Skyrim’s co-lead designer was building real-time horse and cart travel and a dynamic civil war: ‘We were pretty disappointed that didn’t ship’

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Bethesda’s large and complex role-playing games take years to create, so it’s common for some features to be removed during development – only to be rediscovered and revived by fans who create modifications, or ‘mods.’ A prime example is a fully dynamic civil war system that was planned for Skyrim but ultimately cut from the final game, according to Kurt Kuhlmann, a former lead designer and Elder Scrolls lore expert. He says the feature was quite advanced before the decision was made to remove it.

We originally planned for the civil war to be very reactive to player actions. The game would monitor if you killed Imperial soldiers, and based on that, we’d adjust the power balance in each region. If you weakened the Empire enough in a specific area through your actions, it would shift control towards the Stormcloaks, potentially leading them to launch an attack on the capital city.

If you help a faction gain control of an area, you’ll also see changes like their camps popping up everywhere.

We saw a small example of this in the ‘Battle for Whiterun’ quest, where you help the Stormcloaks take control of the city. We were also experimenting with attacks on all the major cities in each hold, in a planned manner, as Kuhlmann explains. He believes we might have been able to successfully implement that wider strategy.

The battle in Whiterun was technically challenging. The team struggled to get the game to run smoothly, requiring a lot of extra work. This was made worse by the number of characters both on the city walls and fighting within it, which put a heavy strain on the system.

In the end, the game’s performance wasn’t good enough. According to Kuhlmann, they decided they couldn’t deliver a quality experience with a stable frame rate across all locations and situations. He admits it’s still surprising the game launched on the Xbox 360, especially considering that earlier titles like Oblivion and Skyrim were originally designed for the same platform, and they were already pushing the hardware to its limits.

You probably remember how buggy Skyrim was when it first came out, before all the updates, fan-made improvements, and upgrades for newer consoles. It had a lot of technical problems then, so just think how much worse it could have been with even more complex features.

But Kuhlmann is still convinced that the team could have made it work.

As a huge fan, I was so relieved when Bethesda finally fixed all the issues in Whiterun – it really saved the Battle of Whiterun! Apparently, the team thought they could’ve used those fixes in other areas, according to Kuhlmann, but it just didn’t pan out, which is a shame.

He admitted they were frustrated that feature didn’t make it into the final release. He suspects players who explore the game’s creation tools will still find remnants of the system, as they couldn’t completely remove all the supporting files. He’s unsure if anyone has ever tried to re-add it through modding, but it’s possible.

Fortunately, several mods recreate civil war scenarios in the game, such as ‘Skyrim at War.’ According to the mod creator, OperatorYoRHa, these mods make every location in Skyrim – roads, towns, cities, and villages – a potential battlefield. Conflicts can begin as small encounters and grow into massive, mile-long battles.

While it differs a bit from Bethesda’s initial vision, the game includes some exciting additions, such as the ability to control armies, plus new units and ways to arrange them in battle.

Kuhlmann also hoped Skyrim had included another feature that many players would have loved: the ability to travel the world with horses and carts in real-time, instead of using fast travel.

In Skyrim, you’ll find a horse-drawn carriage at almost every town and city. You can chat with the driver to choose a destination and quickly travel there, though there’s a brief loading screen. You’ll likely also remember a slower journey – a ride where you actually see the countryside as you travel to a city, perhaps even a dramatic one where you narrowly escape trouble, like an execution or a dragon attack!

This intro sequence became the foundation for Kuhlmann’s real-time system.

I’d gotten a basic version working, using the initial game technology. The horse was able to navigate the world, pull the cart, and you could ride in it. I figured if it worked in this small test, we could probably get it working in other parts of the game too.

Because the system wasn’t pre-programmed or artificial, it could be adjusted, but this caused some initial challenges. As Kuhlmann explains, even small errors could cause the system to change course. Despite these issues, they were able to implement restrictions that allowed it to function effectively.

Honestly, you could even hop out of the cart whenever you wanted. If you saw someone getting mugged, you could jump in and be a hero. But it wasn’t perfect. Sometimes the cart would just…flip over! Apparently, it happened a lot going uphill, and the game’s physics would go crazy. We knew we couldn’t release it like that, it just wouldn’t have worked.

To be honest, most players probably wouldn’t have minded if the horse and carriage had been a little buggy. We’re pretty used to minor glitches in Bethesda games and tend to overlook them.

The idea of exploring Skyrim with a horse and cart was just too appealing to resist, and fans made it a reality through mods. Many different travel mods are available, offering everything from full control over your vehicle to new ways to get around, like ferries. Even though the original creator, Kuhlmann, couldn’t finish the project, the modding community kept the vision alive.

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2026-01-15 21:18