Shrinking horse testicles in the cold were the initiative of RDR 2 developers themselves; management did not insist on such a level of realism

The famous feature of Red Dead Redemption 2, where horse testicles shrink in the cold and enlarge in the warmth, did not appear in the game at the request of Rockstar Games management. As it turned out, the developers added this detail on their own initiative, striving to make the game world even more realistic.

This was revealed by Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, who recently visited Rockstar North studio to prepare a large article about the creation of Grand Theft Auto VI. Rockstar development lead Aaron Garbut shared the story about horse anatomy with him.

According to Schreier, realistic animal anatomy was not on the mandatory list of features for Red Dead Redemption 2. None of the art directors instructed artists to specifically work on this feature or demanded them to stay late to implement it. Instead, one developer or several employees independently decided to add such a detail because they found it interesting and had time to work on it.

Schreier noted that he is currently clarifying the veracity of this story with Rockstar.