I've always thought Final Fantasy did a nice job with the variety of shields. X and XII specifically.

I'd love to see bucklers in Skyrim. They would give Stealth-based characters a defensive option, without forcing them to carry around a massive shield. Perhaps Telekinesis could be used to throw them about as well, eh?

i either want a round huscarl type shield with a long spike sticking out from it or a huge ass spartan shield to smash heads with.

I have yet to see a single game treat shields correctly.

The main problem is that in most games shields are treated simply as "Bigger = better." This simply is NOT the case at all when it comes to shields and their uses.

There's a reason that the buckler, the smallest type of shield, was the longest used on the battlefield. Each shield had advantages and disadvantages. In games however they never portray this, it's simply "small = low quality crappy shield, big = better. "

The buckler, unlike other shields, was not strapped to your arm, rather you held it in your hand. The smaller size of the shield made it very nimble, very quick to move around. When it came to parrying away blows in melee combat the buckler was one of the favored shield types for this. On top of this the buckler was a shield that could be used not only for defense, but as an offensive weapon. There were examples (historically) of bucklers that had the edges sharpened, so you could slice into people with it. Some that had a spike on the front so you could use it to stab with or even "latches" which could catch someones blade and let you pull at it to disarm them. Mainly because of it's quickness, it's size (didn't block your vision like bigger shields could) it was one of the better shields to use for melee combat. The disadvantage of it came from ranged attacks. Arrows and such were it's main weakness, because of it's size you couldn't block that much of an area against incoming fire compared to a heater shield or such.


It'd be nice if in Skyrim they treated bucklers as quicker shields, with more offensive capabilities, then larger sheilds, and larger shields obviously would be better against protecting from arrows and things. I dbout they will though, mostly likely it'll still be "bucklers = crap shields, big shields = better."