Last year, I had the absolute pleasure to discover The search for the mane, a website devoted almost entirely to horses in video games. With elden ring now off, and with horse riding prominently, I wanted to check and see if you had any thoughts on the mount in the game, And it has not let me down.
The place-directed by game designer and horse lover Alice Ruppertโ takes a light-hearted, yet also deeply practical, approach to the subject, and this elden ring review is no different. Instead of reviewing the game itself, just take a look at Torrent, and also some of the other mounted creatures in the game, and examine how "realistic" their animations and controls are.
In the case of games like red dead redemption 2, his coverage obviously leans towards the truly realistic side of things, since those are actual horses we're playing with and can be directly compared. On elden ringhowever, they are not really horsesso the review is a bit different.
Given the magical underpinnings of the game, most of it is fine:
Torrent's neck is covered in enough shaggy fur to make a Wild Jorvik jealous, his long lock of hair and wide ears give him that highland cattle look, just rolled out of bed, and there are a bunch of spots on his bum that are adorable, though sadly mostly hidden by tacks and Baggage.
mane quest the problems finally show up somewhere I hadn't even noticed them, but now I can't help but see them: Torrent looks like a horse, but his legs bend like... well, like they shouldn't, a bit like a goat, but neither Really:
Now let's go to the part that doesn't convince me: Torrent's joints. Unfortunately, our horse-goat suffers from two very common problems: too bent front legs and completely stiff fetlocks. I feel like a broken record at this point, because I've already pointed this out in so many games, but a horse's fetlock joints need to go down as they bear weight. Of course, animating additional articulation is extra work, but I'm still continually disappointed that even a game of the scope and resources like elden ring he does not consider it necessary for the mount of his protagonist.
We can try to explain this by pretending that Torrent is more of a goat than a horse, or at least a mixture of the two: when looking at footage of the goat's walk, his lower legs stay pretty straight. Since Torrent's legs look significantly more equine than uuh... of the bastard, I'm not really satisfied with that excuse. Especially since there is is it so actually other non-goat horses in this game are enemy mounts and tend to have the same problem.
While it's aesthetically jarring, it does at least have one point: Goat legs may look weird, but job.
...playing for longer has made me realize that choice is at least partially understandable from a game perspective, in a game like elden ringwhere accuracy and timing are crucial against all enemies, your mount's jerky movement might be enough to prevent you from using it during combat.
meaning: me get why smooth motion was prioritized over equine realism.
I would also like to imagine that at some point elden ring design process someone said โmaybe the player needs a horseโ, and someone else said โnot fucked up enough, it has to be a goat-footed horseโ and everyone nodded.
you can and should read mane quest full torrent review here.
