Horses in Dark Souls

This is a very erratic post and it's no doubt going to be quite long so only read if you're up for a long string of borderline interesting ideas

Horses- I've been toying with the idea of horses and other similar mounts being in a souls title and i've eventually came to the conclusions that; no, I don't personally think horses would be a good idea for a souls game in the future. I think it would require a drastic change in the design of the game that would lose alot of the feel of a souls game.

There are a few different ways they could implement horses into a souls game and two ways seem more prominent to me.

Have a more open world with dungeons being the areas in which you pve having only one entrance/exit. You would ride your horsey up, tell him to chill at the entrance and you'd pop into the dungeon and do your shizzle. In my opinion though, that idea sucks and would totally destroy a souls game.

The only other idea I thought of would be to slightly redesign the world, making it more open. This would be a bigger step than the one from DeS to DkS and it could possibly destroy the game if it wasn't done right (By someone far more qualified than me, i'm obviously no videogame designer ).

Basically the layout of the world would have a the basic shape of this-


Yeh that's a little big. Didn't know how to resize so my bad.

Basically you start in area 1. Area 1 would be the equivalent of say... going through the burg,parish and moonlight butterfly area then you would get to the main open area.

This wouldnt be open to begin with. The best thing I can think of is some sort of dragon nesting ground where you're totally obliterated until you can eventually make it to area 2.

You would continue in this fashion; moving through the open area between areas. Perhaps you would go over a large bridge that overlooks the main open area (The line connecting 2 and 3) and there would be some interaction with the dragons or whatever as you cross the bridge. Picture the battle against the storm king in Demons Souls.

Eventually when you arrive at world 6 or so you would gain access to a horse or another mount. Of course it wouldn't be like "oh hey here's my mount" it would be like everything else in Souls games. Make the right choices and spend enough resources and you'll get a mount.

Now you'd be able to outmaneuver the dragons. Not outrun, but outmaneuver yeh. The main area opens up a bit more, you can make little runs and maybe grab an item or something.

Eventually you'd get more powerful and be able to, perhaps with help,take the dragons head on and defeat them clearing out the main area. You would be able to summon here, and possibly only invade through RSS (Just a thought) and host pvp here etc.

The open area would allow for more elaborate things like jousting to take place and open up alot of new weapon classes such as lances.

This is all just thoughts in my head, so please share yours

First: Interesting
Second: WHY IS THIS ON ''OFF-TOPIC''

Oh good point. How do I move it? lol

Knight Alundil wrote:Oh good point. How do I move it? lol

Good question...I often C/P everything and delete the rest. I dunno, ask anyone smart around here

Knight, I love you and all, but I don't think horses could fit in most places in DkS.

What about ponies?

Bcc17 wrote:Knight, I love you and all, but I don't think horses could fit in most places in DkS.

Yeh that's what I mean, it wouldn't work in DkS or DeS but would it work in a future one if it were redesigned to include more open areas?

Yes, but open areas in dark souls are ***.

WyrmHero wrote:What about ponies?

Easy now.



Ps. I did almost call this thread "ponies rock" cause y'know. that's how you get more views ^_^

LMAO

as long the ponies dont come with "friendship is magic" in there description in fine...

I actually had another thought on how the horses would work. I used to play a game that had little statues you carried in your pack in the shape of a horse or whatever, then when you activated them they would like... appear underneath you and lift you up so you'd be riding them. Was pretty cool.

I think it would be great if you rode a bicycle. Perhaps with a basket on the front to carry your goods.

In reality I think horses would be interesting, but a real challenge to maintain the same feel while not just adding them in as a mode to get between places.

bmurn wrote:I think it would be great if you rode a bicycle. Perhaps with a basket on the front to carry your goods.

In reality I think horses would be interesting, but a real challenge to maintain the same feel while not just adding them in as a mode to get between places.

Yah agreed. As much as they would fit with the idea of dark souls I think they would take too much away from it.

WyrmHero wrote:What about ponies?

LMAO'd. I pictured Tarkus coming down the walkway toward the boss gate on a pony.

I can see horses working if the entire Souls experience is diversified in terms of locomotive scenarios. For instance, remember sliding down to the Bed of Chaos? I always thought it'd be cool if there were parts of the game where you had to slide down and there were obstacles or even hostiles on the way down. So you could keep the capacity to block and attack, but your movement was locked in the downward sliding motion, being able to control only your sideways movement.

That said, both Dark Souls and Demon's Souls were "hub" games. I think a horse would fit really, really well in a Souls game if it simply wasn't constructed around that hub idea, but as a kind of survival experience with less familiarity. I mean, even moreso than now. A horse might not only be a mount, but a place to store items. Actually, there's an idea -- what if your horse wasn't a combat assistant like regular mounts, but was a kind of portable bonfire, with all your bonfire equipment stored in its saddlebags?

Mounted Combat would be badass though, just imagine that, WoG on horseback, every time you cast your horse's spine shatters.