NOW
PLAYING
By day I am Arthur
Morgan, cynical
gunslinger with
a big heart and
grizzly-bear beard
who runs with the
notorious Dutch
Van Der Linde gang. I have a horse
that poos a lot and I ride around the
wilderness of West Elizabeth and the
city streets of Saint Denis and shoot
people’s hats off. But by night, I am
Arthur Morgan – Ghostbuster!
I’ve been playing Rockstar’s
genius Western sandbox adventure
for months, and in truth I’ve barely
touched the surface. Partly, this is
because of Red Dead Online taking
up all my time, but mostly because
every time I get stuck into the story
mode, I manage no more than one
main or side-mission before getting
completely sidetracked by an
interesting location, or the need to
check out a white blip indicating a
Stranger, who will have something
interesting to impart. Often it’s just
that English bloke looking for his
mate Gavin, but these encounters
always flesh out Arthur’s adventure
and populate Rockstar’s world to an
incredibly detailed degree.
It’s actually got to a point where I
can’t just ride past a dilapidated cabin
or a spooky-looking house without
dismounting and checking it out. Call
it FOMO, or a kind of game-completion
OCD, but I’ve already found so much
cool stuff that would be easy to
completely miss, were I to concentrate
only on the story, that I’m hooked on
the tiniest details.
Rockstar excels in tapping into the
dark underbelly of the Old West, of
course. There are spoilers here, so be
warned – but so much of this stuff is
well worth the time investment to see
for yourselves. During my travels as
Arthur, I’ve found a UFO suicide death
cult, and a UFO; a mad scientist’s
bear/human/stag hybrid by crawling
through an invitingly open window of
a spooky Psycho-style house; a shack
full of corpses, recently eviscerated
by a comet; a giant’s skeleton. Then
there’s that whole serial killer trail tofollow from that bridge near Valentine.
But for now, I’m going to tell you a
ghost story.Spirit guide
OXM’s Haunted West Tour begins
when I overhear Reverend Swanson’s
deranged drunken rambling about
seeing a woman in white in the
swamps near the gang’s Shady Belle
camp. Swanson’s never been the full
ticket, but since the game’s packed
with the aforementioned weirdness,
it seems likely I can follow a trail from
here to an actual ghostly encounter.
I’m not actually looking for it when I
experience my first supernatural event
in the swamps, just riding through.
I’d been forced to stop and deal witha bunch of bounty hunters because
somehow I’d managed to let my
bounty get up to over $400. I’m about
to saddle up and head off, when I hear
it. A woman’s voice.
It’s a soupy night, the way the moon
cuts through the fog adding layers of
horror movie atmosphere, but clear
as a bell comes the woman’s cry of,
“Come back to me!” The hairs on the
back of my neck stand up straight.
“Don’t leave me!” I scour the area for
the source of the voice until the sun
starts to come up, but there’s nothing.
I determine to return the following
night, same time, same place.
Nothing, but it’s a very clear night, and
nowhere near as spooky. So for the
time being I go about my business inextra
Rockstar’s Western sandbox is packed full of weirdness, so let’s
go ghost hunting in Red Dead Redemption II CHRIS BURKE
PUBLISHER ROCKSTAR GAMES / DEVELOPER ROCKSTAR STUDIOS / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 2018096 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE