» Tue Jun 12, 2012 11:15 pm
I too disagree with the use of the third-party cinematics, and mainly because they're just damn irritating. They add no realism to the game, and they make it where you can't perform any last second action, like a word of power (push, or become ethereal) to avoid the attack, in addition to preventing you from blocking. In all actuality, though, if you were about to get bitten in half by a dragon, a shield isn't going to block it, a potion isn't going to heal it, and dragons are big enough where a force push isn't strong enough to blow them away from you. Still, becoming ethereal would prevent them from doing any physical damage at all, so this is, indeed, unfair.
I also understand that the occasional third-party cinematic view is meant to indicate something like a "critical hit" by the attacker that will definitely kill you, and I also think that critical hits like this *should* ignore/bypass Block attempts and some other last second actions depending on the situation (kind of like in DnD, where a critical threat roll ignores defender armor class, saving throws, and maxes out your variable damage), but they shouldn't prevent the player from taking any action at all to avoid being hit when he can clearly see the attacker drawing back/preparing for the attack. Like OP pointed out, your character just stands there like a helpless idiot in these cinematic views for about 2-3 seconds before the blow even connects, even if your character was already moving away when the view changes. I can understand that damage calculation is made at the beginning of the attack, but it should still be capable of *confirming* that you are not ethereal, or that you managed to cancel/mitigate/avoid the attack in the 1-2 seconds prior to the moment of contact. There should be a moment, like maybe 1 second (more or less, depending on the weapon and whatnot) after the initialization of the attack where the combat system actually checks to see if the attack/damage calculation is still valid and modifies it accordingly to prevent things like a blow making contact even when you are out of range. I am pretty sure things like this are already implemented to some extent, but it doesn't help at all if you have to sit there helplessly while your character becomes paralyzed with stupidity, just watching his attacker swing a 40lb greataxe downward to divide his skull in half. The sneak attacks, and various other specialty attacks are one thing, but not an attack that requires a bit of time to perform that an undefeated warrior in real life that has been in hundreds of battles and killed every single opponent could easily predict and avoid.
I too think the third-party critical hit cinematics should be removed. Mostly because they're disorienting, annoying, and completely unrealistic.We'd be foolish to think that Bethesda will actually remove them though, and it's a shame for a game whose developers really tried to make every detail of the game, including the metaphysical/paranormal/mystical stuff like magic, words of power, and dragons, actually seem plausible. Just last night I was laughing hard at how a guard approached me and threatened me with jailtime unless I paid him a bribe to ignore the fact that I had left a weapon lying around on the streets of Whiterun. I thought it hilarious that they included such a minute detail, and totally sweet at the same time.
I look forward to what's going to happen with games in the next 5-10 years. Soon, we are going to start seeing combat systems in games trying to portray material dynamics, the nature of injuries (sort of like in Fallout 3, where a crippled limb slows down movement or makes your shots less accurate) and injury severity realistically. For example, the difference between plate mail and leather armor, and how well they can stop a short sword, instead of watching an axe *handle* (not even the blade, because you were so close to your opponent) go right through your torso and still not cut you in half (implying the handle could cut you in half to begin with). They should also simulate bones, joints, skin, fat, and pain. A chop across your wrist should remove your hand much easier than a chop across the forearm, and when your hand gets cut off, you lose it unless there is a way to get it back. I think details like this will make games *incredibly* fun and will require lots of concentration, preparation, and attention to avoid serious injuries like lost limbs or decapitation. Now don't get me wrong; the level of realism in these combat dynamics should be appropriate to each game, but in the case of TES games, a magic user could re-attach/re-grow flesh, and a warrior ought to still be capable of performing self-surgery/first aid in a safe place to stop bleeding which would reduce HP (which at this point just reflect your will to live) gradually. As your HP reaches zero, you will start to get tunnel vision, blurriness, seeing flashy colors, blindness, hallucinations of enemies and hazards which cause you to flip out and run away (from nothing), and serious hinderances to movement speed, like limping, and confusion (which could be portrayed by gradually blurring out text in your inventory until you can no longer read it, which would indicate that you are very close to death). Imagine if you had to choose in the beginning to be left or right handed, and as long as you use that preferred hand, you get a bonus to your attack (so if it got cut off, you'd have to use the opposite hand, and lose that bonus. Ambidexterity can be represented by dividng that bonus in half and applying each half to both hands, see what I mean?) If both hands got cut off, you would struggle with doing thing like picking up your hands to carry them to a safe place or healer. You can't attack at all, but you can still block, and so on.) Many really fun and cool dynamics will open up for cinematic/emotional/realistic effect when they begin to implement combat systems like what I've been describing. Also, resting and healing shouldn't necessarily have to take as long as in real life, but like I said, the level of realism should be appropriately matched to the game's plot and setting. Games based in the future (without magic) can feature a dose of nanomachines that make their way to the site of the injury and repair it slowly while you continue on (gradually improving your HP and lessening the negative cinematic effects.) Racing games, for example, would be able to feature actual tire temperature, wear, tendency to slip, and the car body can start showing actual damage from collisions, simulating the fibreglass tearing, or the metal crumpling, or your radiator leaking, or your engine overheating, or even the effect on your engine of dropping your muffler (on a regular street car, like in Gran Turismo, not necessarily a race car, again depending on the game), or getting too much dirt/dust/mud in your air filter. Yeah! [censored] like that!
For so much attention to detail throughout this masterly crafted first-person real-time action RPG, however, there are just some things that *blatantly* ignored realism and balanced gameplay dynamics, and the third-party cinematics of "finishing moves" are one of them.
