In many rpgs when it come sto combat its often done in your more traditional "put hp to an enemy and whack away" with little effect given between the interaction between character models and weapons , etc.

What I mean is that for example, many fights in melee combat you will stand there, fighting an pc, and be swinging your sword away. IF you hit them it's usually just a sound that plays indicating that you landed your hit and at the most a stagger or slight animation that plays regardless of where you hit then and what with. On top of this there really isn't much interaction you can do in terms of moves that involve actual interaction between your character model and the enemies. Such as grabbing them, pushing them, pulling something away, etc.

This leaves combat feeling not as "hands on" as it could be. When you have people imagine swinging an axe into someone or such they don't normally picture your phantom swings that most games usually have.

We know that in Skyrim you have "finishing moves" which adds to the flavor, as well as the stealth kills and such. There has also been mention of more of a point of making balance in melee combat be important and throwing people off, etc. Which is a step in ithe righ tdirection.

However takign it further, what about allowing more dynamic combat interaction of models? Not simple knock backs or such, but actually using the physics to give weapon impacts real world looking affects to the models. Along with providing more "hands on" combat moves and such.

Imagine for example, you swing your axe into someones leg and it connects. Now should not your axe have a force applied to it when it connects and the animation not simple "go through?" Should not this guys leg lose balance and move in the direction you hit it witihi? Imagine how awesome it'd look to actually hit someone with your weapon and have their body intieract dynamical depending on the force it was hit with, the direction, and the weapon type.

Now imagine on top of this, if we had combat moves that we could learn that allowed us to even go more hands on. In most combat systems, this type of combat with melee weapons is treated as a strictly "hands off" combat. Where you swing away with your weapon and that's that. However in history this was simply not true.

When two people fought in the middle ages and before making use of your hands in close quarters could be an extremely viable and valuable tactic. There are countless examples from fighting manuals back in the day that show have varied and "hands on" people could get while fighting,

Getting someone's weapon from their hand, using yours to get in close and disarm them. Using your feet to throw someone off balance, etc. There were many many close quarters "hands on" types of combat moves involved in melee combat historical that you simpl do not get in games nor in movies.

An Example:
http://www.thearma.org/essays/armoredlongsword.html


I just think it would be awesome if combat in Skyrim took things a step further in terms of providing combat that had more dynamic interaction between the character models (you or npc's either). Where the impacts looked dynamic and the combat moves involved use of throwing people off balance, disarming, etc rather htne your usual "Swing until they die" style of combat. IT already seems to be stepping in that direction so far, would just be nice to take it even further.

Well I can tell you that what you want will not be in Skyrim. TES VI? Maybe. However, Havok Behavior should make animations overall seem and look more realistic. You may want to take a look at Mirror's Edge as I think it's really the closest game to a real hands-on, full-blown dynamic combat system.

Lets hope till we see a video of how combat works and then discuss it?
All the info we have about it so far is really not that much,so we cant really say whats ingame/should be/whats not,we can only suggest

Natural motion's euphoria tech would be good for this.

Enemies should actually watch your sword with they're eyes.... Instead of staring directly at you oblivikous.

Have you seen the "Building Better Combat" article on Skyrim from Game Informer?

The only thing I'm leery about is the comment "You can't bob and weave like a medieval Muhammed Ali as you could in Oblivion." What if I want to play a Medieval Muhammed Ali?

I think this was refering to the fact you could basically could fight without being hit... there was little risk in fighting 1 on 1 once you figured out how to work the system. This time around I'm hopeing there isn't a system like this so you'll need to use proper combat skill to fight. Games nowadays have a method of fighting, some people are just better at it than others... Mount and Blade: Warpath handle this pretty well.

Or not. That game was like a huge N64 Demo. But anyways . . .
Yes, it would be totally awesome to have a fighting system as dynamic and detailed as you mentioned, but TES has probably not evolved to that stage quite yet. Although there has been an overhaul to the fighting system, I do not think they made these kinds of changes (Todd Howard would have told us for sure!!). Remember, these are huge games, and there has to be a balance with regards to development. When game producers set out to make a product, they have to spread their assets out, and too much attention really can't be spent on any single aspect of the game. In this instance fighting. Sure it got a face lift, but it was not completely overhauled like you hope.

Unfortunately, ATM the best physics engine to run this is the Euphoria/Natural Motion engine which I would love to see in action in a game like this, loved how Red Dead and GTA handled people getting shot/Melee'd and such. But this is almost exclusive to Rockstar and LucasArts. From what I hear its only available to others at a very high price.

But... what if I want to play a fast Martial-arts master who focuses on not getting hit in combat? It would still take skill to pull off.


We don't know the capabilities of the Creation Engine yet.

Then i'm sure they'll have a method of doing this, just not in the same state oblivion was in.
Honestly though, do you really want to play Oblivion Combat in Skyrim or would you rather than come up with something better?

The combat in Dark Messiah felt far more organic than combat in Oblivion and remains one of the best swordplay titles to date. Things have weight!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWKRkhpFqhE

Even without euphoria and recent technology. Animations help ALOT, so does seeing your body. But what really sets it apart is the amount of options you actually have in combat and that's a lesson they learned, judging from the GI article

You'd be an easy fight. While looking at the sword coming from your left you will fail to see the dagger headed for your throat from the right.

As any professional boxer or martial artist can tell you the best way to fight is to focus your attention dead center and rely on your periphery and body language to determine the origin of the next attack.

Or bought since the creators of Dark Messiah are now part of Bethesda =P


Arkane Studios is a video game developer based in Lyon, France. It was founded in 1999, and released its first game, Arx Fatalis, in 2002. Arkane Studios opened an Austin, Texas-based office in July 2006.[1]

In December 2006, the company announced its new first-person shooter title, The Crossing, which was later put on hold. In July 2009, 2K Marin announced that Arkane was signed up to help with Bioshock 2 development, more specifically "design, animation, and art".[2]

In August of 2010, the company was acquired by ZeniMax.[3] It's rumored they're assisting Bethesda Game Studios with development on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.



Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkane_Studios

To me oblivions combat felt off because there was very little relation between the attacker and the attackee( is that a word?). It felt like the PC was attacking the air in front of themselves, and there just happened to be an enemy in the space currently occupied by the sword who began to lose health arbitrarily health because of this overlap.

Enemies with crazy amounts of health just amplified this effect. On the other hand blocking felt good and staggering your opponent added to the connection.

I think the OP's ideas are good but like a different poster said Beth has to focus on quite a few things other than combat. with that in mind I have what I think is a simpler mechanic(my opinion rarely coincides with reality on these matters though).

Basically its Morrowind where character skill effects whether a hit connects But with animations showing glancing blows, parries, dodges etc. To get it more "hands on" for the player allow him/her to choose the type/direction of the attack. eg: Left/right slash, Up/down chop, angled thrusts. With glancing blows and such the actual hits need to feel powerfull and visceral which I think the new tech Beth is using for skyrim will handle nicely

Then incorporate oblivions blocking system but instead of being entirely protected behind a shield the player must actively block an incoming attack
eg: attack coming from the left -----> player must block from the left.

not to toot my own horn but I think this system is pretty slick. It solves Oblivions HP mountains and makes combat more engaging for the player :disguise: