game often remain unclear.
On Reddit, a community of around 86,000 members has formed to track down these puzzles. Together, they gather clues and try to decipher encrypted messages or clarify the whereabouts of certain characters.
Here we present three of the biggest puzzles in the game that still have not been solved even more than a year after the release of RDR 2.
Who is Gavin and where can you find him?
Anyone who has played the story of Red Dead Redemption 2 will have passed by the guy who asks if you have seen his buddy Gavin at least twice.
The man asking you about his buddy is named Nigel. He seems to have taken it upon himself to walk through the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 calling out for Gavin. However, there are no more precise clues about whom you are looking for. Just a rough description, which doesn’t provide clear tips. Thus, you cannot help Nigel.
That’s why players came up with the idea to kill Nigel. His corpse contains a letter from a “Tom,” congratulating Nigel and Gavin on being successful cowboys in America originally from England. Yet, even here, there is no helpful description for finding Gavin.
Players scoured the entire world but cannot find Gavin. That’s why there are the most outrageous theories.
- Gavin might be a confused Nigel
- Nigel might have just made up Gavin
Other players suspect that Gavin might reference a former employee of Rockstar Games who left the company during the development of RDR 2. Thus, the game would now involve searching for a person who is no longer there.
The Witch’s Hut and Her Cauldron
In the great mysteries of Red Dead Redemption 2, a witch cannot be missing. And such a supernatural encounter occurs in the north of the map, above the “N” of Ambarino. There you will discover an abandoned hideout, in the middle of which a heavy cauldron is standing over the fire.
Of course, as Arthur, you immediately go to the cauldron and try a cup of the brew that’s simmering away. In the style of Obelix, you might expect superpowers, but not with Arthur. He faints and wakes up a few hours later. However, several meters away from the spot where you fainted.
Players report having encountered the witch in the west of the map. Arthur finds the corpse of a woman there and then writes in his diary: “I think I met a witch. Or a woman who wanted to be one.”
The puzzle remains unresolved as no one knows,
- whether this was really the witch whose cauldron it belongs
- what she is brewing in the cauldron
- why you wake up at another location after passing out
- and for whom the boiling soup is intended
Francis Sinclair and the Connection to GTA
You first meet the character Francis Sinclair in the Stranger mission “Geology for Beginners.” He asks you to find stone carvings for him. He doesn’t explain why he wants them. Moreover, you’ll quickly notice that the red-haired guy has a large mole on his face above his right eye. This will become interesting later.
If you successfully complete the mission and find all the carvings, the guy is no longer found in his hut. Instead, you discover notes and pictures there. These suggest that Francis Sinclair is a time traveler who moves between the future, past, or present.
In the final scene of the quest, you see a woman (Mrs. Sinclair) in Francis’s hut, holding a red-haired baby in her arms. The woman says that her husband died just before Francis was born. The name of her deceased husband is Tom, and the baby is named Francis.
Notably, the baby not only has red hair, but also the large mole above the right eye.
The Connection to GTA 5: Players suspect that Francis might somehow be connected to the Epsilon group from GTA 5. The Epsilon program in GTA 5 is a parody of Scientology.
On the website of this cult, you can find the 12 principles of the cult. One of them states:
“Aliens exist and are present on Earth. If you have a mole, you might be a descendant of Kraff, the famous emperor of the 4th paradigm.”
And exactly this mole is depicted on the group’s website as follows:
Whether Francis is just “merely” a time traveler or is actually connected to GTA 5 is unclear. The encounter with him and Mrs. Sinclair is certainly strange.
What other puzzles are there? The cowboy game has hidden some cool puzzles around the world. Among them is a mysterious giant who prefers to live alone, Aztec script in Blackwater, and a special fish.
With the release of the PC version, players made significant progress on one puzzle: the puzzle about Princess Isabeau:
