Rockstar Games
One of GTA V’s biggest and most exciting mysteries turns out to be a big disappointment
The conspiracy ends in the crudest way possible, ruining ten years of theories and research.
All of Rockstar’s great open-world games have their mysteries, urban legends, and Easter eggs. Some are small and inconsequential, while others grow into huge conspiracies that feel like analogs to the unexplained mysteries of the real world. In any case, they are elements that give life and interest to the worlds created by the Scottish studio, making their search and analysis one of the great arguments to explain the longevity of their titles in the imaginary.
GTA V, of course, is loaded with them, but for more than ten years it has maintained a particularly exciting one that lacked some kind of conclusion: the mystery of Mount Chilliad and the mural of the cable car station, a cryptic drawing on the wall full of symbolism and, apparently, hidden locations on the map, visible only to the “enlightened”. All topped off by a large eye at the top of the highest point in the game.
The mural has stirred passions for more than a decade, with a subreddit of more than 40,000 users constantly theorizing about it, looking for clues and possible connections. It has been suggested that it may be related to the supernatural, or even the gateway to a parallel world of new possibilities. However, it looks like this search is hitting a dead end. A former Rockstar developer, Ben Hinchliffe, has confirmed in an interview that this particular Easter egg has nothing to hide.
Worst possible conclusion
When asked about the riddle, Hinchliffe clarified that while he didn’t work on this particular Easter egg, he feels that some fans have gotten overly excited. “Obviously, there’s always a desire to put in these really complex Easter egg hunts and trails that the really dedicated players will follow,” he said, “As with all easter eggs, sometimes you just put them in to mess with people. They don’t actually do anything, you just mess with people, drive them a little bit crazy.” According to Hinchliffe, the Mount Chiliad mystery is an example of this.
The thread picking up Hinchliffe’s statement on the subreddit is quite a hotbed, demonstrating the resilience of conspiracy theories once they take hold. Many are dismissing the statement, clinging to the fact that the developer claims not to have worked on this part. But many users see it as the final confirmation of something that has long been suspected: The mural pointed to extended content from the original GTA V, either an expansion or something smaller in scope; but those plans were put on hold when GTA Online became the goose that laid the golden egg, recycling its elements to add to other parts of the multiplayer experience (proof of this is that one of the symbols on the mural clearly points to what looks like a jet pack, which would end up being introduced in a GTA Online mission, precisely as a method of escape from Mount Chilliad).
“Maybe the real mystery were the friends we made along the way,” one of the users concluded. Others will surely resist, at least until a similar mystery appears in GTA VI.
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