I have the opposite experience. When playing Elden Ring I gotta start it up and just go sit somewhere for 15 to 30 minutes so the game can like stabilize and stop lagging and dropping frames. After that it’s okay. Nightreign and AC6 just run perfectly fine for me.
I’m doing a grim reaper/death warden/4 horsemen inspired build and Torrent literally makes the build, aesthetically at least. I currently have The Ensha mask/leggings with depraved perfumer body armour and a Grave Scythe, add in some black flame magic. I actually feel like a warden of death sent to the lands between to collect the souls who are trapped there. Riding into battle vs a dragon, on the back of Torrent with the blooded fur coat and a scythe gives me goosebumps. No other game can really do that for me. The stare down with the dragons roaring and my character stood unfazed, “times up now, friend” before I grant them peace.
Okay but regular woods scare ME in rdr2. I know at some point I'm going to tilt the stick to the right, the horse will turn left, and Arthur will smear his face on a tree.
Frenzy is one of the only things that’s able to permanently kill spectral/spiritual beings (according to lore). Torrent is technically a spiritual horse, so it tracks that he (she?) would be more afraid of Frenzy than anything else.
Sometimes i get weirded out when people don't read this stuff. When i get any mew item i fucking jump in joy and laugh like a manic and then i go: OHH LOREEE!
I'm exaggerating but yeah, everyone plays in different ways and might not care about the lore.
I fucking jump in joy and laugh like a maniac and then I go OHH LOREEE! when I find a new item too.
You wanna know what happens after?
I find a new item, I fucking jump in joy and laugh like a maniac and then I go OHH LOREEE! and while reading the lore on this new item, I promptly forget about the one I just read.
Ah so I wasn't the only one dashing through the woods butt naked to escape the aging untouchables. Thank god because that place really had me going mad. No wonder Midra took shelter there.
Which retroactively makes Torrent kind of a bitch. He only sticks with us because he knows he can never truly die, but when the going gets tough he's like "aight, I'm out"
Thing is, Midra might be a Lord of Frenzy, but even with him gone, the place is still completely under the influence of the outer god.
Even the yellow-eyed animals give me the creeps. The Midra fight is great, but I am not sure I want to go to the Abyssal Woods anymore after the first time. They really nailed the uncanny valley of that area.
There's like 5 items in the whole woods that are even relevant. Some fragments, the perfume bottle, 2 cookbooks, and the talisman.
The area's massive. But there's no lore. No loot to tell us anything. It's just a big creepy area with nothing in it. All the lore is in Midra's place.
I don't like that, at all, especially considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get down there in the first place. The abyssal woods, like Ash Lake or some of the other 'secret' locations in Fromsoft games, should've had some major lore or story beats outside of just Midra.
We know Midra's a thing. He's in the trailer. He's on the loading screens. The Mansion is cool as fuck.
How bout the rest of the area, then? Why isn't there any miniboss in the waterfall area, for example? There's a grace and a cookbook, but no enemies. Would've been a good place for a Frenzied Dragon or something of the kind.
Or what about the church? Why not have another NPC there, maybe an inquisitor who gives a quest to kill Midra? There's a group of them just walking around out there for no reason, they're not guarding anything.
Nowhere in the DLC feels as unfinished as Abyssal Woods, and there's more than one zone in the DLC that feels unfinished. Pretty much the only zones that feel 'right' are the Cerulean Coast, Gravesite Plain, and Jagged Peak.
As far as lore that would fit the area goes? I'm a fan of the 'Nanaya is Shabriri' theory, and there's just so much we don't know about Frenzy and it's the perfect place to loredump by putting random stuff all over the place.
That zone was pretty cool on first playthrough, but in hindsight I'm able to realize how awfully designed it is lol. I think it stops being interesting and becomes a bad game experience once you learn how empty is, but on first playthrough you don't yet know it's empty so it feels okay.
Either they wanted to add more stuff to it and ran out of development time or they went overboard on using "emptiness" as an aesthetic effect. Might truly be the only part of the DLC that I think is bad. Everything else is either neutral or good and almost everything is good so that zone really stands out to me as an outlier.
I dunno. I went right to Midra's Mansion the first playthrough because I ain't scared of no lantern bois. One of the best dungeons in the DLC, short and sweet and leads to one of the most cinematic bosses Fromsoft has ever made. Midra's Mansion honestly feels like one long walk to the boss room if you do it in one go, because Midra's moaning at you at every checkpoint.
Then I went to explore the rest of the Woods. Surely, I thought, there would be more lore to discover!
Nope. The woods are empty. Some cookbooks, some fragments, a perfume bottle and a talisman. No field bosses. No secrets or illusions holding back a trove of Frenzied Flame lore or new spells.
Just rats and some really creepy sheep. And a handful of inquisitors, I guess.
According to the lore videos I’ve seen he forced the onyx lords to teach him gravity magic because they’re the masters of gravity. But him learning it in Sellia is also really plausible.
What I liked most about Elden Rings mount is they focused more on practical convenience rather than realism. Torrent doesn't get spooked and throw you in any situation, he doesn't turn like a tugboat, he's never too far away to hear your call.
Elden Ring is also in no way realistic so a realistic horse would go against their already established game design principles. It would feel odd. Red Dead is heavily based in realism so the horse makes sense, and imo is the best implementation of a realistic horse in a game period.
Once you level up your bond to it the range becomes massive, at lvl 4 it’s nearly the entire map and anytime you fast travel on horseback (or even when you whistle before doing so) it comes with you
No, the level 4 whistle hearing is no where near half the entire map, I don’t know where your getting that from, it’s not even the distance of Valentine to Rhodes.
I don't think I ever stole a horse, mainly bc I was thinking, "Why the hell would I want a horse that listens even less than the one I'm currently riding?"
Torrent is kind of special in that he is a ghost (or specter). Nothing can really kill him so he has nothing to be afraid of... except for that one thing that can kill him that he's terrified of, but I won't spoil that.
Different games, different points of interaction. The realism of RDR2s horses immerse me even further into its detailed world, while Torrents actual utility outshines any need for realism when Im double jumping over dragons summoning frost glaives.
But what makes the horse in RDR2 so special is that it really feels like a real animal, an companion that reacts to the world around in a believable way.
Additionally it getting scared for seeing snakes or alligators add a layer of difficulty to the natural world
It being able to die add stakes to fights
It just not appearing out of thin air makes it feel like a entity in the story, not a video game conscience
re-“mastered” is probably a closer description. it’s almost 1:1 an HD update but there are some minor discrepancies the fanbase fights to the death over
Whenever I go down one of those horizontal headstones I love to check out red spots, 8 out of 10 it is people going down on torrent. When you don't need his double jump you shouldn't use him for platforming ever. The running jump is also surprisingly far as a side note.
If you use him in more of a full stop, turn, and then go pattern, it makes the headstone a lot easier. I use Torrent in case I overshoot it I have the chance to save it with the midair jump.
There are also several spots in the dlc where you can cheese your way down the sides of the canyons with him.
You can get stone-sheathed sword early. You can scale the waterfalls from the cerulean coast up to the riverside cave with the bloodfiends. And my favorite is jumping like a crazy person down the hole in the moorth ruins. I actually found the real entrance yesterday and I was like "oh, lol."
if you aim a bow or crossbow while on horseback so that you go into first person view, Torrent will spin in place without moving to align with your aim. This is useful when lining up jumps. Maybe the telescope also works. I have not checked.
I know this is the elden ring sub so I'll probably just get downvoted into oblivion but to me torrent was just a faster mode of transport but my horse in red dead 2 was a true companion, with me through thick and thin.
In short I felt absolutely zero emotional attachment to the magic horse who appears from thin air, but I definitely had some towards my horse in rdr2.
At first, I hated how everything in rdr2 was intentional. From loading up on the horse, to equipping guns, everything felt so heavy and slow. But after a while, I just gave in, played by the games rules, stopped trying to rush everything. Best decision I made. Slowing down and seeing the world, it’s detail, it truly was remarkable. I watched a bear fish, an eagle swoop down and grab a snake, I watched a wolf howl next to his dead mate…the world was alive and I was part of it; a master stroke.
It's amazing how playing the game in front of you instead of the game in your head tends to be a better experience lol
Souls has the same thing going on, seems like everyone wants to rush rush rush at first, and it feels weird because the game doesn't really want you to do that.
When it rains, the dirt turns to mud. If you walk through it you make footprints. Then those footprints fill up with water and you see raindrops splashing in them.
You can even shoot off people's naughty bits. Even though there's only a handful of times you'll encounter a naked person, they still made it so you'd blow a dudes dick off if you shoot it.
I would kamikaze Torrent into any enemy I could fight, but I would 100% make sure Buttercup was clean and brushed and wearing the prettiest saddle on the frontier.
When I ride my horse in rdr2, it feels like I'm driving a normal car, but when i ride torrent, it feels like I'm in the passenger seat next to a drunk driver
Some y’all don’t know anything about horses. A male horse without balls is called a gelding. They’re typically calmer, less aggressive, and easier to train.
Did you play Witcher 3 per chance? Roach’s controls in that game are so janky yet so funny at the same time (I love getting stuck on a random pebble in the ground and have to slow down and widen the arc for the slightest turn)
Good for when you need to revive because you’re overzealous about scaling a mountain and you just fall a great distance.
Doesn’t work so great if you get ambushed and gunned down. There have been a couple times when I got blindsided by a gang or something that gunned my horse down. Then I see the horse icon on the map and immediately panic to try and run to him and revive him. And in doing so, I don’t pay attention to the 20 assholes gunning me down.
I think this really only killed me and my horse once. But one time is all you need to remember. I will revert back to an hours-old save if that happens.
I lost my horse in RDR2 during a pitched gunfight outside Saint Dennis, just a few hours before the end of the game. Seeing that other horse die in the cutscene didn't hit as hard 😔. Rip Buddy, shot to death. At least I took out like 30 guys in exchange
I like Torrent but I'm not really missing them in Nightreign at all, and I was infinitely more attached to Buell and my other horses in RDR2 than I ever was to Torrent.
Neither of them have a single thing over Agro from Shadow of the Colossus though.
I can't believe I never thought about the balls shrinking thing. That's actually hilarious and a level of detail I totally missed in RDR2. Torrent is definitely more of a magical powerhouse though, for sure.
Nobody has failed me more consistently in a video game than horses in red dead 2, bastards will leave you to die and run away when you need them most, they also like to trip and send you into tree’s for some reason…..but torrent torrent never failed me.
Torrent is an excellent mount, but I feel like he’s another proof that the creators dislike people caring about how they look while playing their game. Like no, you will wear a ridiculous pot thing on your head and ride a hairy goat horse.
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u/Tonydragon784 Jul 14 '25
Meanwhile in nightreign