I love horses; that they'll show rudimentary intelligence will put this head and shoulders above any other game that has horses in it. I thought riding horses was best done in Assassin's Creed 1 and Red Dead Redemption; other games that included horses, like Oblivion and Skyrim, or Bladestorm - they didn't feel all that realistic (especially not in the ES games; in Oblivion you could develop your speed/agility to rival and even surpass that of horses and in Skyrim they were just totally underwhelming; even the vampire horse and spirit horse, while cool, were slow and relatively easily killed).
Just watched some of the combat video...if they keep it historically accurate, fanboys like us will be drooling fit to be tied!