Yes. You attack faster, you have the option of simultaneously using both weapons to overwhelm the enemy. Yes it is a real combat style, and yes, google is indeed your best friend if you feel this type of info is probably inadequate(its not).

And no hostility intended XD

Yeah sorry, I noticed my spelling mistakes after I posted. And these are some pretty good reasons, I bet you could set up some sweet enchantment combos that also play into weapon type bonuses. If you have some more good reasons I'll gladly read them.

I can barely imagine having a dagger in my left hand with "weakness to fire 60%" while having a longsword in my right hand with "fire damage 30 pts on strike"
Now THAT is what I call tearing through a health bar

But yeah, look up chinese hook swords. one of the best examples of dual weilding, and it's also historically accurate (and I'd HATE to be against someone weilding those)

Also, Dual weilding can be damned effective, and it can be suicide too.
The actual cliché is "these people who weild two weapons are crazed-off and attack without even thinking". Anyone using it to fit this cliché will indeed get killed quite fast.
What you need is discipline, self-control, and fast thinking. You need to be able to see the openings or create them by force, and not just bash until the defense breaks

higher attack speed hasn't been confirmed... it's perfectly logical to be on the fence about dual wielding. the last game i played with dual wielding was demon souls. you couldn't attack simutanously with weapons and you had to wait for an attack animation to be comletely done before attacking again... meaning following up from your last attack would take the same amount of time regardless of what weapon you used last.

I'd say that's probably true. Admitably, there are some details about the mechanics of dual wielding I'm not aware of, but that explaination makes sense with what we know of it so far.

I think the important question is, will the benefits of dual wielding balance out the disadvantages enough to make it worth considering? Obviously, Bethesda isn't going to add dual wielding and not give it any kind of advantage, but it's entirely possible that the advantages won't be enough to make it really worth considering for any reasons other than role-playing or aesthetics. It wouldn't be the first time some optioons in the Elder Scrolls have been like that.

There's a reason that my post begins "Possible advantages..." with the word "possible" not only first but emphasized on top of that. Think about that, and see what you come up with. :rolleyes:

You have two different weapons so that's twice the swings, so essentially you doubled your damage output.

Well, maybe other weapon will serve as shield for defense.
Instead of blocking with your shield, you will block with your weapon.
Your blocking ability will be bad when compared when you defense with shield, but bash move will actually make an very strong attack (with probably both weapons).
This could be awesome for assassins since you could sneak up with two blades behind the victim and then use bash move to kill him in one shot without any problem.

Also, when speaking of sneak attacks.
Don't you think that blunt weapons should not deal increased damage (at least not a lot), but should stun/knockout your enemy when you attack them from sneak.
It is way more logical and will make stuff more interesting.
It could also provide an ability for cool duel-wield moves (you bash him with one weapon and knock your enemy out and then finish him off with a sword in his throat).

Now, again on topic a bit.
Will you be able to combine weapon and unarmed combat?
For example, you are master of one handed swords and hand to hand and use one hand for the sword and other has nothing (it's set to hand to hand).

Dual wielding, although not as popular as using a one hander+shield or a 2hander, did existed. One famous example is Miyamoto Musashi, don't know him? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi (theres even sagas about vikings not using shields, but 2 weapons)

Also a sword, nor any weapon needs to be heavy to be effective, a steel sword be between 2 and 3 pounds (example: an average katana is 2,5 pounds), even a 2 hander can be as light as 4 pounds (hey, a 1/2 pound hammer can kill in a blow)

But.. we are talking about a game, so I don't really know how they'll implement this skill... first thing that comes to mi mind is 2x enchanted weapons, so you can play with different combinations (fire + ice - Absorb health + absorb strenght, etc etc)

I thinks it will give us an option to choose between defence (1hander and shield) low speed but high dam (2 hander) or high dps (dual wielding)

What do you think?

if dual wielding short swords is like this i will be stoked :ahhh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-TytzvopOY

and this would be awesome for sword and shield
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOt46Fljfms at the end

LoL, I think that that at the end was a demonstration of Skyrim bash move. XD

I can understand why many gamers and Game DEV often get this wrong, because you can "cheat" using only your arms to "flick" a sword cut that can do a little slicing damage. And if that slice is in a very soft or vulnerable location like the eyes or unarmored throat it can be a viable attack.

However proper sword blows (especially with heavy weapons like a broadsword) against armored opponents require you to turn your body mass for the attack. If you have only one sword you flip it back around your head from left to right each time you turn your body left and right.

Fighting Florentine weapon style (what gamers call "dual") does not give you more attacks per round of combat it gives you more ANGLES of attack.
The advantage then is not MORE attacks but unusual attacks that are harder to match (harder for the defender to counter.)


I was not able to find a really good You tube example but this one is as close as I could find to "good form" at video location 301:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaIEK0H1QnM&feature=related

Skip to 301 in the video to see a sword and shield fighter (the sword and shiled man is an SCA Knight, so I would hope he did have good form) throwing proper sword blows and swinging his one sword from one side to the other with each shift of his body mass left and right, thus matching the number of sword blows the Florentine fighter is throwing.

And no hostility intended as well. :thumbsup:
It is just that as a veteran of RL heavy weapons full contact combat (for over 30 years) I am a strong supporter of using physics in the logarithms instead of canned animations based on what "looks" cool. We have had the PC technology to do this (the game Die by the Sword was getting very close) for over 15 years. But only in the last 15 years or so have we been able to evolve medieval melee weapons combat from an art to a science (using modern physics, geometry, psychology).

See here: http://www.spookyfx.com/book/TROMP.HTML

So I am hoping for great things in the future of sword and shield immersion type gaming.

Spookyfx: Exactly, that's things work, but when you talk about "dual weild", the first things that comes to the mind of any gamer (and it seems that game designers as well) are things like Diablo and most MMRPGs... ok, some can be fun, but not very realistic.

I loved the oblivion combat system, to be able to block and hit when I want, not to depend from a "luck" roll... if I'm able to aim at you with my bow, and shoot you... it seems to me that you're out of luck, don't you?

Yeah, there's a lot of room for improvement in Oblivion, but I think that Skyrim will actually give us that, after all, there's a reason behind them taking 5 years to complete this game.