I have been following the KCD development since Kickstarter and I am aware that KCD will try to differentiate itself from the other games by trying to stay as close to realism as it can. However, I see no reason why an optional 3rd person viewpoint shouldn’t be added to the game when riding the horse and I will give you a couple of reasons why it should.
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Watching the horse’s head bob up and down on the screen gives me a headache - I’m not even kidding - an actual effing migraine. I’ve played the beta for quite a while now and every time I try to make the horse gallop my migraine kicks in. I think it has something to do with the rapid movement of the surrounding environment accompanied with the repetitious and irritating up and down bobbing of the horses head. On top of that somebody in the development team thought that it was a good idea after 2 seconds to force the view screen to fix back to the center of direction of the horse’s movement - an utterly senseless idea.
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The simulated horse riding in KCD or in any game is no way comparable to the actual horse riding. I’ve rode horses for 10 years now and no game can ever successfully simulate the actual feeling of motion, passing surroundings, and the exhilarating immersion that comes from riding an actual horse.
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Riding the horse in KCD is simply a means to travel from point A to point B and done only to reach a mission objective. There is very little actual roleplaying involved, in a sense that one can simply point the horse to the right direction and use a keyboard macro to press down the gallop key, while taking a minute off from staring at the computer screen by either raiding the refrigerator, catching up on the news on TV, or taking a toilet break. When you return, sure you might find your horse trying to gallop against some burnt down farm or a fence, but you can simply continue the game being much closer to your objective. I doubt that there will be a fast travel option that will be added later.
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It is not clear to me how with the future updates the game will handle combat encounters when the player is mounted, but I doubt that there will be any actual horseback fighting like in Mount & Blade or Skyrim. Again, here the horse will only serve as a means of transportation and not a means to do any actual roleplaying.
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I am a huge fan of The Witcher 3. In TW3 the 3rd person horseback riding actually adds to the immersion and does not subtract from it. The memory of trotting into Novigrad for the very first time - admiring the architecture, watching all the citizens going about their business, hearing the shouts and hollering of the medieval city - will stay with me for the rest of my life. Horseback riding should be handled as a means to let the player take a sort of Zen-like pause from the hectic gameplay by letting us admire the beautiful environment and panorama. None of this can fully be experienced when you’re trapped by the limitations of only having just the 1st person viewpoint .
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KCD can still be marketed as a historic and realistic roleplaying game, since the 1st person view on horseback will always be the default option. As far as reality goes, it will never become as real as building a time-machine, travelling back in time, and finding a horse to ride a medieval countryside.
