Yuck. They don't add anything. Maybe if an enemy's health is low and you get an option, like pressing a button if you want to use it. Or why not have a finishing move in-game without a cutscene? I've seen plenty of games do that. But really, I'm battling away, and then I have to sit there to watch the end? That's not fun. It's a good idea, but it's not executed very well. I'm tempted to say even an optional VATS-like system would have been better; at least then I'd be able to pick which body part to go after and feel a little more involved with the final blows.

Nothing is more satisfying than the backstab animation on an enemy, or slicing them apart with my dual wield

Backstab one is brilliant, as are the dual swords to the chest and lifting them off the ground... I find they add to my gaming experience.

I love the 2H Sword decapitations later on in the game, and the first finisher I dealt during the tutorial stage was really the only reason I kept the 2H thing going. Still not a fan of the occasional 1st person finisher I get because it seems a tad off and doesn't give a good view of what actually happens.

Oh yeah and on around my 7th dragon kill I got that sweet Dragon finisher, which was a pleasant surprise full of badassery.

I assumed the finishing moves bit would bother me eventually, but I like them. They let me know when the fight has ended. Stress level goes way down. I'm always in 3rd person during combat, anyways, including bow & arrow fights.

That being said, it would be cool if 1st person players could have finishing moves of their own. It's gotta be distracting to have the game pull out of 1st all the sudden for these players.

There are first person finishers. But, honestly, due to the perspective, they end up looking kind of awkward and/or hard to follow. The third person ones are much more dramatic/badass.

If they were to make it just one type (instead of randomly having 1st and 3rd person finishers when playing in 1st person), I'd much rather have it just 3rd.

IMHO, of course. :tongue:

I like the first person finishers. There quick and neat when they happen. But the 3rd person completely drop immersion and most of the time your weapon doesn't actually interact with the target (at least with one handed axe). Not to mention they take forever.

If you play in first person it should give you first person finishers and 3rd person finishers for playing in 3rd person.

I don't mind them. Gives me a few seconds to celebrate my victory. :celebration:

1st person finishers for 1st person would be nice. It can break the immersion if you are really into the game and your character, delving through a dangerous dungeon, enjoying yourself and then all of a sudden *poof* the camera switches into a 3rd person finisher. Maybe an option for them, "enable 3rd person finishers for 1st person?" or something.

I play in 3rd person. There are forced 1st person finishers as well. I don't mind.

I get 1st person finishers too.

They're not bad as I thought they would be.

there not bad, i wish that only first person finishers played in first person though. There really should have been an option to take them out, some people are really bothered by them

You were going to die anyway.

I want the forced third person finishers that kill my PC gone. Almost all of them would have been avoidable, if I'd had control of my character for the five seconds it takes for a bandit with a warhammer to finish his swing.

love em!! and they don't happen that often to get irritating in my opinion but happen just enough to be very satisfying!!
an awesome new addition to the ES series and i seriously wish some of these haters would just leave........yeah we get it, you don't like the game, so leave and go play something else.........cheers!!

You were going to die anyway. This just makes your death more dramatic. Had there been no 3rd person finsher, the bandit would've just smashed you at normal speed and you would be just as dead, just with no cool animation.

Didn't like them from the start, tried them out, and the result was predictable.

Yup, I want them gone. They add nothing to the experience since they (and this goes for the 1st person finishers too) are completely random, though often occur at the kill blow for the final enemy. You have no control over when they happen, they just happen. It's sort of an undocumented rule that the player be given the final decision of whether or not to play the finisher animations. Take Gears of War, for instance, there are all sorts of finishing blows (executions) you can deal, but you have to tell the game you want to do them first through a button prompt. You have the choice of just ending things quickly with a few final bullets or a basic punch.

You can't do that in Skyrim, the finishers happen automatically and without prompting the player that they are going to occur. I have more than once found myself continuing with the traditional TES button-spam for attack when the battle is ending, only to have none of them actually do anything because the game triggered a finisher. Taking control away from the player outside of a cutscene without clearly notifying him is bad design. Finishers do not give any clear indication of when they will happen, and even then only get triggered about half the time. So not only are we getting control of the game wrested away from us without our consent, it happens at random. At least Deadly Reflex in Oblivion had the courtesy of going into bullet-time for a moment before tugging you into third-person; that told the player that a finisher was about to be performed. Skyrim gives no indication whatsoever, it just does it, and the result is very jarring. This is supposed to be a carry-over from Fallout 3's VATS system, but the major difference between here and there is that VATS required the player to actually trigger the cinematics themselves. That is why VATS worked, and consequently why Skyrim's finishers do not.

In the end, though, all the finishers really are are Bethesda trying to hide how little the melee combat in this game has actually changed by flashing pretty lights in our face every once in a while. the hope is that we would be impressed enough by the finishers to ignore the fact that practically none of the melee combat mechanics were even touched between Oblivion and Skyrim. Oblivion made the same mistake with its environments, Bethesda was banking on everyone being so impressed at their ultra-realistic procedurally generated scenery and not noticing just how bland and repetitive it was. It didn't work, and after Oblivion, they went straight back to hand-crafted environments. They tried to needlessly dress up the combat with a worthless mechanic that adds nothing to the experience.

However, I am willing to give them another chance... if Bethesda puts the finishers back where they belong: in the hands of the player.

Also, if there are going to be finishers continuing in TES, they REALLY need to be animated better.

(Note I am only talking about the player-specific finishers here. AI finishers can stay as they are.)

no thats not true, I've gotten third person finishers on me just because I was close enough when he started his attack. I would have had plenty of time to back away before the attack finished. and if you don't believe that then what about being able to shout away before he hits you?

Exactly. Complaining that a third person finisher AGAINST you is "causing you to die" is weird, since the only reason you get a finisher is because the enemy killed you.

I want more finishers, and more often!...

I am annoyed over how I never get to decide when to cut someone's head, or that I can't do the awesome sword-through-gut finisher when I am gonna one-shot the person anyway...

I for one like them, only seen a handful so far. Ask me again in 1,000 hours

I actually quite like them

I like them a lot. Particularly the decapitation ones.

But I only want to see them from the perspective that I'm playing from. And I don't want slow-mo, I hated it in Fallout 3 and New Vegas (not Bethesda I know) when the VATs kills took 10 seconds and I hate it in Skyrim, just play them at regular speed please.

I'm playing in 3rd anyway, a better idea would be to add in a 1st person option rather than take 3rd out