With the controversial Red Dead Redemption PS4/5 and Switch port now out, it’s a good time — if you’re not drowning in new releases — to revisit Rockstar Games’ most unique DLC to date: Undead Nightmare, an expansion pack that did exactly what it said on the cover while also being a fun take on GTA creepypastas.
Against all expectations, this expansion pack also released as a standalone adventure, in case someone hated cowboys but could stomach a zombie-infested open-world romp set in the Wild West. Typically, it also would’ve been an unambitious story without major links to the main game, but Rockstar had bigger plans. Undead Nightmare begins shortly after Red Dead Redemption protagonist John Marston reunites with his family and tries to lead a peaceful life, something that happens fairly late into the main storyline. It’s essentially an alternate timeline tale that smartly uses character and story beats you already know to branch off and derail Marston’s journey, transforming the entire game world in the process.
Long story short, Marston’s family and his friend Uncle are turned into zombies during a stormy night. This makes John set out to find a cure for the mysterious plague and help other folks in need . Undead Nightmare could’ve been an uncomplicated zombie-killing spree that filled Red Dead Redemption’s map with new enemies, activities, and little else, yet Rockstar went the extra mile and crafted an uniquely disturbing (and darkly funny) twist on both the base game and other zombie titles.
Grand Theft Auto IV had already shown us what the folks at Rockstar were capable of delivering through the still-infant DLC format, but The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony very much felt like more GTA IV – albeit with distinct narrative flavor – and little else. On the other hand, Undead Nightmare did way more than simply making Red Dead Redemption spooky.
Image via Rockstar Games
Without getting into spoilers (for those going in fresh with the re-release), the story alone takes a couple of wild detours and ends on a surprising note that, much like in the base game and its prequel, allows for a post-game no one could’ve predicted back in 2010. It all starts with your average zombie virus theory and then becomes something else. All-around great stuff, just Rockstar having fun with the setting and some little opportunities that were already there.
Perhaps even more interesting is how the game world is presented; besides all the zombies roaming around and a noticeable lack of life, the atmosphere in Undead Nightmare must be one of the most oppressive in an open-world game I’ve ever experienced. You’re rarely confined to narrow locations, yet Rockstar nailed the menacing feeling that nowhere is safe. It all comes down, methinks, to the gloominess and decay that covers the entire map coupled with the truly unsettling sound design and hushed original soundtrack. Mind you, the narrative and many of the situations Marston finds himself in are often humorous, but the undead rising feels really calamitous.
Among Undead Nightmare’s zaniest and more comedic elements, we find side missions such as “Birth of the Conservation Movement,” in which an elder hunter tasks Marston with hunting down a Sasquatch. Those familiar with GTA games and more specifically San Andreas surely remember all the creepypastas that were created around the 2004 behemoth — it all even spawned massive YouTube communities that are alive to this day.
A famous GTA: San Andreas urban legend claimed the Sasquatch, much like UFOs, existed and could be found in certain wilderness areas of the map under the right conditions. This led to countless videos and wacko theories over the years, made possible thanks to the mid-2000s Internet forums and still underdeveloped gaming communities that were filled to the brim with BS finds, tips, and tricks.
Image via Rockstar Games
Fast-forward to 2010, and Rockstar finally acknowledged some of those myths and creepypastas through Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, even creating some new ones in the process. The Sasquatch mission will always have a special place in my heart because of its emotional twist, which has the (supposedly) last Sasquatch telling Marston to kill him because his kind is extinct. It’s a real downer of an encounter and far from the thrilling hunt that was promised earlier. The player can choose to let him live though, but he just sits in the middle of the Tall Trees area crying, so it’s a sad ending anyway. Funnily enough, more Sasquatches do appear around the place regardless of the mission’s outcome, so he wasn’t the last one.
The Chupacabra also makes an appearance in Undead Nightmare as part of the Undead Hunter challenges, and is another reminder that this expansion pack was way more than another crusade against the undead. It constantly rewarded the curiosity of players and paid homage to the community discussions and some of the biggest loads of horseshit that had been floating around GTA forums and YouTube channels for years. Speaking of horses, did you manage to find and tame all the Four Horses of the Apocalypse?
More than a decade later, Undead Nightmare remains one of the most uniquely bizarre pieces of extra content a triple-A release has ever received. Even though no fan could have predicted that direction for Red Dead Redemption’s sole expansion pack, it 100% feels made for the fans. Whether you’re revisiting it or experiencing it for the first time in 2023, I bet it’ll make you wish Rockstar went back to making big DLCs and not just live-service content drops for their newer games’ online components. Personally, I can’t believe RDR2’s Sadie Adler didn’t get her own spinoff story.
Published: Aug 29, 2023 09:00 am