Assassin's Creed Reveals That The Horse Has A Horrifying Human Skeleton

Assassin’s Creed is one of the most prolific RPG series around, it’s now known for its gorgeous scenery, hyper-realistic architecture (so realistic that it actually predicted an archaeological discovery), and over the top lore. After a tweet from one of the original developers, it's going to be known for a horrifying fact that sounds like a Tusk spin-off: the horse in the first game is actually a twisted human skeleton.   

Charles Randall, a developer of the original game, tweeted “...the horse in AC1 was just a twisted f*cked up human skeleton, because our tool chain only worked with biped in 3ds max. Cheers to the amazing animators and riggers that managed to make that guy look like a horse!”

Now we’re living in an age where game horses not only have skeletons, they’ve got heat responsive testicles. At the time though, the studio didn’t have the funding at the time to make a full horse skeleton, we certainly have come a long way.

This fascinating factoid was included in a series of tweets where he bared some more Assassin’s Creed secrets; including another Cronenberg worthy fact that the team only had one human skeleton to work with, so when a character lost an arm below the elbow, they had to make the arm tiny and simply put it inside the upper part of a character's arm. Disgusting stuff. 

The tool chain Randall mentions is a common but complex part of software development. It’s essentially a series of programs used to create the software processes that run video games, to help translate one type of code into another, or to do myriad other things that I would probably understand better if my degree was in something other than Theatre Arts.

If you’re looking for more disturbing and/or hilarious facts hiding inside your favorite video games, we here at Cracked have got you covered. There are more examples of wild tricks that developers used to make games playable, a list of glitches so creepy they’ll make your skin crawl, or wild easter eggs hidden in not-so-plain sight.