Red Dead Redemption 2: 10 Mind-Blowing Secrets & Theories You Need To Know

Red Dead Redemption 2 has more narrative depth than almost any other game out there. The open world is huge and bursting with life, characters are well drawn, complex and lifelike and the story, while arguably poorly paced from Chapter 5 onwards, in engaging and compelling.

With that comes a whole host of theories. Rockstar tends to cram so much life into their games that you get a generous 50 hour story, but even three times that isn’t enough to experience everything it has to offer.

As a result, some of these theories link to the central plot, others to side missions and some are just about the random events you can come across with little to no guidance from the game.

It’s testament to how well RDR2 is written and how perfect Arthur Morgan is for the story Rockstar want to tell. These theories only work because the characters seem so true to life, it’s impossible not to believe the world goes on around you, away from your influence.

Whether Rockstar truly changed the genre as they hoped is up for debate; regardless, they still created one of the best open-world games of all time.

Geology For Beginners is one of the harder to come by sidequests in Red Dead Redemption 2, but as long as you’re exploring the world and not just dashing from quest to quest, you should be fine. In that quest you’ll meet a strange (even by Rockstar’s standards) man named Francis with bright red hair, a foppish wardrobe and a birthmark on his face.

Completion of the quest leads you to a shack, where you see, amongst other things, sketches of the Great Pyramids and the Empire State Building. While it’s possible Francis could have travelled to Egypt, the Empire State Building wasn’t built until 1930, so he’d have no way of knowing what it looked like yet.

The ‘theory’ that he’s a time traveller hardly requires super sleuthing, as a woman will approach you in that shack with a red haired baby with a birthmark on its face, telling you his name is Francis. Much more interesting is Francis’ link to GTA.

In the fifth game, the Epsilon cult notes that someone with Francis’ birthmark is a ‘possible decendent of Kraff’ and that people with red hair are ‘unsaveable liars’, meaning Francis could be some version of the Devil they fear.