Red Dead Redemption 2 is often considered Rockstar’s magnum opus, and for good reason: its intimate, heartrending narrative, stunning attention to detail, incredible soundtrack, and more make it an easy world to fall into. But the cultural fixation on Red Dead Redemption 2 goes beyond the actual quality of the game itself, as its longevity is partially defined by a dense air of mystery.
Indeed, Red Dead Redemption 2 is chock-full of bizarre Easter eggs, cold cases, and breadcrumb trails left behind by Rockstar, to the point where players are still discovering new secrets nearly eight years post-launch. A prime example of this phenomenon is the Spider Dream Easter egg, which was only recently uncovered by eagle-eyed players spelunking through game files and 3D model minutia. Hold on to your ten-gallon hats, this one’s a doozy.
Credit for the following discoveries goes to several anonymous internet users, including Strange Man on YouTube and YoutTube and Reddit users goldenplaysterraria, pariah87, u/fthen2k02 and u/FL4VA-01, and u/TracySevert.
Red Dead Redemption 2’s ‘Spider Dream’ Easter Egg Is Still Unsolved
It all begins with a glowing pentagram that appears in Butcher’s Creek between the in-game hours of 4–5 A.M. If you inspect the outhouses surrounding the pentagram, you’ll find tally marks, and if you draw a line between these outhouses on the game map, going in order of the tallies, you’ll form a pentagram. This is interesting, but the real mystery begins when taking a closer look at the fourth outhouse in the pentagram design: it has an engraving that depicts Fort Brennand.
Fit the 9 games into the grid.
At Fort Brennand, there’s an outhouse with a six-tally carved into it, confirming that this is indeed the next part of the puzzle. One of the fort’s towers has a seven-tally carved into its exterior, and just above the interior doorframe is yet another pictogram of sorts, this time depicting crude drawings of a telegraph pole, factory, and puddle. This is meant to represent Cornwall Kerosene and Tar; near the factory is a telegraph pole with a spider-shaped engraving and, if you visit it during the early hours of the morning, a spiderweb at the top, with a white feather hanging off it.
Overlaying the spider shape on the RDR2 map, roughly between New Hanover and Lemoyne, its legs will lead you to eight other telegraph poles, each with a feather and web. Three of the webs have red feathers, while the rest have white. It’s been speculated that this could have something to do with the honor mechanic, but no firm conclusions have been drawn yet. In the Red Dead 2 game files, these webs are referred to as spiderdream01, spiderdream02, and so on, hence the mystery’s name.
Going to the location on the spider’s body will reveal a ninth spiderweb, this one black and depicting the letter N and another telegraph pole. This indicates that you need to head directly north until you reach another telegraph pole, whose artifice can be shot away to reveal six engravings: the letter W, and five telegraph poles. This is a hint to travel five poles north. Once at this pole, you can once again shoot away an outer layer of wood to reveal more engravings: the letters N and W, and a guitar, which is a hint to travel northwest to Fort Wallace, a location with two guitars.
The second guitar in the fort is in a tower, and is “pointing” directly upwards. If you climb atop the tower and look down at the edge of the roof, you’ll see an engraving of two birds, and riding straight ahead from this engraving will lead you to the Giant’s birds (another unsolved RDR2 mystery) at Calumet Ravine. Take a closer look at the mountains at this location and you’ll see a question mark carved into the stone face. There is another question mark on the side of another mountain, just a few miles east of Calumet Ravine.
Tracing a path between all the clues, starting from the central, black spiderweb, will form a question mark shape, and following this shape to its conclusion will lead players to the Loft, a towering structure which contains, on its first floor, a device for sending telegraphs. According to Strange Man on YouTube, the model for this device is unique and can’t be found anywhere else in the game. Near the end of the question mark constellation on the map is a side mission whose starting location, as it happens, contains a device designed to receive telegraph messages. Again, Strange Man claims that this is the only such telegraph receiver in the game.
Stranger missions in Red Dead Redemption 2 are portrayed with a question mark symbol on the map, which is an interesting parallel with the aforementioned question mark constellation formed by the Spider Dream clues.
So, What Does Red Dead Redemption 2’s Spider Dream Easter Egg Even Mean?
The telegraph receiver is where the Spider Dream trail goes cold, for now at least—the Red Dead Redemption 2 fanbase has some very active sleuths ready to hunt down whatever clues they can. There are clearly some primary motifs here, namely telegraphs and spiders, and secondary motifs like the guitars, which I find especially confounding—what do they mean?
A common theory, which is not entirely unlikely, is that all of these details are simply holdovers from a cut mission or side activity. Perhaps the term “spider dream” comes from these spiderwebs being part of dreams, like the Grass Roots missions and peyote Easter eggs of GTA 5. The hints being part of dream sequences would explain why some of them appear only in the early hours of the morning, and the overall surreal nature of the various hints and messages. It’s plausible that Rockstar simply opted not to remove these items from the game, especially since they are so obscure that players are literally only finding them all these years later.
Spider Dream Is Far From the Only Unsolved Mystery Hidden in Red Dead Redemption 2
While Red Dead Redemption 2 detectives are still hoping to unravel the secrets of the Spider Dream mystery, it could always wind up landing on the pile of the game’s other loose threads, some of the most prominent of which include:
- What’s the deal with the aliens near Mount Shann and Emerald Ranch?
- What do Francis Sinclair’s futuristic city stone carvings mean?
- What is the point of the Giant in Ambarino?
- Where is Isabeau Katharina Zinsmeister, the missing Princess of Luxembourg with a character model in the Red Dead Redemption 2 files?
You can follow any one of these threads to a number of clues and theories, but they all lead to dead ends at this point. It’s not clear whether Rockstar intends for these mysteries to be solved, or if they are part of cut content, as theorized about the Spider Dream clues. The famed developer could also simply be messing with audiences, sending them on wild goose chase after wild goose chase, a never-ending chain of enigmas. Trying to solve these mysteries is like a game in and of itself, so it’s not a terrible design idea from Rockstar.
- Released
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October 26, 2018
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
