Echoes of Wisdom ~ Horses

One of the topics of the Traversing Hyrule Trailer was... well, traversal. And here they announced that the game will feature horses. Similar to the Gerudo, this is actually not the first time that we have horses in a top-down Zelda game, because you were able to ride on one (or four) in Four Swords Adventures. But there it was more of a temporary power-up, which was only featured in a single stage and one of the Tingle Tower challenges. So, it's easy to forget.

In Echoes of Wisdom, however, they will be one of your main methods of getting around quickly, the other being the plentiful Travel Waypoints. You will also be able to use Reverse Bond on certain echoes for very quick movements, e.g. with a Blade Trap, but you can jump with horses and steer them. So, hopefully this won't turn into the same scenario as in Tears of the Kingdom, where horses become completely pointless the second you obtain Autobuild.

At least, you can now summon from anywhere via a carrot echo, so this is a huge improvement already. It may even be the second-most convenient way of summoning your horse in the series. The first is still the Ancient Saddle in Breath of the Wild, and it will be hard to top that one, but with the carrot echoes you won't use them accidentally, which is something that can happen with the Ancient Saddle down on the D-pad.

Otherwise, the carrots are certainly faster to use than to play Epona's Song in the N64 games. And the Horse Call in Twilight Princess is obtained too late in the game to be any useful, though once you have it, it's also quite convenient.

Then there is also the question of where you can summon it, because that's often quite limited. But on the Japanese website you can find a video clip, where Zelda is riding her horse on the top of a high cliff and even through the Gerudo Desert, where the latter was not possible in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. You can also see her jumping over a river mouth on a beach, so they gave this a lot of thought. Nevertheless, there will still be areas where you won't be able to use it, like the ocean. And most likely also Eldin Volcano and the snowy Death Mountain. But let's see...

Your horse can also have different colors. The default one seems to be a brown horse with a dark mane. But you can also have a white horse with a blonde mane, looking similar to the white horse from Breath of the Wild. And the additional footage mentioned above has a gray horse in it.

The question here is whether these are all different horses or all the same one, but customized. Both is possible. I'm personally hoping that they will keep things simple, so I don't necessarily want to tame wild horses, where they all have different stats at random. Maybe the Lon Lon Ranch will offer you a selection and you can pick your favorite.