Rockstar Games has confirmed Red Dead Redemption 2’s much-debated horse anatomy animations, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. The detail wasn’t on the production schedule. It made it into the game because someone independently chose to spend time on it.
The confirmation comes nearly a decade after players first began debating what they were seeing. In footage that went viral about nine years ago, Arthur Morgan’s horse appeared to have testicles with their own dedicated physics. Some fans also believed they changed shape depending on the weather. Unclear footage and Rockstar’s lack of public comment fueled years of arguments over whether the animations were intentional.
Schreier says the feature is real, though he doesn’t specify whether one developer or a group created it. That confirmation also doesn’t establish every weather-related behavior fans thought they spotted. He credits RDR2’s long development and the financial resources of Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, with allowing room for such creative additions.
The account comes from a YouTube video in which Schreier discussed reporting that didn’t make it into his recent Grand Theft Auto 6 cover story for Bloomberg. His anecdotes cover both tiny additions that reached a finished game and larger systems that went through years of revisions.
GTA 6’s weapon wheel falls into the second category. According to Schreier, Rockstar spent years trying to redesign it, even removing the wheel altogether at one point. After numerous iterations, the studio returned to the original wheel visible in GTA 6 footage. Years of experimentation don’t always produce a visibly different feature.
The horse animations suggest that small details can end up in Rockstar’s games without ever being formal production goals. That makes similar touches in GTA 6 plausible, but it doesn’t confirm the new game will inherit RDR2’s particular simulation systems or their depth.
“I think there are going to be a lot of details like that within this game,” Schreier said of GTA 6 while discussing the horse animations.
Details revealed so far offer some support for that expectation, including mud physics and complex NPC dialogue systems. These are concrete examples of Rockstar working on small interactions, not proof that any particular RDR2 mechanic will return.
A possible parallel has also emerged in leaked footage showing co-protagonist Jason Duvall nude. Viewers noted that his genitals appeared to have their own physics, raising the possibility that Rockstar has developed its anatomy animation further. That reading of leaked footage doesn’t confirm an upgraded version of RDR2’s system.
It’s also unknown whether players will be able to move characters’ genitals freely. The game does feature a nudist colony, where such animation could have a visible purpose, but the setting doesn’t establish how those physics will work.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is scheduled to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X on Nov. 19.
