Red Dead Redemption 2 Vs GTA 5: Which Serial Killer Was The Creepiest

Both hit Rockstar games RDR2 and GTA 5 feature serial killers, but which murderer is the creepiest: Edmund Lowry Jr. or the Infinity Killer?

The most recent installments from Rockstar Games’ major franchises, Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, both feature sinister side quests involving mysteriuos serial killers. With rampant speculation over GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 3 already pitting the two Rockstar IPs against each other, players can focus on their tangential inclusion of serial killers as another comparison point. Both characters and side stories are chilling, but is the serial killer from “The American Dream” quest in RDR2 or the Infinity Killer (aka the 8 Killer) from GTA 5 creepier?

[Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5.] Fans can create content to enhance the creepiness of lore, most notably as fan-created, haunting Creepypastas, but the unknown and the incongruous create unease, even in games outside the horror genre. However, some non-horror games include canonical lore disturbing enough to creep players out should they choose to engage with it, such as Rockstar’s two most recent games, where players can unwittingly stumble across violent or unsettling clues to crimes committed. Edmund Lowry Jr.’s victims are recently deceased in Red Dead Redemption 2, giving the player a chance to solve the case, but Grand Theft Auto 5‘s Infinity Killer left haunting allusions to their murders years before the game takes place.

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Red Dead Redemption 2’s Edmund Lowry Jr. Isn’t That Creepy

Edmund Lowry Jr.’s carnage, though disturbing, is surprisingly stereotypical, with in-game credits referring to him as “The Anatomist.” While the complete Red Dead Redemption storyline is complex, Lowry Jr.’s side quest is relatively simple. While ostentatiously violent in his execution, Edmund Lowry Jr.’s narrative arc is fairly straightforward: Lowry Jr. kills and dismembers multiple people, stringing them up and leaving hints towards his location among the carnage. Players confront him and turn him in, Lowry Jr. confesses, and he’s apprehended before being shot and killed. Lowry Jr. seeks attention and recognition, with hidden letters even revealing Lowry Jr.’s attempt to persuade the newspapers to move his stories to the front page.

The Infinity Killer’s Edge: GTA 5’s Inherent Unease of the Unknown

Both GTA 5 and RDR2 have large maps, but the bodies of the Infinity Killer’s eight victims are findable. The Infinity Killings happen about 14 years before the main story of GTA 5, and the player is left to put together clues by the time the serial killer is inactive, a saga that’s been reconstructed by Game Rant. Clues heavily imply that Merle Abraham was the Infinity Killer, and he dies while incarcerated, but he never actually confesses to the crime. The Infinity Killer’s motives are written off as psychosis, revolving around an odd obsession with the number eight and the mathematical concept of infinity, but there’s no hope for full closure when the strongest lead is dead, even if the killings seem to stop.

As the sci-fi gorefest The Callisto Protocol demonstrates, there’s more substance to creepy than gore – a gory execution, while disgusting, doesn’t necessarily mean creepy, especially if the presence of gore becomes a normal occurrence. Players can look toward any horror game’s progression to see player desensitization in action, especially with jump scares in recent popular horror titles like Five Nights at Freddy’s. Creepy content hinges on the player being inherently unnerved, compounding existing tension with a fear of an unknown, but shocking content with a definitive, predictable pattern or ending creates closure and thus loses this fear.

Finally, Grand Theft Auto 5 has a star system correlated to the player’s standing relative to the local law enforcement, and Red Dead Redemption 2 utilizes an honor system. In these games and in real life, players should remember that moral valence is not easily mapped onto dominant legal systems, and exercise thoughtfulness and caution about making generalizations or larger value judgments when interacting with any fictional material, reality-emulating or otherwise. Nothing justifies the serial killers’ actions, and even if one seems creepier than the other, creepy is subjective, justice is subjective, and it’d behoove all players to remember that psychosis, whilst not excusing bad actions, should also not be universally demonized.

More: What GTA 6‘s Release Date Means for RDR

Sources: Game Rant, Rockstar Games/YouTube