The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess served, in many ways, as a love letter to Ocarina of Time. That's not just because of the grown-up Link and harder-edged fantasy – though both were notable after The Wind Waker – it's also the expansive Hyrule Field and emphasis on mounted exploration. As it turns out, it also offered Nintendo a chance to revisit something Shigeru Miyamoto had wanted to see going back to the N64: Link fighting on horseback.
Horseback combat was one of the first things Nintendo showcased about Twilight Princess, even before that subtitle had been publicly announced. Scenes of Link battling atop Epona against hordes of enemies did, after all, figure prominently into the famous "blades will bleed" trailer that introduced the game at E3 2004.
