First things first, congratulations Bethesda with another gem of a game! You guys have become one of those developers whose games I buy blindly. Even when I come across older games and I see 'Bethesda' on it, they're mine (Call Of Cthulhu and Sea Dogs for example). Keep up the good work!

I have been playing Skyrim pretty intense on my 360 for five days now (was able to pick my game up at the 8th of november, somehow). I'm completely submerged in its world and adventures. There are two things in Skyrim that also were in Oblivion and not in Morrowind. Horse riding and fast travel. I see them both as cool additions and for a player like me that takes his time to explore and wander about, I especially like to ride a horse. It's a great alternative to walking and fast travel.
Still, there are some things that, I feel, can be improved.

The horses cost 1000 gold each. That's a pretty nifty sum, but acceptable if you wouldn't have to pay it again to buy a new horse. Off course it wouldn't be realistic to get all the horses you want for 1000 gold, but paying it and then accidentally riding it off a cliff just out of town (which happens, just like in Oblivion), is pretty sour. There you are with a dead horse and 1000 lighter, with the stables still in sight.

Not only the falling can kill a horse. Also when I'm being attacked, the horse starts attacking as well! Once it even ran into an enemy camp and was of course killed by bandits. Gone horse and thus 1000 gold.

The last thing is that when you arrive somewhere on your horse and you enter a cave or castle, it sometimes happens you exit somewhere completely different. That means you might as well forget about your horse, because it could be on the other side of the mountain (unless you fast travel to someplace else and then come back again, but no one does that, offcourse).

These issues (which maybe other players feel are irrelevant) are offcourse minor in comparison to the grand epicness of the game Skyrim. But if it would be possible, I would really like to:

- have less kamikaze-like horses
- buy horse deeds (like in Red Dead Redemption with several prices for several types of horses) which let you pick up a horse of the same kind for free when your old one dies.
- have a way to call your horse when it's out of sight or let it at least show up on the map, so you have an idea where it is.

Again these are small things, but I would really like to hear from others on these forums how they experience the 'horse play'nd if they have any ideas aout it.

Thanx

Oh, and is there a way to sneak-steal a horse so you will not get a bounty?

I've only bought one horse, and I didn't really have many problems with her. I always left her pretty far away from enemies, and made sure I took out anything that was attacking her. Lasted me quite a while. Wolves got her in the mountains eventually

Just need to be careful with your expensive new beast! The only issue I really found was that they're actually quite slow. I can't even tell if they run faster than my character does on foot. Also had a rather odd bug whereby my character would float in midair while I moved the horse around, leaving my character sitting in midair. It was pretty hilarious.

I think your character shares its stamina with his horse. That would mean that when you have a lot of stamina, so does your horse. Can someone confirm this?