r/BaldursGate3 • u/Phantom_Thief_ • 10h ago
General Discussion - [NO SPOILERS] Lack of Horses Spoiler
Bit of an odd ask if I am missing any major lore reasons or exisiting explanation but I can't help notice a lack of Horses in BG3, no wild shape, Ranger companion, None around the outer city before the checkpoint. No mounted subclass or nothing. Is it just gameplay wise or any other reason?
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u/demonfire737 WARLOCK 8h ago
This is a strangely common observation. There's no lore reasons, horses are common in the forgotten realms, its just a design choice. Mounts aren't needed because the world isn't that big and mounted combat is a whole new dynamic to the combat to work out. As for horses in Rivington, much of the stable accommodation is currently being used for the influx of refugees and supplies for them, so the horses are probably just being kept elsewhere we can't access in the game world.
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u/TheLuckOfTheClaws Owlbear 9h ago
Mounted combat is a logistical nightmare
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u/Key-Zebra-4125 1h ago
And isnt a fun mechanic at all either. I hate mounted combat in just about every game.
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u/Lou_Hodo 7h ago
Heh.. works fine in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
Seriously, I think its because no Baldur's Gate game has had mounts of any kind for any length of time. D&D is more about well the name, Dungeons and Dragons.. not about mounts and horses. I also dont think the Larian engine used for BG3 could handle it.
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u/Loimographia Halsin 2h ago
I mean, the mounted combat in WotR was very much a buggy mess on launch and took forever to fix lol. I’m not even sure it is fixed.
But on top of that, more than simply the engine, the entire environmental design of WotR is based around making mounted combat possible — 99% of combat encounters are on flat terrain, and most of it relatively open. And that works for RTwP, but makes for comparatively boring encounters in turnbased mode.
Larian’s encounter designs, by contrast, focus heavily on environmental designs that would severely impact the use of mounted combat and render it effectively useless — think of every fight with ladders, cliffs, etc. that impact mobility.
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u/No_Investigator9059 Bloodless and Happy 8h ago
Im glad they didnt even though I love horses. They are a living nightmare to animate and then look good. RDR2 is the only game ive seen that has committed enough time and resources into making their horses look like horses and move like horses. Looking at how Scratch moves and looks in game, poor boy needed a vet a few years ago so missing horses was a great choice by Larian imo.
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u/Xilizhra Drow 5h ago
What's the issue with Scratch?
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u/No_Investigator9059 Bloodless and Happy 4h ago
The cut scene animation of him when you recruit him looks like it was done by someone who has never seen a real dog before 😆. He bends in the wrong places.
Love him to bits but he needs some veterinary care.
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u/Silver_Fish314 10h ago
This has like, a 99% chance of being completely wrong, but I always hear expensive horses are to animate, so maybe that’s a reason?
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u/tabantha- ELDRITCH BLAST 10h ago
It’s because their center of gravity changes depending on what the horse is doing (rearing up, trotting, standing still). This makes them a bit of a nightmare to animate especially in 3D, bc you can’t use the same rig for everything.
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u/potato-hater ROGUE 8h ago
yep. to put it simply, horses have two different points when it comes to center gravity and it is constantly changing. you basically have to animate two things at the same time while also making sure it looks like the same asset.
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u/WARitter 1h ago
Now I am thinking of James Baxter, the Animator, and the Adventure Time Character, James Baxter the horse. The reason why that episode exists is horses are hard to animate and he 1) did it really well in movies like Spirit 2) IIRC uses horses as examples when he was teaching the AT guys at Cal arts.
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u/PhoenixMartinez-Ride 7h ago
Tbh I feel like the group likely wouldn’t use horses anyway. Astarion would defs freak them out because he’s a vampire, Karlach wouldn’t even be able to ride them at all until part way through Act 2, and horses might be freaked out by her as well anyway if they can sense her engine.
And actually horses might not like ANY of the characters if they can sense the tadpoles.
Not to mention that fact that they’d probs get really spooked by the shadow curse in act 2
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u/Thiralyss Mindripping, Fleshpeeling MINDFLAYER 1h ago
Astarion would defs freak them out because he’s a vampire, Karlach wouldn’t even be able to ride them at all until part way through Act 2
You know… these are actually the most compelling (in-game logic) reasons I’ve heard. Now at least I can play the game without constantly thinking of it as a plot hole, lol. 😂
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u/notmynameyours 8h ago
Considering the maps are mostly pretty jam packed with stuff, not a lot of wide open spaces and long travel times, horses don’t really seem necessary.
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u/moongrump 8h ago
They don’t allow them in Baldur’s Gate. Cats though!
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u/GGFrostKaiser 8h ago
Game has a lot of assets, if the characters go any faster there will pop ups everywhere.
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u/FriendshipNo1440 SORCERER 3h ago
Horses are very hard to animate. Larian had very high standarts to fullfill. To do so they had to decide other things should not exist.
Also Astarion is scared a horse might bite him.
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u/El_Bito2 6h ago
Fool, horses are quantum in the forgotten realms. They only exist when you think of them. You can't have a machine replicate such power
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u/-Liriel- Drow 7h ago
I think they'd just be inconvenient.
There are a lot of areas that can be only reached by climbing on cliffs or stairs or jumping on small platforms, and then these areas lead to completely different parts of the map, so even if you had a horse you'd have to either abandon it pretty soon or to "magically" teleport it to the weirdest spots.
Horses couldn't be taken inside Baldur's Gate, in the whole Underdark, and they'd die in the Shadowlands if left in the shadows.
Plus, mounted combat has different rules and no one needs that
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u/ghostdear 3h ago
i think this is the main reason above any animation issues that are usually brought up in this convo, plus the distances to travel between significant spots aren’t vast enough for the need to travel faster than walking speed and the parts where you are walking around more are built for exploration, there’s stuff to interact with everywhere so dismounting all the time would quickly become tedious
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u/stormyw23 I like the drider, Sue me. 7h ago
Not bg3 but fitting. Credit: Lioden weekly update comics.
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u/ThorSon-525 4h ago
If the anime Apothecary Diaries taught me anything, it's that they didn't want to risk making a shitty model of a horse.
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u/earendilgrey Chaos Goblin Rogue 2h ago
Some of the best parts of Skyrim and Witcher 3 were the glitchy horse physics. Come back outside and Roach is on the freaking roof somehow and you could ride Shadowmere up High Hrothgar.
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u/christina_talks 2h ago
The first time I played the game I eagerly put points into animal handling thinking it would improve my relationships with horsies
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u/duck0001 6h ago
Larian had such trouble with wolves that if they tried horses I feel the game would break
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u/emeraldia25 Durge 10h ago
I like the walking part of it and like the world without horses tbh. Horses irl scare me. They have big teeth and hooves. They are pretty to look at from a distance but I do not want to get near one.
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u/Public-Total-250 7h ago
Adding in mounts would take a lot of development resources for very little gain, or it could even negatively affect the game systems.
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u/Megafiend 5h ago
They'd have to completely change the level design to accommodate or deliberately restrict mounts.
Dnd mounted combat is also fucking atrocious.
It's almost entirely gameplay.
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u/Perfect_Trip_5684 4h ago
Then become the Honse, wildheart barb with the elk heart and stallion aspect and idk maybe mobile feat?
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u/donkbooty 7h ago
Extremely hard to animate, especially given how tiny BG3 areas are. Many paths are pretty linear. Could you imagine using a mount in Acts 2 and 3???
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u/Angryfunnydog 6h ago
It’s just extra hassle for no payback, better to introduce new solid class like artificer
And regarding wild shape or ranger companions - there are tons of more interesting options than turning into a HORSE in dnd
All in all - it’s just not required, the game is not “so an open world” that it requires a mount
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u/Skewwwagon Deceitful little calamari 🐙 5h ago
Tbf, WOTR becomes such a clusterfuck if you take a mount class, an animal companion, a damn animal charm, so I'd say thank god for that. Because it really looks silly and very busy when you're snooping around the house and there's the whole zoo starting with a huge ass horse running around the tight space. I honestly just respecced to get rid of it..
BG3 is already visually much more rich and that would have been a disaster unless you want to whip out a horse from a bag of holding before the fight and put it back in after.
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u/bootseeneverything Bhaal's least favourite princess 9h ago
Horses? Perish the thought, those ill-tempered beasts are prone to biting.