Rockstar is known the world over for the absurd levels of detail it puts into its games. From Easter Eggs to little flourishes, no stone goes unturned. You may have thought horse balls shrinking in the cold was the pinnacle of what Red Dead Redemtpion 2 had to offer in terms of almost pointless minutae, but you'd be wrong. It turns out, railway workers actually build the tracks as you watch them. It's not just a looping animation.
This is such a small, pointless detail, but it's part of what makes Rockstar games so memorable. it's also probably part of the reason modern game development cycles are so unsustainable, so it's a double-edged sword for sure.
The person in the TikTok below can be heard saying, "No way," as they watch the NPC hammering the rails into place, watching as the fang bolt (yes, I did Google that as I wrote this article) slowly digs into the wooden slatt, called a sleeper (something I also learned just now).
In most games, you wouldn't expect the bolt to move at all, but in Red Dead Redemption 2, it does. Then the person in the video clearly thinks the animation will simply loop and the bolt will pop back out after a few more hits, but no, it goes all the way in.
Okay, surely now is the time the bolt springs back out and the worker has to hammer it in again, like Sisyphus, bound to this eternal, digital hell. But no! The bolt stays in place and the worker shuffles along to the next bolt, readying their hammer for another strike.
The person in the video gets more and more shocked as it goes on, sure that this much detail can't have gone into something as mundane as some railway work, but people at Rockstar coded in full animations, hopefully not over the course of a weekend to meet tight deadlines.
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