Horses have always been a quirky part of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim’s environment, able to climb any mountain, survive unbelievable drops, and fearlessly crush all opposition beneath their iron-shoed hooves. Discovering the mild absurdity of the game’s horses is one of the universal Skyrim experiences, and it’s strange to think of The Elder Scrolls 5 without these beasts of burden.
However, the developers very nearly deprived players of their quirky mounts. According to Skyrim animator Lianne Cruz, Game Director Todd Howard almost axed the horses due to their difficulty to implement correctly.
This revelation comes from an hour-long documentary on YouTube by former Bethesda Character Artist Jonah Lobe. During the video, Lobe interviewed several of his former colleges. Among them was Lianne Cruz, who animated many of The Elder Scrolls 5’s four-legged creatures. These included Skyrim’s horses, which it turns out were a significant hassle to implement.
According to Cruz, developers had a lot of trouble getting Skyrim’s horseback riding to look and feel natural. It also caused an unusual performance issue on earlier builds of the game, where the horse could gallop faster than the game rendered the world in front of them. This and other problems led to Todd Howard delivering something akin to an ultimatum. Cruz remembers walking into a meeting where Howard reiterated that The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is about fighting dragons, exploration, and player freedom. Therefore, horse riding was not a priority, and he’d rather cut the mechanic than let it hold up development. Fortunately, developers managed to make it work before Howard had to bring down the ax.
Cruz also animated many of Skyrim’s other four-legged animals. These included the game’s wolves and dogs, the latter of which she said was her favorite to work on despite their particular complexity. As programmer Jean Simonet brought up during the documentary, Skyrim’s quadrupeds were much more complex than in previous Bethesda games. It was the studio’s first time programming and animating animals with spines. This was necessary for the more realistic movements developers wanted to give them. Compare the rigid, almost tank-like movement of canines in Oblivion and Fallout 3 to their more fluid motions in Skyrim and Fallout 4 to see this in action.
During her interview, Cruz also brought up the unusual division of labor among artists, animators, and programmers. Rather than being wholly separate teams, the three worked together closely to create Skyrim’s assorted creatures. She also noted that a given Skyrim animator would work on all aspects of a creature’s animation. This is different from other studios she’s worked on, which divide different steps between multiple employees. She describes this as giving animators a sense of ownership that they rarely have with the characters they work on.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.