Mounted Combat arrives in latest Skyrim Update

Bethblog writes, "While we can’t share details on Dawnguard yet, we’re excited to announce another new feature making its way into the game… Mounted Combat! Like the recently added Kinect support (360) and new kill cameras, this highly-requested feature that was teased in the Skyrim Game Jam video is arriving by way of a free title update. In fact, by opting into the latest Steam Beta Update, PC users can check out the feature today."

[aviator189]

Aha, that's totally going to be awesome.

[darkride66]

When I received the game for Christmas I played nothing but for almost 4 months (taking a breather now, but I'll get back to it). In that entire time I have yet to even ride a single horse.

[JsonHenry]

If I remember correctly you could do this in the TES: Daggerfall way back in 1997.

[Moncole]

This should have been in Oblivion.

[synchroscheme]

It was through mods, albeit a bit clunky. So I'm assuming that the groundwork was already set by the modding community and then Bethesda was either inspired to implement it themselves or just improved on the mod itself.

Always fun to stab a fool on horseback. :)

[McSpermie]

Bethesda can be very generous with the features that most companies would charge for. While Skyrim might not have been what it should have been, you got to admire how they're not milking it at all.

[Genghis]

Meh, the combat system in skyrim is the worst thing about the game. Don't know if mounted combat will help it any...

[Forbidden_Darkness]

I personally enjoy the combat in Skyrim, but that's obviously my opinion.

[lastdual]

Essentially, Skyrim's combat is "good enough".

Combat has never been the core of Elder Scrolls, and if what you're primarily looking for is a deep combat system with multi-hit combos, counters and air-juggling, then the series really isn't for you.

TES excels at crafting a detailed, immersive world. Fans would rather see real bugs such as broken quests get ironed out, rather than the combat get "fixed" simply to appease the action crowd.

[ljh217]

Who cares? Your character will look like a BADASS!

[an0nym0us]

Like the type of BAD ASS that stabs shit while riding a horse!

Or...

The type of BAD ASS that shocks shit while riding a horse =D!!!1!1

[InTheLab]

Tell me about it. Now you can cut air while on horseback.

[Freshnikes]

Agree!! If only they could fix that!!!!

[Kurt Russell]

The combat in Skyrim is excellent!

[TheLeapist]

Looks like Skyrim is slowly but surely being finished. We're almost there.

[mynameisEvil]

Isn't it sad that a game that's been released for 6 months is a game to which you're now saying, "It's getting finished"?

*sigh*

[Faelan]

Ranged combat while riding a horse? That's going to be fun, if a bit overpowered, with my Khajiit sniper.

[OcelotRigz]

When i played Skyrim when it was released it was fine, i didnt experience the problems others were having. Then i kinda got stuck into Battlefield and kinda left Skyrim for a while. After finishing Max Payne the other day i was kinda bored and look at my collection and noticed Skyrim and was delighted as i had completely forgotten about it.

Popped it in, updated it, start playing and bam, kept freezing as i entered water. After a few freezes i looked it up, solved it by re-installing the game and updates, no problem, but things just got worse. As i walked through the land textures were disappearing, i kept freezing for a few seconds every minute or so, sound kept cutting out, loading when entering towns seemed to be much longer than usual etc...
What the hell happened? Is anyone else experiencing this kinda stuff? This game is unplayable for me right now, i hope this new update fixes it because i love this game and cant finish it in this state.

As for the mounted combat, hope it applies to archers as well. Dont think ive ever used anything but a bow in this game, just love being the silent assassin, taking out guys one by one from the dark and would love to fire at guys from a horse just for the sake of it.

[Whitefeather]

Actually for me after play for 10 hours it stopped working properly and literally went down to like 5 frames per second I am not joking it was like I was playing a slideshow. However with each update it got a little better.

[scotchmouth]

I LOL'd at "slideshow". :D

[Snookies12]

Depends on what version you have... The PS3 version just plain sucks and I would almost NOT advise it if at all possible. (Was my first version I bought, traded it in rather quickly.) The 360 version is a little better, at least it's somewhat stable. The PC version is definitely the best, but that depends on what kind of rig you have as to playing it smoothly.

[MySwordIsHeavenly]

Those problems have been fixed. I own both the PS3 and PC versions. Except for obvious graphical differences, they run exactly the same now. Frame rate and screen tear are no longer an issue for the PS3 version. :)

[Snookies12]

I don't know, as of last update I tried the PS3 version with my save file and I was still getting consistent lag. D:

[Parapraxis]

I only had really bad issues (PS3) during the last few Civil War missions, after that it ran great. (160+hrs)

[OcelotRigz]

I have the PS3 version and kinda knew what to expect with Bethesda, but assumed it would be fixed after all this time. But i seem to be reversed compared to everyone else, before the patches it ran fine, well ok it had a few hiccups here and there but smooth enough, even as my save file grew very large.
Since the patches, it only got worse, doesn't make any sense.

@MySwordIsHeavenly
Obviously they have not. If you care to browse the web, or even the comments beside yours, you'll notice i am far from the only one still having serious problems with this game even after the recent patches.
And why would you buy two versions of the same game, considering the advantage in graphics and mods on the PC, why would you also get it for the PS3?

[SilentNegotiator]

I have issues with a good deal of audio cuts, like you mention, but not really those other things.

But then, I still have some issues with quests BREAKING, so...that's pretty bad.

(Oh, PC version, btw)

[Whitefeather]

LOL Thought it said "Mortal Combat".

[scotchmouth]

Same here! Mounted scorpion harpoon! GET OVER HERE

[FinaLXiii]

wow that´s quite awesome to add such a feature after months of being released.

[Derpy]

That'll be cool. I never understood why Oblivion didn't allow for horseback fighting when even Zelda: AoT allowed for it, in a sense, by use of the bow (it being the first 3D RPG with working horseback riding that I am aware of.) So understandably I was pretty disappointed when Skyrim came out and it also didn't allow for mounted combat. When you're constantly being attacked while riding but can't fight back it makes the horses seem rather superfluous.

[MysticStrummer]

There are definitely some very cool things about Skyrim, but combat isn't one of them. I saw more epic moments in the first 20 hours of Dragon's Dogma than in 100 hours of Skyrim. I hope DD sells well enough for a sequel.

[nihonlight]

You can't even ride a horse normaly.let alone fight on the ps3 version without framerate drops!!!
Fix you're lazy port you sold us Bethesda!!!!!

[glennco]

when a game is this big porting it to a difficult system is never going to be perfect. i wouldn't exactly call it lazy. i would call it the downside to multiplats on PS3 when compared to exclusives.

[OcelotRigz]

Yeah, but theres so many multiplatform games that run great on the PS3. Like recently i finished Max Payne and that was perfect and looked great. Ok its not as big as Skyrim but look at GTAIV and Red Dead, they were fine and also looked better. Consider driving high speed thru the cities of GTA, with all the things going on, and the only problem you might have was some slowdown. Thats one of the many reasons why Rockstar are my favorite developers.

Dont get me wrong, i love Bethesda's games, Fallout 3 is one of my all time favorites, but they really shaft us PS3 users every time.

[FCOLitsjustagame]

Why they left this out to begin with is beyond me, it made horse riding kind of pointless except to carry large amount of crap. And the one time I had a large amount of crap and a horse outside....it got killed. :(

[Emilio_Estevez]

Sweet!

[Leeta]

Awesome, cant wait for this. I hope we can loot corpses from horseback too or we will still have to dismount after a kill.

[TopDudeMan]

Awesome. Now I don't even have to get off my horse to shoot someone on the knee with an arrow.

[mook1022]

This is going to look silly with the bouncing boob mod.

;)

[josephayal]

Seriously, does anyone still play this game?

[mynameisEvil]

Most of the people who bought it, I think. I come back to it sometimes.

[Rupee]

Trollololol

[gamingisnotacrime]

good thing i barely played skyrim all this time, now with kinect and the patches i will play skyrim as good as it gets, sweet

[bishop-br]

I still don't get why the voice commands thing is only on Kinect... Seriously, you can do that over Eye too (it has a mic there). Or even better, forget about the whole camera/motion controllers clash, what about people that don't like motion controls but have a headset? Can't they shout FUS RO DAH?

Even if it is some kind of deal with MS, I believe every 360 console comes with a headset, it could still be marketed that way.

Some people argue that Kinect has "built-in software" for voice recognition (I believe that they mean either MS has the software in their suite or that Kinect holds support processing or memory hardware dedicated for that), but people have done that on mods for PC way before the patch and run on fairly low requirements, it's not like voice recognition is major task to either build or run.

[gamingisnotacrime]

i dont know the details, but there is no voice command in any way for PS3, and 360 first got it with kinect, so there might be good reason

i have the kinect and the voice recognition is pretty damn good. a few hiccups here and there but it works great. i wish more games made use of voice commands, it made skyrim so much better, is actually playable!!! lol

[bishop-br]

As I said, it might have somethign to do with Kinect hardware indeed, but actually the first voice commands in Skyrim were through mods in PC that really didn't uped the requirements of the game (well, it requires any mic, but that's it). So there's really isn't a reason for it to not be in PS3 camera or even on 360/PC/PS3 regular mics/headsets. It would make all those Skyrim owner without Kinect that more happy.

[NonApplicable]

Fix the damn "Hired Muscle" Quest! I can't continue the companion's quest line because of it!

[Lovethedead1777best]

cant wait for this one, its starting to piss me off how a lot of people act like its gonna throw skyrim's bug rate off the chart, i notice how all the complaints are about quests mostly and there are only a few about combat, why dont those complaners ask themsleves this? wat is a combat series of bugs going to have to do with any quest bugs? please let me know if you have a awnser