What about horses in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

[Satguru]

You would think that after all that time between Oblivion and Skyrim the horses look and played like those horses at Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare, but no bummer. Perhaps they may not be like RDR, but looking at the demo video, it appears that there is about 3 levels of speed while riding the horse, ranging from a normal trot to full gallop. Anyone have any idea or any information on this than please let me know.

[Adonis]

I like the look and animations of the horses in Skyrim. I think they fit the world and that Bethesda has done a nice job with them. They are definitely not as good as horses in RDR in my opinion, but they're at a standstill great. Only bad thing about horses in Skyrim is the well known "no mounted combat" I would say. I wonder how the horse movement speed will work on the PC. It's different on the console since there you got the joystick to handle all the different movement speeds.

[MacIntel]

Horses seem much improved over Oblivion's horses. Though, I agree. No horse in games looks or moves anywhere near as realistic as RDR's houses. I don't think realistic horses are important in Skyrim. I'm just thankful for the vast improvement it has made over Oblivion's. RDR is a western game. As a western action adventure game, it pretty much required horses that looked real, moved real, and controlled real. Skyrim on the other hand, is a fantasy RPG, and though it needed to be improved much over Oblivion, perfection isn't necessary.

[Common]

If that's it then I don't really like the sound of that, though I guess there's no other way. When you say "caps lock for running" I assume you mean hold down caps lock for running, and not just tapping it. If so, then it's a bit better. Still, a joystick is much better in that sense as there's a "dynamic" transition between movement speeds. I not at all used them in Oblivion and I am not going to start at Skyrim, no skills XP for horseback riding.

[desilva]

I remember an article that stated that they basically took a real trick riding horse, covered him in motion sensors, and then documented his movements for the game. The movements are more realistic in RDR because of this, as they even got the horse to do some unintended movements that only added to the game's final appeal. (That was the horses in RDR buck with Marston on them, for example, were recorded on accident. They gave the horse the wrong cue while recording, and instead of it doing what they intended he ended up nearly bucking his rider off.)

[RyanInt]

In Oblivion you had two speeds. One was a walk, one was a run. You switched between the two by pressing Caps Lock. Holding the sprint key will give us a third speed. Honestly I don't know if horses in Oblivion worked the same because they were useless and I never used one. If they did, the system I proposed would probably be what's used. If they instead have horses accelerate from a walk to a run, then that would be great. The sprint key would still probably be what makes them run super fast.

[AZUL]

More like they half-assed it and they don't look very good and thus arguably detract from the game as a whole. It is seriously not that hard to implement mounted combat, especially when they have a new, dynamic animation system and perks that could balance it out. Horses were at the very core of RDR. You might as well complain that the cars in GTA IV don't look as good as the cars in Gran Turismo 5. You'd be right, they don't. But they look a hell of a lot better than they did in previous titles.