Skyrim is a huge game and exploring the world takes a while. A player has now explained on Reddit why he has foregone using a horse for the vast majority of his playtime, preferring to travel on foot instead.
Which player are we talking about? The Reddit user DrPloyt shared his Skyrim experiences in a post. He is one of those players who have played Bethesda’s RPG on various platforms.
Specifically, he has traversed Skyrim on Xbox 360, Xbox One, Switch, PS5, and PC. Anyone who has done the same knows: Skyrim is a vast game, and correspondingly, the map is huge.
As a player, you travel the northern part of the continent Tamriel, where other places like Cyrodiil (Oblivion) or Morrowind can also be found. The landscape is characterized by coniferous forests and mountains. The paths lead to various villages and towns, into dark burial chambers, and up to the highest peaks.
All this can be explored on foot or by horse. But not all players want to resort to the faster method of riding.
A pretty crazy trick from Skyrim doesn’t work in Starfield anymore, by the way.
Over 400 Hours Without a Horse
How did the user play Skyrim? Spread across different platforms, DrPloyt has amassed over 400 hours of playtime. For the most part, he left the horse behind and preferred to walk.
There are two reasons for this: Firstly, the player simply did not like the riding mechanics of Skyrim. Furthermore, the game is much better explored on foot.
The beautiful scenery wouldn’t rush by so quickly, and many places simply cannot be reached with a horse.
Thus, instead of getting on and off, DrPloyt opted to entirely forgo his mount. As a consequence, he had to walk around for hours to unlock all fast travel points. However, since Skyrim still looks good even thirteen years after its release and can be made even prettier thanks to mods, the walk is worth it.
What does the community think? Many players have reacted to DrPloyt’s post on Reddit. They also prefer to walk rather than ride.
For example, the user Soulruby has the urge to pick every single blue mountain flower by the roadside. He finds it annoying to get off the horse each time.
The user nullv, on the other hand, fundamentally believes that the horse does not fit the gameplay of the game. After all, you want to explore the game world off the beaten path.
To do that, one usually has to dismount, move away from the horse, and run a long way back to find it again. Only after a fast travel will the horse be automatically teleported next to the player character in Skyrim.
The riding mechanics of the game would have been outdated even at launch, argues balkanobeasti.
There could be some truth to that. As Lianne Cruz, an animator for Skyrim, stated in a documentary by former Bethesda employee Jonah Lobe on YouTube, the horses barely made it into the final game. It would have been difficult to implement the mounts properly.
This could explain why some players prefer to hit the ground running rather than galloping through Skyrim on horseback. Another player reached the highest level 13 years after release by casting the same spell for 43 hours.
