So. I've been playing my thief/assassin build lately and i was thinking that there should Really be a kill animation for bow kills. You guys are gonna hate me for his but I was thinking something along the lines of a bullet cam ala the COD series. Except with the arrow. Would it be possible to do something like this with mods? What do you guys think?

Eh, I still think they should have added one to where you just shoot tons of arrows into them rapidly and when you look at their body, there's like 7 arrows in their chest.

I wouldn't mind an arrow kill animation if it was one of those extremely long sniper, one-hit criticals. You fly the arrow just perfectly at the sweet spot and the camera zooms into position right behind the point, and the camera stops flying about 10 feet from the victim so you can watch the impact and resulting death animation as the body blows back. It would have to be kind of rare. I can't stand when they do death animations in games for every third time you kill something. After the first 4 or 5 times you're like, "Ok, I get it. Nice shot, blah blah blah..." and you go into the settings and look for a way to make them stop.

The problem with arrows is that you don't know if they hit until after you've released them. You'd have to see if it hit and then start the animation. The death animations from hand weapons and bare fisted happen before you connect with the final blow. I bet there were animations made, or at least mockups done, and they didn't like how it would have to backtrack in time to show it.

I dunno if we'll be able to do it with mods, but I do agree wholeheartedly - same for spells. It'd be great to have a bullet-cam (fallout has one, same engine) occasionally





Same applies to melee attacks, yet the kill-cam works (It assumes the enemy will not dodge the attack, and just goes ahead with the kill)

It doesn't have to back track. The camera could move to the arrow and go slow-mo as it pierces through the enemy's skull... or where ever it hits.
They could also do a close up one where you knock the enemy to the ground, either by kicking or punching, and then put your foot on their back and shoot them in the back of the head.

Aim for the knees, and in the game-winning killcam you will see them turn into guards.

I downed an elder dragon.
One arrow left to kill it, so I load my bow and aim for it's head.

... a perfect shot between it's eyes.
But wait.

Cutscene.
WHILE I have the arrow notched, aiming at it's head, a cutscene starts.
The dragon spends half a second on reaching forward with it's head, grabbing me, tosses me like a ragdoll and kills me outright.

...
...

The cutscenes could need an overhaul before they are extended to bows.
It's especially important that the players are not One Hit Killed by attacks they easily could have dodged, or like in this instance, would have killed the enemy BEFORE their attack would land.

The close up kill sounds awesome. And shouldn't the game know the arrow is going to hit as soon as you let it fly from the bow? I mean new Vegas was able to do this with bullets.... Why can't Skyrim do it with arrows?!

Okay... I also think an arrow kill-cam would be cool. But there would have to be an option to turn it off... And heres why (besides the obvious "it may get annoying"): i for one would like to be able to move right after the shot especially if there are more than one enemies and one is running straight at me.

Now, lets say there is a kill-cam. I think it may be cool if the shot actually misses. Hear me out. The camera is following the spinning arrow, its almost to the target, the bandit moves at the last second, the camera, as if its on a tripod on the arrow pans to the direction of the bandit, following them as it passes. I dont know... I can picture it in my head. Looks cool in here. Lol.

About the person talking about the dragon munching cutscene. I hear ya man. When it firwt happened, i was like ...awesome. After the 5th time, im like okay.. I seriously had more than half my hp left.. Wtf... I was still cool with it tho... Until the time the cutscene actually shifted my character into position for the animation to begin as if i was in a spike lee flick. It was funny, yet VERY frustrating (cause i was trying to run like a b!+<# at the time... Cause i knew that was coming)

Anyway... What the couldve done... Is something like god of war. I hate to say "mini game" but thats pretty much what it is. A few quick button pushes or mouse clicks to either dodge or find a weakness to quick kill the dragon. Now, i know it may sound even more and more like an action game then an rpg... But, eh... I like hybrids.

I agree. But when the arrow misses, it should immediately be followed by a laughtrack to punish you further.

Would be awesome if you could do the Lord of the Rings thing with arrows when Legolas shoots 3 arrows at once to kill 3 people. The animation could pin them to a wall of if you do an execution it could put the bow to his head or sumit lol

Why not the bullet cam from Fallout 3?

I thought about this today. I'm getting quite bored of my Redguard archer, he's just one shotting everyone now. It would be cool to mix it up with some cool cut scenes.

It should be very easy, really, since the engine that runs the game is just an updated version of the Gamebryo engine that runs Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. In the Fallouts, they have a projectile cam that would show the enemy getting hit, and it didn't matter if they died or not, it only showed it if the shot was going to make the hit. One of my favorite cam hits animations was from using the dart gun in Fallout 3. Similarly speaking, the melee kill animations in Skyrim, are just enhanced versions of the of the animations in Fallout.