Ahead ofSkyrim Anniversary Edition’s upcoming release, Bethesda has detailed or teased new information such as the game’s fishing quests, Special Edition upgrades, and new content coming to the game. The most interesting of the latter are two newquestlines, one based onMorrowindand one based onOblivion.
Oblivion’s questline is known as The Cause and will see the Dragonborn come face to face with the Mythic Dawn, who theHero of Kvatchalso faced. They will be attempting to open a new Oblivion gate, and it’s sure to be interesting as a result. It’ll come with new weapons and armor, enemies, locations, and more, but there’s a notable “even a conjurable Daedric Horse” attached to the end of the statement from Bethesda.
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GivenOblivionand the Mythic Dawn’s connection to the Daedra, it’s a fitting piece of new content forSkyrim. However, it’s hard to imagine howOblivionand a horse didn’t draw a few smirks with this content, as many may still recall the Horse Armor controversy related toOblivion. As such, adding a horse to this new questline really cannot be a coincidence.
Oblivion’s Horse Armor Controversy
At the time ofOblivion’s release, “Microtransaction” wasn’t even a core idea in the gaming industry, but as soon as they were introduced, many publishers took to the idea. That’s evident enough in how many games feature microtransactions today, evenmostly single-player games likeFar Cry 6. Indeed, one could even argue that microtransactions put down the groundwork for the rise of live-service games too.
WhenOblivionannounced its Horse Armor DLC as a microtransaction—which was just really known as bad DLC at the time—many fans were immediately upset. Microsoft and Bethesda priced it at $2.50, and many thought it was far too high for something no one could see and that had little impact on gameplay. Obviously, some microtransactions are much more than that nowadays, but this really set the tone for the player-microtransaction-publisher relationship. That is, many players hate it but also as many players buy it.
Despite the outcry about the price and quality of this “DLC,”Oblivion’s Horse Armor DLC sold well, outperforming several other Bethesda add-ons. From that point, the potential of microtransactions had been noticed. It would take some time for microtransactions to settle on the current model today, but theOblivionHorse Armor DLC heralded it.
Horses, Oblivion, and Skyrim Anniversary Edition New Content
As such, as Bethesda adds a new horse to new content into a newSkyrimre-release, it’s hard to not put two and two together and, at the very least, chuckle about how far the industry and microtransactions have come, good or ill. There’s no doubt that, giventhe popularity ofSkyrim,theAnniversary Editionis going to sell like hotcakes. And it may not have a proper price tag, but some of the reasons to buy this game all over again are Creation Club content,new fishing quests and possible sea monsters, newOblivionandMorrowindquests, and a horse.
Skyrim Anniversary Editionreleases on November 11 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.
