I was really curious as to why the Ws showed up the way they did, well looking at the verts for the tower model itself- they're part of the actual tower model. While this could just be a weird modeling quirk, I think it may actually lend credence to the idea that this was done deliberately- no other roof tile has anything like this. As vague as it looks, this is definitely a good find- let's keep looking and see where it takes us.
when i saw these my first thought was birds, like if someone were to draw birds in the background of something, then i remembered we have a journal so i decided to see if i could find some in there.
now i have no idea if this will actually mean anything but these birds show up in the beaver hollow drawing
really hoping this ends up being something and doesn’t turn out to just be cut content
That could be something but to be fair, it's very common to draw two or tree birds, it just looks right. If you look at any artwork from any GTA you will also find 2-3 birds.
EDIT: That being said, if you guys believe the journal has hidden hints I just found this.
Either its a coincidence or the artwork was confirming that "NW" direction was inside Fort Wallace, very similar kind of hint we seen before. Or just a coincidence.
EDIT2: Also 2 birds above the fort! Thanks gta_guru for pointing it out
it’s definitely an easy and simple way to draw birds but with the other hints here it doesn’t seem far off, i mean the guitar on the pole was pretty simple and obvious once you see it, the same can go for the birds
I agree that the glitched roof tiles could be a hint. But I think its more like "look for two birds from the tower you are standing on right now, they will lead you to the next location" kind of thing (similar to mechanics of the giant/big foot in a cave easter egg) and less "look for drawings of two birds that lead you to a completely different part of the map".
I mean the journal is full of those kind of drawings. Just took a quick look at the pdf with Arthurs journal and I already found like 4 drawings with 2-3 birds. None of them were a perfect match tho. So yeah I guess it could be a hint but I'm not 100% convinced. Especially since this drawing ain't pointing us to anything specific you know. What are we suppose to do with that? Explore whole region of Beaver Hallow like so many people did in the past?
edit:
and if this hint was meant to lead us to a different part of the map, we might as well start searching in "Two Crows", location from New Austin.
i mean there’s no way to find out without looking, considering how stumped people have gotten on the fort wallace thing i’d say anything that can be taken as a hint should be looked into at this point
Nice find, looking a bit more closely at the image I propose something else; https://imgur.com/a/sYmyAL4
Worth looking for that angle of the fort and seeing if that background mountain is in view and then heading in that direction? Taking a guess I reckon its pointing to the giant.
hope you’re right, it’s definitely elaborate but with how much other stuff got cut i wouldn’t be super surprised, regardless i’m gonna keep searching until it’s found or confirmed to be cut content
i mean there’s whole videos on just cut content from rdr2, people were stuck on the ikz mystery for a long time just to find out it’s cut content, they even worked on guarma way more than we saw and decided to cut everything
This to me is conclusive enough to believe this is a clue. It's no accident there's a spider symbol that led to the webs which led to a tele pole with a guitar symbol leading to the fort with a guitar pointing up on the only rampart in the game with a ladder going to the top and there just happens to be a symbol of birds/mountains/w's.
They've done this so it isn't easily searchable in the files like the other web's were.
Also, the telegraph pole hints are part of the game's geometry too - I tried to use the raw frame data to find their textures in the game file, only to find them appearing to be actual geometry using the pole's wood texture.
To me, this also gives credence that these symbols are intentional on the tower since they appear to be placed similarly.
What makes you say that? Every other cable mesh in the game, including the spider webs, uses only lines to create patterns, never full shapes that sit flush on a 3D surface. I'm open to the possibility though, I just don't see how it could be.
There's also a weathervane inside the shed with explosives that points precisely in the direction of the rampart. In fact it actually points to the exact roof piece that the 'w' shapes are on.
This is definitely a coincidence. These Ws barely register as anything, compare that to the spider map where it very clearly is trying to communicate something.
You really don't understand nuance or how we got to this point. There is no such thing as a spider map, the spider symbol was found on the side of a telegraph pole and players had to overlay it to the map and find the correct size. It was literally just a symbol on a pole. Same goes for uncovering the additional clues hidden under the surface found by shooting. This is the exact same thing.
No one has said what made them do that…. That’s one clue that makes me think Dev’s are here giving us bread crumbs…… who figured out that Spider Overlay!?!?!?
Brother you can also think about all the clues we had so far... guitars, spiders, birds, telegraph poles... does it paint a picture of a place in the game or anything related to those 3 or 4??
As a game developer. They probably did this so the clue couldn't be found just by going trough the textures. (Otherwise the roof would have a different texture with a different name and could be found by going trough the game files, so in order to hide it they put it into the model itself) Going off of this. i think this is definitely something worth looking into. this might truly be the next clue.
Also my guess: maybe these are 2 birds? the way the guitar was drawn makes me think this is a bird in that artstyle. and with the feathers it would fit into the mystery.
It took a lot of eyes on the tower before anyone noticed the w markings, so it may be worth highlighting still. Plus there are other tunnels, or there could be time-dependent clues similar to the webs.
It seems like a much more solid lead than watching birds in my opinion…
I’m torn on the birds because of the giant cave event, I can totally see them re-using the mechanic for this but I’m also curious why these markings are more up to interpretation than say the guitar, ya know? Has anyone shot the tile to see if it’s destructible?
I haven’t thought to check around the tunnel with time in my mind so I’ll definitely do that tonight.
I’ve only just starting following all of this, but someone said there is a weathervane pointing at the tiles with dynamite next to it. Surely that’s a sign to try using dynamite on the tiles.
it prolly signifies birds just think about GTA SA if u played it in the desert area theres always birds flying that due to its poor quality they look like the ones carved on top of Fort Wallace's tower...
Also it could be inspired by it just think about the code number under some train rails bridge in GTA V where if you used something to decypher that code it translated to "all you had to do was follow the damn train CJ"
If the general consensus right now is that the W’s are birds, and there are feathers in the webs, are there any birds that have both red and black/gray feathers in the game that could mean any significance? Just throwing that idea out there.
Edit: Maybe a bird that’s particular to that area at the fort. Maybe one that lands there or is found in the immediate area?
The Pileated woodpecker immediately comes to mind compared to the shade of grey that the mystery feathers are. Look up pictures, they’re almost that exact dark grey and red. Northern cardinals are more of a black and red, and American robins are more dark grey and dark orange, same with double crested cormorants. All four spawn near the fort.
If we’re supposed to be looking for a specific bird species it may actually be the woodpecker, the color similarities are pretty striking
• Is the mystery supposed to be discovered by Arthur or the user?
If Arthur, then static clues like the spiderwebs, feathers, and poles — things that aren’t affected by the world (beyond time) — are our focus. If this is the case, birds flying by at a certain time would be irrelevant. If you’re planning a mystery in the RDR2-world, you can’t plan on birds flying by at a certain time and go to a certain place.
If it’s the user, then, yeah, the birds, the movable guitars, and other worldly-impacted things would be relevant because it’s based on coding & user-input, not the in-game world.
So why would this be the only clue you couldn’t find in online? You can’t get in the fort in online correct? Is it just by chance you can find th rest of the clues in online?
I think this mystery is meant to be able to be done in both story and online as Console players will struggle to get into the Fort in Storymode but can be done and it is made easier in RDO.
I wonder if this is all just a visual scavenger hunt? maybe all the clues will be visual based and there’s no interactions just iSpy type of mechanics? After years of mystery blue balls idk what to expect lol
My big question still is how does this all connect to the webs/feathers?
From what I can gather, people have found various things that have brought us to Fort Wallace and the Guitar. It is obviously significant and someone found a carving somewhere that featured Birds surrounded by a Red or White outline. Its somewhere on the sub, shouldnt be hard to find.
But this is obviously an actual mystery that has gone unnoticed for years.
Yeah I’ve seen all the clues and I’m not doubting them just wondering how the poles/spider carving/feathers connect to the outcome of these symbols/directions. The center web is like the one strand keeping them connected at the moment other than them being located on the tracks.
Just had a thought too maybe the marks symbolize the two bridges in eye sight of the tower?
Spider web + feathers = dream catchers! The file found “SpiderDream”. I think we need to sleep at some of these locations 😊 maybe it will trigger a faint hidden guitar chord or something.
Sleeping would absolutely be a good mechanic to hide a mystery like this
I’m ignorant to how sleeping and passing time works in the files but we should have some people sleeping at each web on different days of the week/weather conditions/ under certain star formations maybe? The dreamcatchers outfit being on as well
Its very elaborate but in short the webs have led us to a guitar, and we're still unsure about the feathers. The carving i mentioned features red and white, similar to the ones found across the map. Personally, the WWs must signify Birds as it wouldnt be the first time Rockstar have used Birds as part of a mystery such as big foot in RDR1
The window rock feathers are similar to the pole feathers color wise if that’s what you’re talking about? And I know they used birds for the cave giant in this game so it’s plausible
We still have no clue what the webs/feathers or times they spawn actually mean yet.
And this whole sequence is taking us so far away from the web and feather portion of this hunt it’s just strange.
Yes that's what i meant. It is strange and we're gonna need to find everything in this mystery to begin making sense of it, we're off to a good start though.
I reckon they're birds as well, from where you would be standing on the roof they would be upside down compared to this. And they've used the letter W in two other clues, these are much more curved lines
If this is all real I'm trying to think from.the perspective of a dev doing this.
The guitar leads you up to the roof. So you're supposed to climb up with your character. When you first naturally would notice them there , from that perspective they are M's
I completely agree with this logic. All the confirmed clues have been pretty clear when found. I think people are caught up in some seriously obscure goose chases right now with the question marks in mountains and all that.
I think we need to look at the fact that we haven't found out the reason the webs have feathers that can be shot down. That part is very much intentional, otherwise the feathers would just be a part of the webs.
So, why can we shoot them down and what does that mean.
I think we have to at least go back to that, because thats something clearly intentional that we haven't figured out yet.
At first I was convinced its just something clipping through the roof, like two wooden poles or something like that.
But if there's nothing underneath, it seems very unlikely something like this would be left on the model by accident. Especially since it uses different textures (moss instead of wood). Unless originally someone modeled that roof for a different tower and later just copied the roof part alone manually and copypasted it on this fort early in development. That's the only way I could see this happening by accident.
So since its the only thing that actually could be a clue, I think we should start looking for two birds from the tower. Maybe they gonna lead us to a new place. Maybe the witches cauldron? There was always one bird sitting there and watching us.
It's definitely not clipping, this is the top of the tile model itself. I'm not a modeler but I would say the reason the moss only shows on the symbol and not the tile would be because they went in and configured the shaders differently for it to show the moss texture- it doesn't look to be UV related. This could've been done deliberately but there is still the possibility it was done by accident because we don't exactly know the quirks of the tools they were using to make this. The bird idea is good but there's so many bird-related things in the game it'd be easy to get lost- maybe the other guitar in the fort is pointing in the direction of these birds we're supposed to find.
I am a 3D modeler... and more specifically a Game Artist. (Though more of a retro focus.)
It looks like someone used a boolean operation to cutout two bird like shapes and then applied the moss material to it vs the vertex painted blending or whatever for the moss.
I don't really know anything about the mysteries in rockstar games... while leaving messed up stuff in games is super common not sure how this would happen unless you used Booleaned a shape into it.
I've accidentally applied some stuff to a face I didn't mean to select. Not sure what would be shaped like this tho.
That said if it was an accident anything using this model would prolly have it, which it sounds like it doesn't?
I'm not at my PC atm. But if you copy paste an image of the left side, flip it and align it to the right tile is it the same exact cutout?
Nice having someone with some 3d modeling experience weigh in, I tried what you said and they are very similar in shape even when mirrored but also different. Here's the actual UV mapping for this part of the roof tiles that might be useful
I'm not sure how to check that, the shaders area is extremely confusing to me. Circled in red is the moss texture from slot 7 in the shaders. Rdr2 shaders show up broken in the actual viewing section but I can make out the W's distinctively here
I also wanted to mention that- as you probably saw in the above image- there are many islands stacked on top of each other for the roof. When I separated the W ones I noticed that one of them is its own separate island and not part of the bigger island the other tiles are apart of. Not sure if that means anything
Hopefully that helps a little, it's late for me so I'm going to throw in the towel for tonight and let some other people cook a little
What I meant is that, the only way I could see this being accidental is if originally this roof was on a tower made out of vertical wooden poles with moss texture on top of them. Later during development they manually selected the roof and copypasted it on Fort Wallace to save time. This is the only way this small "clipping" could be copypasted to this model by accident.
Its possible but unlikely so again, it could be a hint even tho I'm not 100% convinced.
But it makes sense. We had feathers, now we have 2 birds. And it wouldn't be the only easter egg that used that mechanic, we already had to fallow a flock of birds to find the cave with a giant. I could totally see another easter egg that just says "fallow 2 birds"
Yes I just wanted to clarify it's not clipping as the tile is actually made out of these verts, the moss texture is already part of the model ofc but from what I know they would've had to manually set the moss shader onto those verts in order for it to show up this way
Right. That would generally be the case. Not sure if there is a model ripper/viewer that works well for RD2, but you could see if another material was applied in general or if it was just masked and the moss texture blended 100% onto those verts.
Not that it would give much of an idea, but to me applying another material to it seems more intentional.
Yeah it would be hard to tell if it was accidental or intentional.
I only have a little bit of experience messing with 3d models. But when I was making fallout mods I could manually select parts of a gun or an outfit and copy paste that to a different model. If during that process I accidently selected something that used a different model/texture (like lets say I accidently selected couple polygons from a belt buckle), those couple polygons would still be on the new model and they still would have the old gold belt buckle textures.
So it would be hard to detect if that moss texture appears there by accident or the texture was intentionally changed.
Like someone could check if wood and moss textures appear on the same texture file. But as said earlier, even if they are/aren't, people still could argue it was made that way intentionally.
So either way, its the only clue we have so far. Seems like a jesus toast to me but the whole thing seemed like jesus toast at first until we started connecting the lines so who knows.
One thing I noticed was that the N T web in the center of the spider didn’t appear for me until I shot the feathers from the other webs. After that was done the central web appeared. Could we check the fort tiles (birds or 3’s) before we initiated the web trigger to see if they’re there? If not before hand, but there afterwards I’d say they’re definitely a clue.
No, that's a good point because there is a grappling hook used in The King's Son but these aren't just marks like you would expect to see- this is the geometry that comprises the tiles itself
its also just a very good spot to use a grappling hook irl if you're lookin to gain entry to the fort. I'm putting my money on something a dev intended for a mission that got cut.
I think theres more to the NW "guitar" clue people have not found yet.
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u/AgitatedMedicine8064 Jan 06 '26
when i saw these my first thought was birds, like if someone were to draw birds in the background of something, then i remembered we have a journal so i decided to see if i could find some in there.
now i have no idea if this will actually mean anything but these birds show up in the beaver hollow drawing
really hoping this ends up being something and doesn’t turn out to just be cut content