

Just as it is possible for a game to have horses that scratch neither the collectible nor the companion itch (like my otherwise beloved Stardew Valley), there may be ways to get the best of both worlds:

If a game has all its dialogue in text boxes without voice acting for example, inserting a player generated name for a horse and therefore making it part of the story is relatively trivial. For games with voice acting on the other hand, it could be an option to let the player customize the looks and stats of their horse, but keep the same name. This may work better in a fantasy setting where a horse changing appearance can be explained away by magic.

Or how about a character creation screen that opens as soon as you first meet your horse companion, much like Skyrim’s character creation opens up when you’re first about to see your character?

The possibilities are wide and varied, if the developers can and want to make use of all the untapped potential.

In Conclusion

For me personally, companion horses will always be the more desirable option of the two. I dearly hope Epona will be back as an actual character in the next Zelda game, for example. But that is perhaps an extension of my preference for predefined characters in RPGs over open character creation, and I know that other people feel exactly the opposite way about that.

In the end, there is not really an overall better or worse when it comes to choosing a model for your game horses: what matters in the end is treating your horses with a certain measure of respect, to try and get things as realistic as possible where it’s within the game’s scope, and to make use of the fact that you can make a whole lot of horse fans very, very happy by paying attention to the details.







