Summary

• Fallout: New Vegas modder Xilandro has ported The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion's horse into the game.
• They aim to release the mod later this year, finally giving us a faster way to explore the Mojave.

It's tough getting around the Mojave in Fallout: New Vegas. Whether it's because the Courier got shot in the head or because they're slugging it through an outdated Creation Engine, they can't run, and there are no vehicles or even mounts. Walking from A to B in the wasteland takes time—unless you turn yourself into a glitched revolver-wielding rocket—but thankfully modders are here to change that.

Fans have tried for years to get cars working in Fallout, but nobody has made them a smooth ride. Even fan-made Fallout 2 remake Project Arroyo is only including the iconic Highwayman as a fast travel station for Survival mode, rather than as a functioning car. But what about horses?

Mod maker Xilandro has painstakingly ported TES 4: Oblivion's steeds to New Vegas, which you can see below. Bethesda's Fallout games are jokingly described as 'The Elder Scrolls with guns' since they share an engine, so it fits incredibly well. However, this mod isn't available to the wider public yet—Xilandro has their fingers crossed for it launching later this year.

How Can We Make This Horse Lore-Friendly?

There aren't any horses in the Fallout games. Most fans assume that all we'd have left are their distant mutated cousins, not real horses. But there are a couple of ways that we can make this mod fit into the lore.

For one, there's Great Khan graffiti of a rider on a horse in New Vegas. It might just be referencing pre-war visuals, but it could also be depicting a 'contemporary' rider. In the All Roads graphic novel, we even see an NCR soldier in a flashback of the Bitter Springs Massacre on horseback (thanks, Fandom).

In Fallout 4's Nuka-World DLC, several people ask what a horse was (comparing them to large dogs), so we at least know they aren't common anymore.

Horses likely exist in the Fallout universe, but are extremely rare. Porting one from Oblivion to New Vegas was hard enough, let alone modelling a new lore-friendly mutant version, so one option is that the Courier simply found a hotly sought-after rarity in the wastes. Another option is that the horse is a Synth, suggested by Xilandro themselves. Either way, we'll soon have a mount to explore the Mojave with.