Red Dead Redemption 2 works very hard to accurately depict its western time period. As horses were still the primary method of transportation in 1899 when the game is set, an extreme amount of care went into designing the look and movement of these RDR2 horses.

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However, despite their photorealistic designs and movements, it is very easy to crash Red Dead Redemption 2’s horses and send both player and horse flying. But in a bizarre moment shared by Reddit user Accomplished-Gur-69, the player does not go flying. Instead, the player is seen being launched into a full backflip in midair, before locking into the animation that would usually allow players to jump onto their horses from above. This leaves the whole moment seeming like a strange acrobatic trick that isn’t clear if it was performed by Arthur or by the horse.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is huge in scope but also extremely polished, which means the bugs that do occur in-game are often extremely situation-specific. It is extremely unlikely that a horse could register a crash, and be standing again by the time the player came to land. Although this could technically be seen as a bug it is not entirely unrealistic, it is just clearly unaccounted for by the game.

However, horses are often at the center of Red Dead Redemption 2’s glitches and bugs. The reason horses are so easy to crash and come off in Red Dead Redemption 2 has to do with Rockstar’s in-house RAGE game engine, which has been used and modified for all of Rockstar’s new games since Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis in 2006. The engine emphasizes weight and momentum for its in-game physics rather than responsiveness.

For a player, this is why character movement in Rockstar’s RAGE engine games can feel heavy, while looking fluid and realistic. Red Dead Redemption 2’s horses have a lot of weight attributed to them by the game’s engine, but also, they need to be agile and quick for the sake of gameplay. This is the reason why horses that do crash in Red Dead Redemption 2, often go down spectacularly hard and send the player flying as well.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is available on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.

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