Your opinion please: should horse behavior in games be more realistic, or do you think they typical model of "organic motorcycle" is better?

Depends on the game

I'm personally not a fan of how a horse you are riding in most games will just happily go over a deadly cliff. Like, horses are alive and they don't want to die. They aren't going to just run off a cliff unless there is some serious fog or something.

Both have their place

I think we should replace horses with akira-esque biomotorcycles

Quinn Angstrom : that is an option

and in games too

lol

Horseback riding is one of my favorite things in video games, but there are places where the behavior is not only unrealistic, but frustrating

Shadow of the Colossus has AWFUL horse controls compared to other games, and the lack of realism was especially bad for me in the sand worm colossus fight, because agro kept running into walls. I feel like a real horse would turn

Something like Minecraft though, I’m not gonna mind as much because it’s a game where you’re very much the main character and the god of your world

And the controls for horses are VERY simple

Video games? There's a lot of having to concede to gameplay needs that I think would be hard to work around enough to make them all that realistic.
TTRPGs? Whole other story; at least try to acknowledge that they're animals with simple needs and simple motivations of their own.

Depends on whether the horse is intended as a companion or a fast travel system

Even as a fast travel system, I feel like some very fundamental simulated intelligence could be put in there so that horses won’t blindly run off cliffs or into walls at full speed

Not even intelligence, really. Just a specific kind of barrier only triggered while on a horse.

Well that’s why I said simulated

Have another sort of hitbox in front of the horse that detects hazards, and the horse will either stop or turn to avoid them.

Also this a really small inconsequential thing but I think that instead of holding the forward key to make a horse go forward it just keeps going forwards without needing to hold down anything and only stops when you pull back, it encounters and obstacle, or maybe gets tired if you have some sort of fatigue system