To many people, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most advanced video games ever made, and after almost four years since its initial release, it still rivals the graphics and details of newly released games. As Red Dead Redemption 2 is an open-world game, a great deal of effort was put into creating a massive Western landscape and allowing players to interact with the environment in an immersive way that is representative of the era.
For this reason, Red Dead Redemption 2 was given an in-depth hunting mechanic which allows the player to take part in all aspects of stalking, hunting, and selling the game’s wide range of animals. In order to complement this hunting mechanic, the animals of Red Dead Redemption 2 were also made to be extremely detailed and to act characteristically of their real-world counterparts.
However, as with the programming of any intricately detailed video game, sometimes a bug or an unpredicted player action will cause Red Dead Redemption 2’s systems to react bizarrely. This is something that was witnessed recently in Red Dead Online, which shares RDR2’s hunting mechanics, when a Reddit user named PeasBeard found themselves being chased endlessly around a tree by an overly determined mountain elk.
Deer and elk in Red Dead Redemption 2 are designed to be quite timid creatures that will often run away if they spot the player nearby. However, just like the real Rocky Mountain species that RDR2’s elk are based on, an elk in RDR2 will charge the player with its antlers if it is left with no other choice. The game's elk will usually track the player’s movement to a certain extent during this charge, but it certainly isn't meant to chase them endlessly as seen in PeasBeard's clip, which is appropriately titled, “Just leave me alone dude.”
The real irony of this bizarre hunting moment is that the Reddit user encountered this single-minded elk while on a mission to hunt a different legendary animal in Red Dead Online, the Legendary Ruddy Moose. This is a creature so huge that it does not need to charge at the player in order to knock them down, as simply running into them will usually see players trampled to death. It is unlikely, however, that the legendary moose would have put up the same determined fight as this randomly encountered mountain elk.
An extreme amount of detail went into making sure the animals of Red Dead Redemption 2 matched their real world counterparts. But although this Reddit users' bizarre elk encounter could technically be classed as a bug or a glitch, it is not entirely out of character for a wild animal to become obsessively focused on attacking something or someone.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.