I love where this subject has gone! The domestication of the Aurochs into plough cattle and the Horse as a mount were among the two most significant developments in early civilization. And the domestication of the dog was the most important interspecies alliance of all, right at the root of modern humans. Dogs made us human. They domesticated us, and then set us down the path. Romans raised by wolves hehe. So at least Scratch is up in there.
But horses are really pretty key, and they don't get any love in this game yet. The way things were handled in Skyrim or ESO or SWTOR with mounts wouldn't work here anyway, but it was a cool thing going back to like Ultima Online when you finally get enough money and attained a high enough level to buy your own horses. In D&D its probably better at higher level anyway, like a lvl 5+ accomplishment and we only have 4 so lol... Stealing horses though, and horse raiding, also cool concepts that could be explored more in the subgame. I know they tried in NWN forever to make a mount a working thing for those 3rd edition games, figures it wouldn't happen till they did an MMO out of it alas. But I like a single player type design. I thought Breath of the WIld had probably the coolest concept from an action oriented game where you had to find them and train and could keep a stable. Or even if it ended up something like the Tauntans in SWTOR, I can't really complain there, it's way more therapeutic to ride than to speeder heheh. But trying to design mounted combat would be a massively cool thing if someone actually did it up proper. I'd be curious to see what Pathfinder does with it, mechanically that game feels a bit more like the infinity iso's, but they have some cool mini animations for the paper dolls, and a bit more screen real estate, so I think it could work there. I think for a game like BG3, they could still find a non combat way to include mounts. It'd be clean to see two people ride on a single horse at slower speeds or shorter distances, or to carry the wounded, or drape a corpse on the back. Riding in to initiate a combat would be pretty badass to see though, like lancing a gobbo straight off the bat would be fun to see, or an armored charger just tearing it up. A horse and pack mule are good thing to have around. And a villainous cat familiar, of course, to keep boo in check. They could do a lot with the talk to animals ability on that one haha.
I think the best we could hope for here would maybe be just having a horse at the camp. Perhaps as a plot conceit, a donkey to explain the hauling and sending items to camp type dynamic. In the MMOs that's like a thing that the henchmen can be ordered to do, go sell junk. So if there were mercs I guess we could imagine that too or that one of the party members is dipping back on horseback. I think it'd be a nice touch, but I wouldn't expect much more. Though it would be cool if someone pulled it off in a compelling way
Last edited by Black_Elk; 11/01/21 02:35 AM.
