Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games's 2018 hit, is a western style action-adventure game that takes place in 1899 in the west, midwest and southwest parts of the United States. The open world in Red Dead Redemption 2 is a massive playground that players get lost in to discover new secrets, side-quests, environmental storytelling, and a myriad of other things that make the game so rubust and full of life.
One of the most important aspects of any open world game is traversal, as the vast expanse of the map opens up to the player early in the game, allowing for free travel to and from any of its far reaches. So, Arthur Morgan's horse comes in quite handy as players travel through the wild west in order to progress the story and encounter other challenges along the way.
One of these challenges, surprisingly, is just the matter of dodging NPCs on their own horses along the road. Redditor spaghetti_in_my_shoe shares a gameplay video showing off two separate instances in which the player character is completely run off the road and knocked off his horse as an NPC comes barreling straight at him. The player is seen trying to get out of the way, but to no avail.
The video raises a question, perhaps for the developers over at Rockstar Games, about why NPCs are ushering their horses into full on gallops as they ram straight into the player. Understandably, the player in the video vents all frustration by proceeding to knock the lights out of the NPC, achieving maximum vindication.
Traversing the world on horses that behave strangely is not exclusive to Red Dead Redemption 2 and, of course, the developers at Rockstar Games are not the only ones struggling with programming these daredevil creatures (Skyrim's horses being a famous example). Perhaps it will never be known if the NPCs and their horses are programmed like heat-seaking missiles in order to create yet another obstacle in the world of Red Dead Redemption 2, but either way, it makes for a clever and, at times, hilarious challenge.
Though glitchy and seemingly unnecessary NPC behavior often angers fans and players of games, the horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 are classic examples of how games give players a choice as soon they are booted up. Players can either take something like this as a rage-inducing frustration and quit, or suspend all belief and immerse fully into the open world at the turn-of-the-century, giving Arthur Morgan yet another challenge to survive in the game.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.