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People keep taking confused selfies with a gorilla in Red Dead Redemption 2Witness the ape
Witness the ape
One of the greatest bits of environmental storytelling in all of gaming can be found inRed Dead Redemption 2, in a valley beneath a railway bridge. There, seemingly without explanation, is a gorilla.
It’s completely motionless, seemingly frozen in the act of bursting out of the crate that contains it, and there is absolutely no explanation for it to be found in its immediate environment. Thereisof course an explanation for this bizarre apparition, which can be pieced together from information found in a side quest, but I’m not going to spoil it. To be honest, I long for the time before I unravelled its mystery. When it was just a gorilla, trapped in a Western it had no hope of understanding, and with no hope of being understood. It’s become something of a rite of passage for RDR2 players to stumble across this ape, and post confused messages on Reddit hoping for an explanation. But my very favourite thing about these posts, is that they always stop to take a selfie first.
This imagefrom Reddit user buttered_peanutspositively vibrates with the energy of danger. But where’s the danger? Is it the gorilla, looming out from behind Arthur to brain him after he’s been hunting it for hours? Is that gun trained on where he thought the beast was lurking, until the paranoia finally got to him and he decided to have a calming smoke? Or is the gorilla a pious but kindly soul, about to tap the cowboy on the shoulder and warn him about the dangers of smoking? Either way, an artful shot.
Finally, this piecefrom specter355is perhaps the most touching of the pack. Posted with the title “when your friend needs a shoulder to cry on”, it shows the gorilla leaning forward to touch its brow companionably to Arthur’s chest, as he looks on with all the awkward, stunted warmth his weathered old boot-leather heart will allow. Here are two great beasts, frozen in an act of futile escape, from a wilderness that is so similar - and yet so cruelly different - to the ones they were raised in. It is a moment of perfect solace, and I like to think that specter355 has found thetruemeaning of theRed Dead Redemption 2gorilla.
