With players sinking so many hours into games like Red Dead Online, it's not surprising that bugs and glitches are found now and then. One Reddit user has managed to replicate GTA 4's infamous swingset glitch in Red Dead Online, using a waterwheel to fling themselves up in the air at alarming speed.
Grand Theft Auto games often have notorious glitches, and Grand Theft Auto 4's swingset glitch was easily one of its best known bugs, with many videos and compilations making their way online as players catapulted their vehicles across Liberty City. In that game, players could activate the glitch by simply finding a swingset and reversing their car up the incline of the play-equipment, this would cause the player's car to fly into the air at various angles, and sometimes explode almost instantly.
In Red Dead Online the glitch is performed slightly differently. As Reddit user KayPeeJay demonstrates in their video, players can go to the town of Strawberry, located in the Big Valley region of the game, and find the town's waterwheel. KayPeeJay shows that if players stand on the moving section of the wheel and simply wait around 10 seconds, their character will be launched into the sky at extreme speed. Obviously, Red Dead Online players should prepare for death, as there isn't much one can do when hundreds of feet into the air.
Interestingly, KayPeeJay's Red Dead Online character doesn't seem too concerned about the high velocity catapulting that is occurring, staying perfectly still during the upward portion of the journey. It isn't until they start flying downwards that the character begins to show signs of panic, flailing their arms around until they eventually hit the ground. At the moment, it's unclear exactly how the player is launched by the waterwheel, with KayPeeJay simply stating that it launches "somehow," and no specific indicators being apparent in the video for how the glitch is performed.
While this new Red Dead glitch likely doesn't have any real practical uses, it is certainly a fun way to blow off some steam. It's likely that once players start to uncover the specific method used to activate the glitch, there will be a wave of compilation videos posted online, as with the GTA 4 swingset bug. It could even be possible that if there is a way to survive the fall, the glitch could be utilized in speed runs, as a way to traverse long distances quickly. Having said that, most people will be happy just to see Read Dead Redemption 2 characters careening through the sky.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.