Anyone else share my opinion that the melee attack animations are singularly horrid, in this game? I mean, unless you are attacking with some kind of swinging weapon, like a machete, club or axe, most of the (extremely limited) attack animations simply make you laugh at them for their awfulness.

There I am, sneaking up on some hapless victim with my combat knife, ready to stick them through the kidneys from behind, I set up the VATS attack and accept, and I get to see my character make a broad, wide, sweeping swing at my enemies legs, as if the knife were a bumper sword or super sledge. And then my handy little gizzard-sticker makes one of their arms or legs fall off. Mmmm, k.

Or, I use one of the fighting spears you can get via Dead Money, and instead of lunging with it to run your opponent through, you swing it way up over your head as if it was a long axe and try to bonk them on the head with it. Again, after doing so, a leg falls off. It's this singularly grotesque and unlikely and limited amount of melee attack animations, that instantly breaks all feeling of immersion in the game, when using those weapons. It would not have been that hard or incredibly time-consuming, to make just one or two extra melee attack animations depicting thrusting-style attacks, and then linking them to thrusting-style weapons like knives and spears and the like- versus all of them just being swinging or clubbing motions. And then UN-link the big overhead or sideways swings from those thrusting weapons.

Melee fighting is just awful and anti-immersive to me due to this, which causes me to avoid it, unfortunately- because I really want to like it. Lumping all of the melee weapons into the 2 or 3 simplistic and generic (and largely unrealistic) attack animations they bothered to create, just doesn't cut it.

I wish they would have added some nodes to models that define targets, and have the fist (or club) fly towards it. (This may not have been possible in the previous engine; but it'd be really neat if it were possible with the new one used for Skyrim).

I agree, I would say there should be at least three animation (charging, stationary/strafe and back away) for each type of "style/grip", i.e Sword, Spear, Axe/Mauler etc instead of "two-hand melee weapon".

Engine limitations my friend, just you wait till Fallout 4, hopefully it'll blow us all away.

I'm pretty sure the problem is VATS related. They can surely do melee (and have for years), but melee attacks in VATS would require precise hits and be under scrutiny every single time.

Right. So the limited and unrealistic generic attack animations are basically meant to camouflage the fact that their VATS meleeing system is pure ****. Figured as much. But I'd be happy just to see one extra animation added, for thrusting attacks, and it doesn't need to be adaptable to target specific body regions. Just link it to thrusting weapons, and use if whenever you use one of them. Not rocket science. Just a nice added touch of realism.

dude.....ALL of the animations in this game are singularly horrid. ALL of them make me laugh at their awfulness! like, do you even realize what game you're playing?!

Well, you kinda do have a point there... but at least it's tougher to really screw up a 'shooting a gun' animation (although I've seen my share of laughalicious situations with them, too)... whereas it REALLY shows, all the time, in the melee animations.

heh some of the vats animation bugs are funny only when it doesn't get you killed. I have gotten killed because vats locks me up in animation hell and seemingly not doing any damage to an enemy, but the enemy gets free shots. Plus the arm bug is still around which effects vats