All the pretty horses: how Red Dead Redemption 2’s majestic steeds were made

At Rockstar's Edinburgh studio, designers reveal the lengths they went to in creating the western adventure's animal soul

Oddly for a multimillion-selling blockbuster video game, in Red Dead Redemption 2 you spend many, many hours staring at a horse's ass. Of the 70-ish hours I've spent with the game so far, I reckon 35 have been in a saddle, either exploring the wilderness or haring it from A to B on the way between story chapters. Horses are omnipresent, hitched to wagons, trotting under everyone from lawmen and farmers, running wild in the fields. They aren't just a means of conveyance - they're the soul of the game, beautiful and blameless, metaphors for the natural freedom that the game's humans keep screwing up. If I ever accidentally shoot one in a fight, I feel appalled at myself.

If the horses didn't look and sound so lifelike, rearing and whinnying in the presence of wolves and grunting with exertion as you push them into a gallop, players wouldn't feel such a connection to them. One of the first things I marvelled at in Red Dead was the way my steed's muscles were moving under its flanks as it pushed through the deep snow. At Rockstar's Edinburgh studio the week before Red Dead Redemption 2's release, no matter whom I talked to, I ended up in a 20-minute conversation about horses.