// KOTAKU — GAMING
I Spent Hours Tracking Down Big Walk’s Mysterious Flying Folk Hero To Learn His Secret
I’m in the tutorial area of Big Walk, on hour seven of a day-long vigil. I’ve been sitting on this little yellow stool for hours, a glowing orb light in front of me at the center of a circle of stools. Also arranged in the circle are the bodies of three other players, stiff and abandoned by their hosts hours before. I’m tired. I’m bored. I’m ready to log off.
Then, I see it. Coming out of one of the starting doors. A glint of silver. A flash of red.
I first learned about John Bigwalk in passing while scrolling through the Big Walk subreddit. My first encounter with the name was this post:
The myth? The rumor? The legend? byu/KastrTroy inBigWalk
At first, I thought this person was just making some sort of goof I didn’t understand about the basic concept of a protagonist in the game Big Walk. But then I read the thread, in which people were claiming to have encountered someone in their games going by the name John Bigwalk. Some seemed to be joking:
I did more research. It wasn’t just a fluke. Some guy calling himself John Bigwalk really was joining people’s lobbies in Big Walk and making an impression:
Clarification and Discussion on "John Big Walk" byu/Significant-Ad-4813 inBigWalk
Thank you, John BigWalk byu/EmptyBuildings inBigWalk
Reading through the various accounts, I was able to assemble an idea of what was going on here. Normally, Big Walk is a game you play with a small group of intimate friends—there’s no random matchmaking or anything like that. But for those who don’t have anyone to play with, or who just want the experience of playing with strangers, various Discords and community spaces have popped up to facilitate people matchmaking themselves into groups. There, people will post lobby codes publicly and simply wait for players to arrive. And those lobbies are where John Bigwalk has appeared.
John Bigwalk, from what I could tell, has a few identifying features. For one, he apparently always talks in the lobbies he’s in and has a very pleasant, deep, good radio voice. He usually shows up as a character all in red. He does not help with puzzles unless very directly asked to participate, but he does come along with the group and observe and make polite (often humorous) conversation. And most notably, he seems to have the ability to fly around the map at will. Those who have witnessed John Bigwalk have written that he did not use this ability to mess with people’s games, but rather would help bring individuals who were lost back together if they requested it. And, occasionally, fly around just for show.