Skyrim's look is more realistic and i guess gritty than Oblivion. Oblivion was colourful and vibrant, decaps and such would have looked almost wrong probably, but not Skyrim in my opinion. The realistic looks hopefully means more realism in terms of violence too. I mean..in Fallout 3 we decapitate all kinds of monsters and humans, why not in Skyrim?

I would like it if it happens at random. not all the time.

Short answer for a change

Yes for decap./dismem. but only sparingly.

Because if it's not done well, it will be goofy as heck.

You have to take into account your weapon type, the type of armor your opponent is wearing, etc. Someone with chainmail or plate armor should not have limbs flying off; a swing from a blunt weapon should not make limbs burst off, and so on.

It would take a massive effort to do it well, and frankly there are far more important aspects of the game that deserve the dev's attention instead. I don't play TES to get cheap laughs as goofy limbs go flying around like in some cheezy B-movie.

that mod was pure win

not to mention the way you moved was improved 10000 times

and this is a new game so I don't care if OB and MW did not have this or that, thats a pointless argument a lot of stuff were in MW and OB and are now gone (most for the better anyways)

they said skyrim is more rugged and brutal .... GREAT then show me, I want death and horrors all around me, when a dragon bits someone's head off I want to see it or when he slashes someone with its claws I want to see it.

and don't you dare say a dragon can't bit your head off, cause if a crock can do it then I'm pretty sure its easy as hell for a flying dinosaur the size of a double deck bus

Ya or a toggle/random/finishers would solve all problems. People that are against it just don't want a gib fest. If it's not overdone then i'm fine.

No Gears of war nord style please

me neither its like they are saying there are nice ways to kill people..... and that realism and some artistic battle flare is "not TES style" what a load of pooh :shakehead:

a few months ago (before skyrim was announced) they were saying dragons are not TES style and marriage is not TES style, like there is A TES STYLE TO BEGIN WITH, get over yourselves...


I say put an option for "finishers" and make them gory as hell

Oblivion didn't have dragons, why would Skyrim have it?

C'mon now... :tongue:

I agree with everything you said, except not entirely with the last part.

I want all dismemberments to be implemented realistically. Every body part should have health, like FO3. If you work on someone's shoulder or leg, then there's less health there as you've worn it down, injured it, etc. So, if your opponent is close to dying and you attempt a "finishing move", if you go for the head, I don't think it should come off. But if you go for the leg that you've been working on, then there should be a chance it can be dismembered (depending on your opponent's armor, the weapon you're using, and your proficiency with that weapon).

I think if you implement it in this fashion, it will make dismemberments rare, realistic, and satisfying.

EDIT: I am NOT suggesting a VATs system be put in place so you can visibly see the damage you've done to each of your opponent's body parts in % form. I am suggesting that "under the hood" the game keeps track of each body part's damage by percentage. If a leg is at 10%, or whatnot, and you attempt a finishing move there, it should have a high probability of coming off, as opposed to, let's say, the guy's shoulder that is at 90%

wow

that would be awesome

locational damage AND cool battle coolness

pure win :thumbsup:

Yes
Another case where DAO got it wrong. I was taking off limbs left, right and centre with dual-wielding daggers.
If it was in I'd hope only for finishing moves since then it could be done as appropriate for the type of weapon. Even then though we're not going to get different finishing moves for different armour. It might be believable to lop off the limbs or heads of unarmoured or lightly armoured foes with a battleaxe but plate-armoured foes?

Every one of these threads I post just to add that I don't think every single game should contain in your face gore. For me it adds nothing to the game and in fact makes the game seem less realistic in some ways than my imagination can provide because, well...there is no way to realistically represent such things. It always looks fake to me and often just cartoony. Not to mention, really unnecessary. There are many other aspects of the game I would rather the time spent than on such animation which will never look real.

In addition, I'm still not sure how one would include it in a numbers/stats based game in a way that was reasonable. 1st hit: miss, 2nd: scratch, 3rd: slice......50th decapitation. ???? Seems it would only really work as a finishing move. And such is nothing but cinema and not worth having to me. :shrug:

When I think of gritty, I think of chopping through half of someone's neck and struggling to pull your weapon free from the bone it lodged into before you're gutted by their last desperate slash, not a clean decapitation that sends their head flying ten yards. Fallout 3's style worked because darkly comic over-the-top violence has been a hallmark of that series from the beginning. If Skyrim does dismemberment, I personally think it should be rarer, if it happens at all.

The only way I could see limb severing and/or decapitation making sense is as the result of a perfectly timed and executed power move. If you hit an opponent with a blade, you cut them at most. A lot of the time, you just glance off their armor, but if you hit a weak point you cut them. Or stab them, as the case might be. But every once in a great while, if you time it exactly right and execute it exactly right, you might actually manage to sever a limb, or, if you're really skilled and do everything exactly right, a head. That could make sense within the context of the game world. And obviously, severing a head has to be part of a finishing move, since that would literally finish your opponent. The requirements for succeeding at any of those things should be set so high that they're rare occurences, and they only happen when they make sense - you just got the drop on an opponent and delivered a perfectly timed and perfectly executed attack, and that was the result.

Oh... and - if you can sever your opponent's limbs, then he can sever yours as well. That seems to me to be an obvious consequence of the whole thing.

I'm still not particularly interested myself though. In spite of the fact that killing is such a part of RPGs, I don't see them as killing simulators, so the realism or lack thereof surrounding the killing doesn't really matter much.

How badass would it be if, maybe one in every one hundred kills, you pull off some special finisher. It would have to be so rare that some people may never get to do it, they'd have to go on YouTube to see it happen. Imagine wielding dual long blades and finishing some guy off with a kick to the chest, knocking him to the ground, and then, with a scream of adrenaline-fueled rage, pulling off a double-bladed decapitation, a la Gladiator. Awesome.

Perhaps your finishers would vary depending on your enemies weakest body part to make repetition of finisher's not occur as much.

Maybe tone down the blood spray but I'd love Age of Conan finishers.

I think it's a philosophical thing. I don't find graphic violence to be "cool". Period.

From my point of view, there's two possible ways to Go Gore:

1) make it Really Realistic.... in which case it's incredibly disturbing & disgusting, which will turn people off from the combat. And why would you want to make a combat-centric game where people wanted nothing to do with the combat system?

2) make it over-the-top.... in which case it's just gratuitous and is mostly just there for prurient purposes (for Gorn fans, and the people who go Heh. His head flew off. Cool!)



There's no "think of the children" or "violent games corrupt people" here. Just a straightforward "I don't understand why anyone would want such stuff."


I put up with it in Fallout 3, because it was so cartoonish that it couldn't be taken seriously. And, from an "artistic" point of view, it really did fit the black humor style of the game. (Which somewhat undercuts my #2 above, I suppose. But you've got to admit that a good number of "Woohoo! Gore!" games aren't doing it for artistic reasons, but to attract the drunken fratguy demographic.)


But I'm perfectly fine with how Oblivion did it - bit of blood spray, solid whacking noises, some blood decals. That's all you need to get "combat" and "violence" across.


disclaimer: just my opinions. :shrug:

Watch the interview or listen to the podcast .Todd Howard says its not over the top anymore your sword will get bloody but Gore is a no go only that the fighting will get Bloody and brutal . :toughninja:

I agree. Decapitation and dismembering should happen on certain conditions, and deadly reflex was an awesome mod indeed.

Ridiculous arguement. I wouldnt mind dismemberment but find it disturbing so many people are demanding it. Sick individuals it seems.

ahhh is that you Clarice .....!!

I don't like this because I think it would allow the game to decide for you where you want to strike. You should have to intentionally go after a certain body part. In first person mode, you have complete control over which body part you want to attempt to strike. Todd even said they added in more specific animations in regards to where you aim your strike. If you aim for the knee, he'll do a low strike at the knee, aim for the head, a high strike at the head, etc. etc. Oblivion was like this, but it was more vague (simply high strikes vs low strikes). I'm assuming in Skyrim, if you aim for the left knee, you'll execute an animation that strikes the left knee. It's more specific.

So, with that in mind, I think you should only dismember a body part if you have lowered the health of said body part to a certain level, and once the overall health is low enough to execute a "finishing move", you have to intentionally aim at that low % body part to have a chance at dismembering it. Other factors like the armor he's wearing, the weapon you're using, the proficiency you have with that weapon, etc. should matter.

This would make it VERY rare.





I want dismemberment to be VERY realistic, and I don't find this disturbing at all. It would not turn me off at all. You're fighting someone, head to head, and the loser doesn't get a last place ribbon. You lose, you die. Battle is brutal. IF (read my comment above in regards to locational damage) you happen to dismember a limb, it's not for fluff, or unnecessary gore, but an aspect of battle. It can be very bloody, very brutal. It's not glorified dismemberment. It's just realism. I killed someone who was trying to kill me. To unleash a finishing move that took off his head, for example, would be the culmination of that testosterone infused battle. It would be satisfying-- not in some disgusting, sadistic way. But in "I'm still alive!" kind of way.



My comment is ridiculous? I disagree. His logic for no dismemberment is because Oblivion didn't have it. THAT is bad logic. So I made an equally ridiculous comment in jest; why have dragons in Skyrim, since Oblivion didn't have them. My comment was mocking him. I was trying to be tongue-in-cheek about it to not offend, but I do feel a need to defend myself to you because you're suggesting my comment was ridiculous when it makes absolute complete sense.

You can argue not having dismemberment in Skyrim a dozen ways, but to suggest it shouldn't be in there just because Oblivion didn't have it is ridiculous and bad logic. 2 points for me. Blah!

Even better that sound's great. However on a decapitation note i dont want to cut people in half and see there organs realistically it would be very hard to do. so fatal hits to the chest result in the enemy dropping dead. I think Head/appendages should be the only thing's to be removed in finishers/combat.

I'm ecstatic that they aren't in. It would be like watching characters use the bathroom to me, or worse really.