Rockstar is really going hard this December with their content. Following The Doomsday Heist, a surprisingly huge DLC, they've now added a cross-promotion with the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2.
These kinds of cross promotions used to be fairly common in games, however in recent years they've been toned down and mostly only appear in the fighting genre, though another more recent example is the cross promo between Final Fantasy XV and Assassin's Creed Origins. Bioware fans are also familiar with this concept, as unlocking the Blood Dragon Armor DLC for Dragon Age: Origins unlocked a similar armor suit in Mass Effect 2.
The object of the promotion at hand is a golden retro Double-Action Revolver. If you unlock it now in GTA Online by completing the treasure hunt, you'll also get it in Red Dead Redemption 2 and presumably in Red Dead Online, provided you use the same account for both.
Once you've got your hands on the gun, there is also a special Headshot Challenge in Freemode, the completion of which will grant you GTA$ 250,000, and the weapon for use in Red Dead Redemption 2. The challenge itself is really simple — get 50 headshots with the pistol. Any targets count, be they players, NPC enemies, animals or even PEDs.
Functionally, the Red Dead Redemption 2 version of this pistol is actually just a weapon skin, because the Double-Action Pistol is a pretty basic revolver which would be odd if gated in such a manner. So your regular, battered gray version will be available for everyone, while the golden skin with ivory grip is the reward here. This, on a side note, confirms weapons skins for Red Dead Redemption 2, so that's something.
But how do you actually get this pistol? The treasure hunt isn't too tricky, but we've put together a handy guide on how to get a hold of it.
Approximately 5-10 minutes after playing GTA Online, you'll get an in-game notification with a screenshot of some notable landmark or building somewhere in the game world, and a large circled area on a game map. The circled area is the general area with the photo being a more specific guide to where you need to go. What you're looking for, specifically, is a small piece of paper.
Once you've found your first clue, you'll get three more similar emails. You'll need to track down those clues as well. Now, the reason we're not doing a coordinate-specific, screenshot-laden guide here is because this isn't a set mission, but the clue locations have a lot of variations so different players will get different locations. One good way to know that you're on track is a jingling audio cue, which gets louder as you near your note.
Once you've discovered these three second-wave notes, you'll get one final email pointing you to the actual location of the gun itself. The revolver is easy to spot, what with being gold and all, and after you've claimed it, it's yours to keep forever, and you can move on to the Headshot Challenge.
For the Headshot Challenge, the fastest way to rack up the kills is to get a wanted level, hunker down and pick off the cops that come at you. You'll have a steady stream of targets and no need to go chasing them around.
Hopefully we'll be getting further cross promos between the two games as the release date of Red Dead Redemption 2 draws closer, however in the meantime this is exciting enough. There is no end-date set for this event, and it very well might be permanent, but we'd go grab that revolver as soon as possible on the chance that it isn't.
