About River Monster

[PsyWarVeteran]

The cut river monster is by far my favorite cut content from any game that came out during the last ten years. It's a shame it was removed but that doesn't mean we can't theorize about it:

 

First thing to note is that it's big, way bigger than the biggest animals we normally see in the game. The cut RDR2 version's size could have been different compared to the GTA V version, they could very well have made it larger for it to be seen more clearly from afar in Cayo Perico, but from the sounds we can assume it was about or exactly the same size as we see it now, no small creature can make those roars.

 

Spoiler

 

(Image by johnnywolfwolf)

 

Secondly what we see in Cayo Perico is not a real creature but a simple prop. It's has no animations, is in a reference pose and poorly placed to the map. It's not perfectly placed on grid, notice how it stands crooked in the water, and once you get close the game simply pulls the model downwards, it looks bad. The lack of animations may mean they were never created or it could simply be that R* decided not to use a hypothetical diving animation for something that is seen far away and/or didn't care. The point is, we are not seeing it in its full potential.

Here's how I imagine it would play out in RDR2:

When you were far from land in deep water you'd have a rare chance of hearing the monster, possible locations for it are the Flat Iron Lake and Lannahechee River (it is called a river monster after all) it would show up far from you, roar and then dive back down, a simple spectacle just like the UFO. You wouldn't be able to interact with, shoot or catch it, here's why:

 a) How could you interact / loot it in deep water?
 b) There aren't any attack, death or hurt sounds for the creature.
 c) The textures of it are 256x256, tiny for something that would be seen up close.

I think it would be much better to witness the river monster instead of an UFO, no joke when I first saw the UFO in the game I paused for a second and thought "way to ruin the immersion R*". While acceptable in GTA, turns out seeing aliens in a cowboy game doesn't really fit, not to mention I didn't do anything special to trigger it, simply walked into a cabin in the woods and it appeared. But some can say the same thing for the river monster, it was also unfitting and that's why it was removed, sadly we will never know.