I'm not really a big fan of the blood on the screen thing myself, I really don't feel it's that realistic, because even if blood sprayed onto you in combat, it probably wouldn't abstruct your vision unless it got into your eyes, and while I've never gotten blood into my eyes before, from my experience with getting other things into them, I can reason that it probably wouldn't be like if you were watching footage from a camera and blood got onto the camera's lens, like you know, if while filming a movie fake blood got onto the camera and they decided to leave it in, or did it intentionally because they thought it would look cool, which is probably pretty much what most games are going for when they do this, actually. The developers want the game to feel more cinematic, however, unless a game is trying to feel like an interactive movie, I really don't need my games to try to imitate movies, they just need to be good as a standalone work. I'd only really say blood on the screen is realistic if your character is wearing goggles or some kind of helmet with a clear visor or some other thing that covers the eyes with a transparent surface that liquids could potentially stick to, and considering that in keeping with the Medieval fantasy theme of the series, helmets don't usually have things like that (The glass helmet in Morrowind being an exception.), blood on the screen makes much more sense in games where your character actually wears a helmet like what I described.
While holding your weapon in front of your view constantly isn't entirely realistic either, it does serve a function as it gives you a visual indication of what weapon your using and what you're doing with it. The game would likely feel quite awkward if you couldn't see where your weapon was. In real life, you don't need to always be able to see your hands or what you're doing with them, or what you're holding in them, but in games, you don't automatically know these things, the game needs to give you some form of indication, and the easiest way is often a visual one.
And in games like Call of Duty, a bloody screen serves a purpose, as the game doesn't have a health bar, instead screen effects like that serve to tell you when your health is low, but honestly, I prefer health bars, they give you a much clearer idea of how much health you have left, and bloody screen effects can often obstruct the view, making it harder to see what's going on, and when I'm nearly dead, I want to be able to clearly see what's going on so I can better avoid damage until I can get back to full health, such a method of indicating health often serves to makeit harder to see when you'd most need clear vision. Sure, health bars aren't entirely realistic, but neither is needing to see blood on my screen to tell that I got shot in the leg. Besides, I seem to recall that Call of Duty still retains other interface elements which arguably aren't really realistic either, like a crosshair or an indicator for weapon ammunition, in fact, I'd argue that's less realistic than a health bar as whereas you might get some idea of what condition your body is in from signs that you can't accurately show in the game, such as what you're feeling, unless your gun is like what's seen in a few science-fiction shooters and has a gauge on it that shows how many rounds you have left, you don't reallty have any way to know how many more times you can shoot it before you have to reload if you weren't keeping track of how many shots you've fired, yet that doesn't stop your character from having a convenient indicator at the bottom of his vision that shows how many bullets are left, so if removing health bars is an effort to make games as realistic as possible, it's undermined by the fact that developers aren't making an effort to find alternatives to other unrealistic HUD elements, and instead, it just looks like they just have an irrational aversion to health bars.
CoD is better than counter strike by far.... counter strike was originally just half life multiplayer standalone.... it is the most raw shooter you can find, you just have basic gameplay and basic guns. it has a little shop minigame to spice it up tho, call of duty could've used that.
Lets face it, the people here who are flaming CoD just don't like first person shooters. keep it to yourselves, you may be a hardcoe RPG gamer but i'm just a hardcoe gamer. i'm sure that most hardcoe FPS gamers would say the same about you since you're playing skyrim or oblivion or whatever.
Really, I'd say the whole thing is completely irrelevent here to begin with, Call of Duty is Call of Duty and the Elder Scrolls is the Elder Scrolls, we wouldn't be here if we didn't like the latter, but some here might like the former and some might not, but that really doesn't matter, we're here to discuss whether a certain feature should be in the game or not, not whether Call of Duty is a good game or not, the fact that the feature we're discussing here is in Call of Duty doesn't matter as the fact that a feature was in another game which you happen to not like doesn't constitute as a good argument for the feature not being in Skyrim, that would be like if I said that Final Fantasy has leveling, and therefore leveling should not be in Skyrim, I really don't have any interest in Final Fantasy, but that does not mean that exists in it would automatically be a bad idea for Skyrim, just as even though Fallout has guns and I enjoy Fallout, I would not use that as an argument for guns being added to the Elder Scrolls. If the question is, "Should Bethesda put
x in Skyrim, whether
x is the bloody camera thing or anything else, we should answer based on what we think about
x, and how well we feel it would fit in Skyrim, not what we think of some other unrelated game that just happens to have used a similar feature, I would not want leveling to be removed from the Elder Scrolls even though some games I don't want to play have included it, leveling in some form or another has always been a vital part of RPGs and I would not want to see it done away with, on the other hand, I have no desire to see guns in the Elder Scrolls even though I've enjoyed other games that have it. I have absolutely nothing against guns in a game if it fits the game, but the Elder Scrolls is not a series guns would fit.
My own objection to blood on the screen is because I don't really like it as a feature that much, at the very least, it's not a feature I really want to see in the Elder Scrolls, I don't really hold anything against Call of Duty but even if I did, it would not have anything to do with my thoughts on the matter.
» Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:07 pm 
