It seems like from his podcast interview that he's not very confident about making horses right. I understand that Bethesda hasn't had much experience with horse implementation and oblivion is just their initial attempt. I think Bethesda should take a step by step approach to learn how to implement horses, in other words, make a few improvements in each installment that they are gonna use horses (doesn't have to be TES, though). In Skyrim, these few things can be done to make horses better than oblivion:

1. Horses don't stand still when they are idle. Make their tails sweep around would be a good touch.
2. When mounted, the horses don't stand still either, they tend to walk about, change direction, and you have to kind of control the horse constantly to keep him in place.
3. The galloping or walking animation should be jerkier. If you are not experienced with horseback, when the horse is walking, he can shake your guts out of your throat. A little more bouncing to the walking animation would be good. Also, when galloping, it was too smooth in oblivion. The moment the horse's legs pushes him upward, it should be very jerky.
4. Horses should have softer bodies. When standing still and you try to make him turn, the horse's entire body actually bends toward the direction he's turning. In oblivion the horses are completely rigid.

Any comments?

Pretty much just copy/paste horses from RDR

Horses were a waste of time in Oblivion, once your athletics skill was high enough. You could run faster than them, completely negating the need for them.

If they do have them in Skyrim, you shouldn't be able to run faster than them. They should look at Red Dead Redemption for a lesson on how to do horses in games.

I think they can well figure out what horses are suppose to act like, its actually making them do those things realistically in the game that is the hard part.

Assassin's Creed has excellent horses as well.

let's just hope it is not like two worlds where horses have a mind of their own, that was annoying

They should pretty much just copy Mount and Blade. It has the best mounted combat out of any game to date (and it can switch from 1st to 3rd person like TES).

Yeah pretty much, just look at how those were done and blatantly copy it. I doubt Rockstar would care and Bethesda would learn a lot from it.

RDR horses + Mount&Blade mounted combat = Sorted.

I'd be quite happy with having a horse similiar to the Assassin Creed games though, to be honest. Don't need anything overly fancy for Skyrim, maybe for the next TES game where there are large cavalry armies and stuff.

Horses really are not necessary with fast travel. And if you can't have combat while riding its just boring. And the horse armor DLC for Oblivion was the biggest waste of money ever, which made me hate horses even more.

The problems with horses in Oblivion is that they are difficult to control, you have to get off of the horse to fight enemies (which sometimes seems to be every 10 feet, and you can't collect things like alchemy ingredients from a horse.

And they don't offer any advantages. At high speed levels your character can run faster than a horse.

Riding a horse is not really that important to me. But if they were to make horses useable you'd need to probably at a minimum

• fight from horseback
  
• have some gameplay advantage - like much greater speed or some combat advantage. Like being able to trample enemies or fight deal more and take less damage because of your higher vantage point
  
• be able to control the horse nearly as easily as you control your character. Even though that might not be realistic. I could see a horsemanship skill, that when you increase it you get more responsive control.

good point from the OP, okey Nb 2 is a bit over the top, remeber it′s a game, not a horse riding sim, I have enough troubles without needing horses that doesn′t just do what I want.

I picture the main issue they are having is with the terrain of Skyrim. Maybe they just aren't happy with a horse just mindlessly running up against a rock/tree and not caring. It's a tricky problem to fix the way i see it. So i'd understand if they cut them for now.

Aggro from Shadow of the Colossus is the way horses should be in videogames.

RDR and Assassin's Creed are mere derivatives.

Mount and Blade has all of these. Therefore, Skyrim should copy it.

Seriously, Mount and Blade has a much closer setting and combat to Skyrim than RDR or Assassin's Creed.

Sounds good. I'd add the chance to use them to carry stuff too - possibly the more loaded up they are, the slower the will be able to move.

I liked what Todd said. I like that he relates to the RDR horse and I like that he's not satisfied with what Oblivion has.

Except when they run they look ridiculous.

I'm hoping horses are replaced by woolly mammoths.

Yes, although they slow down way too much going up hill. but still very good horses

Tried horses in Oblivion and really wished after 5 minutes that Epona's Song was TES lore.

Obviously minor adjustments need to be made for Skyrim, since the horses will (hopefully) be used for transport and for fighting. Having horses that can't go over hills at faster than walking speed would be tedious.

btw...am I the only one that read the title of this and thought it was about Todd having a fear of horses...because one bit him as a child?

haha, well yes that was assumed they would be tweaked. Although i don't think we'll be seeing mounted combat if they're questioning having mounts at all.

Yes......yes you are