Okay?

It's way to early to be complaining about this.

Except that if I wait, people will say that it's too late in development. It's never too early or too late, friend.

I don't know.

I just don't see the issue.

I love that scene in the trailer too but if you watch in slow motion doesn't it look like the enemies head actually starts bending back even before it gets hit?

From what we've seen, finishing moves take no longer than 2 seconds.

We're all probably aware of how useless daggers were in oblivion and now with the 10x multiplier and seemingly insta-kill animations, stealth seems like it will be a lot more fun.
What I'm worried about is the balance of the game as far as stealth goes. From what I've heard, such as the new alert system their implementing, stealthing may even be easier than it was in oblivion. I don't want a game where you can literally sneak in a straight line up to someone, kill them instantly, go back into the shadows or turn invisible (oh god) and do this over and over until you've racked up 50 bodies. If they keep the multiplier at 10x, instant death, than I want sneaking to be hard. I don't want the old "wait for the guard to turn around, he see's me now but once he looks the other way he won't know my presence at all" type deal.

I couldn't have said it better. Ideally, although I know many people may oppose this, I want every single action to a result of my key presses. I know it will not be this way.
The stomach stabbing finishing move, for example, 2 seconds long and most likely uncontrollable.
Does this ring a bell to anyone? How about if I said Assassin's Creed?
That's all that game was. You could literally Counter attack a whole army's worth of guards performing one of 3-4 animations over and over and over and over and over and over and over. If it was up to me, I would implement a system where the only "animations" you could perform would be performed if and only if
a ) you clicked a specific number of keys and given variable were met (which sounds like what I'm trying to avoid, I know, but also...)
B ) have the player actually control the animation.
For example, allow the player to grab a humanoid by pressing a certain button, then another button would push said humanoid on one side which would expose his stomach, then your mouse movement + another certain key would control your sword swing (would have to be partially guided of course, but you get the idea).
These kind of animation/finishing moves would be ideal imo. Unfortunately, chances are it will be more of a "oh you blocked? okay, press x and you'll stab him and slice his throat"

How many enemies did you kill in your last Oblivion run?

You really don't believe every enemy will be killed with a finish do you?

For all you know it could only be the last enemy of the battle.

Do you know whats more repetitive than finishers? Seeing the same slash back and forth even when killing enemies. I'm excited for finishers. I'm hoping for some brutal kills!

They said that finishing moves can be executed so long as the health of the enemy is so low that all that is needed to kill him off is the finishing blow. That sort of sounds like every killing blow to me, but I doubt it's that. It might be random, like in Dragon Age Origins, where I might sometimes behead and opponent or sometimes not. Or, they could have a separate button that is used for finishing blows, or power attacks count as finishing blows.

Yes I thought I saw that too. Anyone else notice this?

the game could still be balanced with insta-kill sneak attacks

if there are 2 or more enemies, one could be killed with a sneak attack but youll still have to fight the other one

also, high lvl enemies would be more alert so you cant sneak up on them like that, youd probably be able to score a critical with your bow and arrow but it wouldnt be an insta-kill


im also interested if bow and arrow will have finishing moves, something like a character with an arrow through his chest gasping for air or something like that

I'm not worried at all. I've been playing AC Brotherhood recently and EVERY time you kill somebody it triggers a "finishing move." Never gets old. I actually feel like a bad ass when I get in there counter and parry my way to victory. Instead of "hack hack hack hack hack" *canned death animation* or "hack hack hack hack" *gravity is no longer relevant ragdoll death.*

Ditto

To me it's just eye-candy that really doesn't add much to the depth of the game :shrug:

here's my concern. you have several enemies surrounding you. you attack 1 guy and execute a finishing move that takes 2 (do we have a source for this?) seconds. what will the others do during that time? will they stare and wait their turn like they did in AC?

It may be the Ninja Gaiden style of finishing move - you have to wear the enemies health down via normal combat, and only then are you able to strike with a finishing move.

well sneak attack animations should be really quick, so that even though enemies wait for it to finish it deosnt look unrealistic

but regular finishing moves should IMO only occur on the last enemy in the group, but not every time on the last enemy

This, the AC kills never get old. If they even hint at getting stale you have a huge arsenal of weaponry to use, and hopefully we get a big arsenal here too. My concern is how finishing moves will work on custom weapons.