Does anybody really use horses at all in any of the games in the TES series? For one thing, their use is unrealistic. In OUR dark ages, lords ruled Europe as mounted knights of which is not reflected at all in TES, you just ride them around to get to a place real fast without expending energy, that's all. But why would you do that when you can gain experience sneaking everywhere? Even walking or running everywhere makes you combat ready and easy to pick up items on the ground or pick alchemic reagents. If you are horseback in TES, you will have to get off your horse to conduct combat too, very unrealistic.

One break in the trend in RPGs is the new Dragon Age Inquisition, where horses can wear armour and YOU may fight from horseback, making YOU a formidable opponent. I can't wait for this game which will be released for the PS4 on October 7th, 2014.

Guess what? TES aren't our "dark ages" ( and there is so much wrong with that term that I won't even start ).

It probobly wasn't your intention but you sound here like some advert bot.

Roleplaying. Not everyone roleplays a Knight who wants "to rule." I roleplay many characters who do not.

Roleplaying.

Roleplaying. Again, some of us roleplay characters who don't even own a horse. Or, maybe a character used to own a horse and that horse was stolen, or maybe it died. If a character does not own a horse it is, in fact, realistic for that character to conduct combat on foot.

I feel the need to point out that, despite the cultural perception... Knights were kinda useless. Warfare involved the capture of fortified strong-points like castles and towns, situations where knights were practically impotent. On numerous occasions the British defeated the Knight-Heavy armies of France based on the simple fact that they svck. Wars were never won by Knights, they were won by men-at-arms and Bowmen. There are far fewer historical events of Knights routing an infantry formation than there are of them being stopped cold by pikes, spears and halberds.

Even then, transportation rarely involved horses, again despite what Hollywood would like us to think. Most transportation and shipping of goods was done along water-ways. In the vast majority of cases, cavalry like Medieval Knights were abut status, rather than use. Horses were expensive to raise and care for, so if you wanted to flaunt your wealth, you bought horses.

Plus, there were no Dark Ages. That is, again, a misnomer perpetrated by Hollywood and a somewhat Romanocentric view of history. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence to support it ever existing.

And finally... Do not judge a game before it comes out. That's a sure-fire way to set yourself up for disappointment. Bioware promised great things with Dragon Age II and Mass Effect III. They've dropped the ball twice already, don't psyche yourself up too much for an un-tested product.

Horses svck in general in TES, that's a fact. They're good for RP, but pretty much nothing else one would use a horse for.

Skyrim allows you to fight from horseback.

Mounted knights inflicted a disproportionate share of casualties in medieval and earlier warfare. That's mainly because they pursued an already broken enemy and ran them down from behind, or else picked off a few skirmishers away from the main body of troops. They were most certainly feared (by taking away the option of a safe retreat), but mounted knights were rarely stupid enough to charge head-on into a wall of pikes and shields, and if the rider was, the horse wasn't. Generally speaking, if you force a horse to charge a wall of men, it will slow down to a crawl and halt before impact.

Mount & Blade makes mounted combat slightly overpowered, but even there, horseman are regularly stopped and dragged from their mounts by foot troops.

There was one episode stated in Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars" where a mounted unit was ambushed by a group on foot before they could dismount to fight. Mounted combat was highly subject to conditions, and was either an advantage or a disadvantage accordingly.

I really like the horses in Skyrim. They put a lot of work into the characterization. The way the horse will tilt it's head and look at you when you are standing nearby. I like using them for a kind of semi-fast travel and it's good to be able to load up on dragonbones and hop onto your horse and not get a bunch of annoying "you are carrying too much to be able to run" messages. I really wish Bethesda had provided us with a pack-mule with saddlebags in addition to riding horses though. When I want to fight from horseback, I play Mount and Blade, they did a really excellent job with horseborne combat. Considering the really poor design choices made in Dragon Age 2, I will be really surprised if Inquisition lives up to it's publicist's hype.

Good tactic putting that Dragon Age thing as the very last sentence in the post; otherwise probably a lot of people would not have read the thing all the way to the end... XD