Grand Theft Auto V fans have spent THREE YEARS trying to crack this puzzle and it still remains unsolved
Players remain stumped by bizarre codes and messages hidden in an isolated location in the game's world
IT IS the biggest mystery the world of video games has seen, with sleuths dedicating more than three years to solving the puzzle.
Despite countless theories and the Grand Theft Auto V Chiliad Mystery remains unexplained to this day.
The mystery started after a trailer of the game was released, showing a shed positioned located on the top of Chiliad Mountain.
Gamers were immediately intrigued and set about heading to the mountain top to see what secrets the shed would hold when the game was released.
Upon reaching the location, people were greeted with a glyph and a mural containing a picture of a UFO, an Easter egg and a jetpack — items gamers believed would be unlocked from cracking the code.
In addition to these, players quickly found a message carved into the base of platform, which read “come back when your story is complete”.
The strange findings triggered wild speculation about they might mean, with people collaborating on GTA forums and Reddit in an attempt to discover answers.
Within days of being posted, eagle-eyed gamers found more glyphs, along with four UFOs — one of which can only be discovered above the mountain at 3am when it is raining in the game.
After the initial hype, interest began to dwindle and majority of players concluded the mural was simply a map to find the UFOs and nothing more.
“All the Easter eggs have been found,” users wrote.
BIGFOOT
Things took a strange turn when Rockstar Games re-released the game for PS4, Xbox One and PC, adding an achievement called Cryptozoologist.
The developers announced the achievement with a very vague message saying, “you unlocked all animals for use in Director Mode … or did you?”
Despite being oddly dubious, redditor rkRusty knew the achievement was related to peyote plants hidden in the game.
“The peyotes are 28 hallucinogenic plants located around Los Santos that let you play as birds and animals when eaten,” he told RedBull.
With the help of the Chiliad Mystery Reddit community, rkRusty was able to discover there was actually a golden peyote, which spawned between 5.30am and 8.00am on a Tuesday and only after players had collected the other peyotes, and completed a mission featuring Bigfoot.
It was later discovered there was, in fact, seven golden peyotes — each appearing on a different day of the week.
“I think people appreciate our discovery because it gave us something definitive to say we found, worked through and solved,” he said.
Unfortunately, after consuming all seven of the peyotes, rkRusty said nothing had occurred and the sleuths were back to square one.
It was here, GTA V developer Rockstar Games gave a hint in the game’s code.
“He was wrong to start his hunt on Tuesday,” the code read.
No one was able to determine what this meant, until redditor NIC779 ate all the golden peyotes in the correct order — starting on Sunday and when it was foggy in the game between 6am to 8am.
Completing this process triggered a cutscene showing the player evolving into Bigfoot, which opened up the quest to kill a beast with the appearance of Michael J. Fox’s character in 1985 werewolf movie Teen Wolf.
Killing the Teen Wolf allowed players to unlock him in Director Mode.
After learning players had achieved this, Rockstar once again changed the code to confirm the character was indeed homage to the 1985 horror film.
“His quarry seemed familiar,” the code read.
While the Bigfoot find might not be directly related to Chiliad Mountain, rkRusty believes it proves there was still more to be solved in the mystery.
“The peyote existed for a year before we found it, it was included with the launch of the PS4, Xbox One versions of the game,” he said.
“I’d say we were pretty slow to catch on, even needing a prompt [from Rockstar] to get started.”
THE JETPACK
With some suggesting the UFO and egg on the mural have been cracked with Bigfoot, the hunt has turned to the jetpack.
Much of the community believe there is hidden jetpack somewhere in the game — a theory fuelled by Rockstar’s 2004’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was set in the same fictional state and contained a jetpack buried at the bottom of secret alien research facility.
Redditor BluntsAreBest — who is responsible for the Chiliad Mystery megathread — said he is constantly surprised by the attention the Chiliad mystery has been able to attract.
“I think the meta world that this conspiracy has caused is incredibly entertaining, if not totally insane,” he said.
“Over the years there have been subgroups that have tried to work together to solve it in a more methodical way, but everybody hits the same wall.
“Some subgroups even resemble cults: trying to preach the ‘truth’, that the answer to the Chiliad Mystery is actually Enlightenment.”
BluntsAreBest said he truly believes the jetpack is the final piece need to crack the puzzle.
“I think most people would agree the symbol on the mural is a Jetpack. There have been lines of code found relating to the Jetpack,” he told RedBull.
“I would be satisfied with only two outcomes: the Jetpack, or a proper explanation of the mural from Rockstar.
“If I don’t get either of those, I might just have to keep searching forever.”
MORSE CODE
Another Reddit user SSjS_Tarden has spent countless hours attempting to solve the mystery.
He admits he was first drawn in by the allure of the jetback, but admits to hoping it will be something more mystical.
“[I’m hoping for] an awesome alien gadget of some kind,” he told ArsTechnica.
The Redditor is no stranger to uncovering mysteries in the game, having been responsible for cracking the coded message from a tapping sound – only heard in the proximity to an underwater hatch.
Following a tip off from GTAForums, SSjS_Tarden ran the sound through a filter after ripping the audio from a YouTube clip.
He then wrote the coded message using a T’s, underscores and question marks to represent taps, pauses and indeterminate pauses, respectively.
From this information, he was able to discover it was morse code and learnt the first two words of the message were “hey, you”.
After turning to the community for help to decode the rest of the message, SSjS_Tarden was able to discover the full code was “Hey, you never call, how d’you fancy going bowling”.
He quickly learnt this code was nothing more than a reference to cousin Roman from GTA IV.
“I had worked hard to learn that,” he joked.
After spending so much time on the search, the gamer gave up on trying to debunk the mystery.
“I had some real-life things to deal with,” he said.
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“I went from living the hunt day in and day out, morning ‘til night, to nothing.”
Although, the allure would be too much for gamer who is now actively on the search again.
SSjS_Tarden is currently spearheading an initiative to search a 36-square grid overlay of the
GTA V map for anything players might have missed.
By searching every area of the game they hope to solve the mystery, which has plagued the gaming community for more than three years.
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