I've always been into gore, and being able to take a huge claymore and decapitate your enemies sounds mighty fun. It's not really realistic that you can swipe at your enemies and only blood appear on the blade and some on the ground. But killing someone so that the body erupts into a pile of gore just becomes too cartoonish. Decapitation and dismemberent is where the gore level should be, as far as I would prefer it at least.

Skeletons resized to be the size of a 10-12 year old. Hard to miss. I know I did

More realistic the better.

I voted "Like OB" but that said I would like a bit more gore, it's just that Fallout went a bit too far for an Elder Scrolls setting (it's fine in Fallout). It's quite hard to decapitate things, especially if it's wearing armour. More brutal cuts and wounds would be good, and a bit of blood splatter, just nothing too excessive.

None of the poll options, dismemberment is stupid. It looks stupid and is too uncommon to make any sense. I would like wounds and blood splattering on everything that it hits and stay there, NOT disappear.

I liked the dismemberment aspect of Fallout, though not the levels of the bloody mess perk that causes someone to just explode (even though it is awesome when you hit someone with a power smash with the supersledge, Oh, Baby!)

Ok, but what about the other weapons? How about someone wielding an axe? Are you telling me it would be hard to decapitate or dismember an unarmored person with a battleaxe? Because I find that hard to believe. And how about warhammers? Shouldn't one of those to the face cause some noticable damage?

Yeah, I'm not really understanding his argument either. He claims he doesn't want any dismemberment on the grounds of realism, but then admits that the weapons would realistically cause massive damage, broken bones, and deep cuts. So would he be in favor of modeling all kinds of deep gashes wounds and broken bones on enemies? That would be much more of a "misallocation of resources" than simply separating a limb and letting physics take over.

BTW, I'm not buying the whole "weapons are incapable of severing limbs" thing. I have read many articles that state that limbs were occasionally severed, and heads as well during medieval combat. I have also seen period paintings showing it. I have yet to find a single source that says a sword is incapable of severing a limb. There are videos of people slicing a pig carcass in half (bones and all) with swords. Chances are, most limbs didn't come off because a bone was chopped in half, but rather cut off at the joint (shoulder, elbow, etc) where there is a separation in the bones. That way, all the sword is really cutting is soft tissue and tendon.

Regardless, no one here is pushing for "excessive gore", at least that I have seen. If dismemberment were in the game, I would want it to be quite rare so that it remained unique. I would be perfectly happen just to see some sort of indication of damage of every well connected strike. A small amount of blood spray and a damage decal would fine with me. To me, that is much more important than an occasional arm, leg, or head coming off...

As long as it is proportional to the damage and it's type

I want realistic gore.

When you swing your sword and someone is a low enough health or if they have critical hits, etc then it can cause dismemberment.

Other weapons like flails (I hope they are in) or maces should cause blunt damage that can crush things.

MAgic, well magic can have all sorts of gore if done correctly.

I'm just hopingi that we have dismemberment now and it's not over-the-top but rather more realistic and only happens every once in a while. You don't want dismemberment to happen every-single-fight, otherwise it loses part of the appeal of having it in the first place.


As far as blood goes, I'm hoping this time it sticks to your clothing/character (like in Dragon Age) and doesn't quickly "fade" like it did in Oblivion. I also would like to see damage on YOUR character. Like cuts/bruises, (done long ago in games like Severance) etc (which go away over time/with healing effects). I want to see my character walk through a dungeon and then emerge bloody and looking like he's been in a fight.

As long as it isn't as cartoony as it was in fallout.

Whatever Gore legally admissable in the country that I play in

Well in Fallout, dismemberment never actually occurred while an enemy was still alive, so I assume that the same would be true i it were implemented in Skyrim. You could cripple limbs and make enemies limp or drop their weapon or basically blind them, but the enemy dies when limbs start popping off. I think a little bit of gore would make the game better. Imagine smashing an enemy's head with a hammer and sending little bits and pieces everywhere or finishing an enemy off by cutting their legs out from under them. Things could get interesting. What I'd really like to be able to do is pin enemies to a wall with arrows.

Wait, Oblivion had blood?