John Carpenter “gave up” on Red Dead 2 because of troubles with the “damn horse”

Halloween director John Carpenter has admitted that he never finished Red Dead Redemption 2 due to increasing frustration when it came to a specific gameplay element: horse riding.

In an interview with The New Yorker, John Carpenter  – one of the most recognizable and beloved horror filmmakers of all time – recently admitted that he never finished Red Dead Redemption 2 due to his inability to “get on the damn horse.”

“I’m pretty good after all the years I’ve played. But with that one I was terrible,” Carpenter explained when discussing his negative experience with Red Dead Redemption 2. “The controls weren’t intuitive, at least for me. But I guess everybody else had a good time. It was a popular game.”

Carpenter has made a name for himself as one of the most successful horror film directors of all time. His resume includes the likes of Halloween (1978), Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), and many more beloved horror movies.

However, Carpenter did reveal in the same interview that he has been playing video games since the 1990s and that Sonic the Hedgehog was the first game that got him into the medium. “That’s where I started, and I fell in love with it. It was beyond me at that point. But my son, who was much younger, he brought me the rest of the way. He introduced me to certain games, like Halo or platform games.”

And while Carpenter may have given up on Red Dead Redemption 2, he has played through some other modern classics, highlighting the Fallout games as some of his favorites.

“I’ve been playing this game for quite a while. It’s called Fallout 76. The Fallout games are fun, it’s like a post-apocalyptic world. This game had a rough launch, with problems and bugs, but I really like it. There’s this incredible game called Horizon Forbidden West. Astonishing game.”