• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Horses

DOWN

Banned
God we need a sequel. War Horse (white mane, black coat) from the pre-order DLC was my main squeeze for most of the game. Lovely.

Red-Dead-Redemption-The-War-Horse-DLC-Trailer_1.jpg


rdrabril-01.jpg
 
Agro > all other horses

I liked how movement of Agro wasn't dependent on you smacking the horse over and over ( even though people still did this despite not needing to ). One whip of the reign for trot, another for stready stride, and another for sprint. Hold the button down in their respective modes to keep it there.

I also liked the interaction with the horse. You could run and jump into the saddle, you could lower your head while riding and even stand up while riding Agro and pull out your bow and arrow and fire. You could lean left and right on the saddle. You could pet Agro.

His animations were fantastic both still and in stride. Was greatness.

And agreed about RDR. Besides SOTC it probably had the best overall horses.

Horses in games so often feel so light. Like you are floating on some sort of secondary apparatus or something with real overly jerky movements.
 

barit

Member
Yeah I would go with Argo too. (and yes he is called Argo not Agro lol)

And the fact that
he survives a drop from 100 feet
makes him the best horse anyway ;)
 
Anyone remember that GAFfer called Horse who used to post horse gifs all the time? That was strange.

I seem to be in the minority here but I really didn't like RDR horse riding. Guess I just sucked at it.

Argo would be my pick for best horse.
 

Symphonia

Banned
GTAV might have had horses at one point. There are unused audio files of the police communications describing a suspect (you) as riding a certain color of horse, the same way they describe the vehicle you're driving in during a pursuit. They had audio files for something like 5 horse colors.
This makes me want R* to patch in horses in a future update. Imagine galloping through downtown Los Santos on a stallion with rifles on your back and a cowboy hat on your head. Could make for some truly epic showdowns.
 
Castlevania taught me that given the opportunity horses can be pretty dickish fellas, even when they just run back and forth for all eternity.
latest


See Also: ghostly horse heads being a recurring thing in this series.
 

Nightbird

Member
How can there be a horse thread without Life With Horses 3D?


EDIT: on topic, I'm ambivalent on the "immersion-breaking" of just whistling and having a horse magically appear to take you anywhere you want to go. Like, that horse just traversed thousands of miles of treacherous terrain in an instant from its stable, and then magically disappears once you're done with it.




Those two were the first thing that came to my Mind. Glad that this was already taken care of
 
I think the actual horse riding is the best in Shadow of the Colossus because IMO you can put the RDR horse into more situations where the lack of inverse kinematics on the limbs is apparent. (Or maybe it has it in general, but it has several states where that doesn't work where two legs are hovering in the air.)

But this is nitpicky to the highest degree. Any game that reaches either of these two levels is already better than all other game out there that features horses.

Yeah RDR's more complex world geometry and clutter made it much easier to "break" the realism of the animations, but that is understandable.

I did like the way they handled the controls in SOTC, making it feel like the horse had a mind of its own moreso than in RDR.
 
The horses are horribly animated in Red Dead Redemption, and they also control in a weird jerky way. Despite it being one of my all time favourite games.

And Agro is easily the best. Most fun to control, interact with. Most realistic. Best animation. I love that horse.

https://youtu.be/SugEdJ6meLg
 
Well Mount and Blade more or less have a monopoly on horseback combat. It's a great game for any cavalryman out there (myself being one), the archaic engine is taking its toll now though which is a shame.

Yeah lancing someone or successfully striking with a sword feels great in mount and blade.
 

Anticol

Banned
horsing in ASS 1 was terrible

I was about to say this, well if u are talking about Assassins Creed 1, it's one of the worst in my opinion. As for the best, like most of the opinions in this thread, I loved riding in RDR, it was pretty good.
 
Yeah I would go with Argo too. (and yes he is called Argo not Agro lol)

And the fact that
he survives a drop from 100 feet
makes him the best horse anyway ;)

I've been spelling it Agro for years. I am sure that's what his name is. I know Wander seems to omit any 'G' sound when he says it, but I still think it's Agro.
 

Snowballo

Member
Man that's depressing. Even if they'd just copied across RDR's horses with no improvements of any kind, I still would have been happy as Larry.

Anyway, another thing more developers need to work on is mane/tail hair. Getting a generally "decent" looking horse seems to be pretty easy these days, but hair quality and the movement of it still seems to be generally lacking.
Hairworks seems to be making a great move in that direction, but it's supposedly still destroying GPU's to do so. Hopefully it can either be more optimized, or developers can find other, better ways of doing it, because this is just downright incredible:
vMnVsYv.gif

What game is this?
 
Agro is definitely my favourite horse. It's weird how attached to a horse when it is your only companion.

Also fuck, when he fell just before the final boss. That shit was sad. But then he survives and comes back with only a broken leg. Agro is one tough motherfucker.
 

CHC

Member
Great thread. I'll echo that Skyrim should genuinely be ashamed of its horses (and pretty much all their other animation as well but that's a different topic).

RDR and Shadow of the Colossus are the only ones that felt remotely convincing, as if they were another creature not just a vehicle that galloped. I hope Witcher 3 can deliver on a good, weighty horses, but animations aren't really the strong suit of that series either.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Horses shouldn't control like bikes, with instant perfect input.
RDR sort of does this well, but when you spin in place and other instances, it still feel like a mechanical thing rather than an animal.

Shadow of the Colossus is as close to perfection as i've seen, i don't think there is another virtual animal that feels as alive as Agro does, in my eyes.
Sometimes the skeleton fucks up a little bit (when you're on a slope, especially) and the model is a bit funny looking (but it was a ps2 game, after all) but in terms of animations and sheer controls feeling, it's not even a contest.
Feels like you're riding something with his own will, rather than an object.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Well I think MGS V has the only horses with some weird diet that gives them "oil slick poop" for using to overturn vehicles / innocent pedestrians
 
Horses shouldn't control like bikes, with instant perfect input.
RDR sort of does this well, but when you spin in place and other instances, it still feel like a mechanical thing rather than an animal.

Shadw of the Colossus is as close to perfection as i've seen, i don't think there is another virtual animal that feels as alive as Agro does, in my eyes.
Sometimes the skeleton fucks up a little bit (when you're on a slope, especially) and the model is a bit funny looking (but it was a ps2 game, after all) but in terms of aimationas and sheer controls feeling, it's not even a contest.
Feels like you're riding something with his own will, rather than an object.

The inverse kinematics they were doing on that horse (and Wander) among many other ridiculous things, were just so beyond PS2's capabilities - I can think of some other PS2 games with inverse kinematics, such as Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, but even that wasn't integrated with animations. It's no wonder it ran like bum. :p
 
OP got what I was going to say anyway. RDR is the bes thorse implementation ever. Their AI and the way you can see their skin and muscles flexing is absolutely amazing. Nothing will come close to that, and I'd even be surprised if a Red Dead 3 came close to the same level of fidelity.
 

Sn4ke_911

If I ever post something in Japanese which I don't understand, please BAN me.
OP got what I was going to say anyway. RDR is the bes thorse implementation ever. Their AI and the way you can see their skin and muscles flexing is absolutely amazing. Nothing will come close to that, and I'd even be surprised if a Red Dead 3 came close to the same level of fidelity.

I thought so too but then i replayed RDR after watching the MGSV Afghanistan gameplay demo and was shocked how little weight they have to them, it seems better in TPP.

MGSV might surpass it, we'll see.
 
Agro (SotC) is the best, no others come close. I love the little touches, like the way he'll wander off to water or grass if I'm messing around with lizards/fruit. Plus all the sweet moves you could do with him that aren't ever really explained in the game. He was my best buddy in that game.

RDR is in distant second place because its dumb horse AI lost a lot of marks with me. I had at least a couple commit suicide on me because they tried to take a shortcut over a cliff, instead of just taking the long way around. Agro would never do that, he was a smart horse.
 
From the games I've played Red Dead Redemption certainly has the best controlling horses. Just about perfect. The Elder Scrolls games definitely have shit horse riding mechanics. Never even really bothered in Skyrim.

It's been awhile but I remember the horse mechanics being pretty weak in the early Assassin Creed games.
 

Nestunt

Member
Red Dead Redemption's not only was incredibly well animated, but also a great way of moving from place to place (better than any cars in past R* games)
 

UrbanRats

Member
Agro (SotC) is the best, no others come close. I love the little touches, like the way he'll wander off to water or grass if I'm messing around with lizards/fruit. Plus all the sweet moves you could do with him that aren't ever really explained in the game. He was my best buddy in that game.

RDR is in distant second place because its dumb horse AI lost a lot of marks with me. I had at least a couple commit suicide on me because they tried to take a shortcut over a cliff, instead of just taking the long way around. Agro would never do that, he was a smart horse.

Plus speaking of RDR, when you gallopp fast in uneven terrain, you can see the horse float a little bit, when the ground is particularly potato-like, which makes it feel less weighty and real.
Never happens with Agro, which could also be thanks to a different level design, but still.
 
All who said "SotC's the best, and it's not even close," are correct.

I made a thread about horse animations a ways back and NeoGAF user Mario worked at Sidhe where they were the first to motion capture a live horse at full gallop for a video game. It's mentioned on their Wikipedia page.

And in case you missed it above, here's a demonstration of all the actions the player can perform in tandem with Agro. That doesn't include moments where close-by explosions or blows send Agro tumbling, something RDR never managed to include (if a horse tumbles, it's only ever because it died and went into ragdoll-mode).
 
Top Bottom