Ahead of Skyrim 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 new questlines, one based on Morrowind and one based on Oblivion.
Oblivion’s questline is known as The Cause and will see the Dragonborn come face to face with the Mythic Dawn, who the Hero of Kvatch also 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.
Given Oblivion and the Mythic Dawn’s connection to the Daedra, it’s a fitting piece of new content for Skyrim. However, it’s hard to imagine how Oblivion and a horse didn’t draw a few smirks with this content, as many may still recall the Horse Armor controversy related to Oblivion. As such, adding a horse to this new questline really cannot be a coincidence.
Oblivion’s Horse Armor Controversy
At the time of Oblivion’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, even mostly single-player games like Far Cry 6. Indeed, one could even argue that microtransactions put down the groundwork for the rise of live-service games too.
When Oblivion announced 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 the Oblivion Horse Armor DLC heralded it.
Horses, Oblivion, and Skyrim Anniversary Edition New Content
The Daedric Horse (as seen above around the 3:45 mark) looks a lot cooler than the Oblivion Horse armor DLC, but it’s quite notable that the advertisement of the new questline mentions all the big stuff…and then the horse. Horses and Oblivion are inseparable because of this controversy so many years ago, and suffice to say, it’s not that controversial now. It’s commonplace.
As such, as Bethesda adds a new horse to new content into a new Skyrim re-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, given the popularity of Skyrim, the Anniversary Edition is 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, new Oblivion and Morrowind quests, and a horse.
Skyrim Anniversary Edition releases on November 11 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.
