10 Things You Didn't Know About Red Dead Redemption

6. Mo-Capping The Horses Was An Ordeal

Even today, the original Red Dead Redemption has better horse physics and mechanics than most other games. At the time especially though, the way these animals controlled was a total revolution, and the developers painstakingly did their best to recreate lifelike movement and behaviours.

That, unsurprisingly, came with a bunch of its own issues. At that time, motion capturing the performance of regular actors was tasking enough, so when Rockstar decided to kit out a horse in a mo-cap 'suit' they ran into a whole bunch of frustrating issues.

The first came in deciding where to place the markers on the horse's body and, more importantly, keeping them stuck on. Apparently, after every take they'd fall off, and the developers would have to stick them on again in the exact same place in order to avoid ruining a whole day's work.

Fortunately, the horse the team used was, as they described it, a "consummate professional" and already used to Hollywood sets. Still, a movie set is much different from a cramped game studio, and fitting a horse in there, and getting it to not accidentally wreck all the equipment, was something the studio had to deal with on the daily.