Yeah, I discovered CLANG about a month ago, when it had gone quiet, prior to it being cancelled. My thought at the time was similar to one of Neal Stephenson's points in his cancel announcement - they seemed to prioritise historical accuracy too much over pure and simple fun of swordfighting. I think the focus for games needs to be fun gameplay number one, with the mechanics built to support the fun.
I'm following KC: D a bit too, I think those guys will get it right. If the game is successful, I think it will raise the bar for melee-based games. It should make it less acceptable for other devs to just have a melee attack button anyway. Different attack types (slash, thrust, etc), various hit targets and targeted parrying/blocking should be a minimum. Not sure about the bullet-time thing though - hope it doesn't just trigger a quick time event sequence. With mostly, or better yet fully, dynamic animation, I would have thought you should be able to trade blows in realtime.
I hope that with KC: D that melee combat still requires thought and timing when you reach higher levels. As opposed to Skyrim, where you quickly become a tank that just needs to spam the attack button to roll over all foes. They seem like pretty clued up guys, so I have faith. I loved Operation Flashpoint in it's day, I thought it was ahead of it's time. I remember them patching in hardware transformation and lighting, which was a big thing to do at the time. Made me think that they like pushing the technical edge, so I hope that KC: D carries the banner forward from Mount and Blade to continue the incline of melee-based combat!
Can't really speak about how well the bullet time and prompting will work in KCD, as it's something I've had questions about myself. But based on their past record with video game combat and realism, and their statements about trying to make a very realistic fencing system, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it will work out well. Maybe they thought having this kind of slow-down/prompt system was the best way to approximate the intricacies of real fencing within the limitations of keyboard/mouse and joystick controls, I don't know. We'll see. Maybe once they complete the combat system and roll it out to the alpha/beta players, their devs will give some rationale for doing it that way.
Of the games I played, my favorite melee combat is probably in Gothic 1 and 2. It's very simple in a way, but to fight against humanoids, I would just time my parries with a fast one-handed weapon to their attack patterns, and then quickly hit them with a counterattack. These sequences would be chained into parry-parry-attack-parry-parry-attack and so on, and that was the closest I ever felt in a game to a movie-type sword fight. It was really visceral and fun because the timing had to be very sharp, fraction of a second. But yeah, I would love a combat system that combined that type of visceral feeling and timing with a more tactical approach, where instead of just simple attacks and parries, you would have a pool of available moves, with each one meant for a specific situation, or to counter what the enemy is doing.
More thoughts on hand-to-hand combat, maybe going slightly OT...
It's simply impossible to recreate a realistic melee combat situation. I gave this much thought over the years, as I've been into different martial arts for the best part of the last 20 years now, and have been playing games since much before.
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I don't think it's impossible, it would just take a lot of simulation elements (whether real time or turn based). But I think you are thinking way ahead of where the industry is right now. Most of the stuff you mention is pretty advanced and detailed, when most combat systems can't even get the simplest basic stuff right, like not doing real time button mashers and instead introducing some tactics and reflex based challenges into it. On the turn based side, similarly, most systems don't have enough abilities/actions and enough interaction between them to make things challenging or interesting. Mostly it's just pick your most powerful gun/fireball, shoot other guy in eye, rinse, repeat.
So basically this:
<Wii controller image>
Well, theirs was shaped more like a longsword hilt or a lightsaber handle, so it was a thinner cylinder, and I think you could put both hands on it. Not sure how it captured motion compared to the Wii controller.
Call me a pop-a-mole faggot.. But I like games with steep power curves over a long period of time.. I want to have my ass kicked then feel my character becoming stronger and come back and smash faces in.
The problem with flatter curve progression is that your rewarded more for being skillfull (twitchy) or abusing mechanics then making decisions in how you progress in character development.. It cheapens the feeling of accomplishment when you level up or find a new cool item..
I prefer tactical skill over twitch skill.. and I like feeling more powerful as the game progresses.. if I played a game for 40 hours and still had trouble with bandits on the road that I did when I started.. why am I even leveling up at all?
IMO of course
After playing RPGs for many years now, I have to side with the people wanting flatter power curves. I think a lot of problems in RPGs stem from the huge increase of power for the player. This includes balancing issues as mentioned above, where you are often running into either too hard or too easy combat. It also completely ruins action combat, because you can't balance player skill based combat around completely different power levels. It also leads to a turning point in those types of games, where your party/character becomes godlike and everything starts to be silly.
But that doesn't mean you have to take away the fun of getting better, which is one of the best things about RPGs. You just have to be more intelligent about design. Instead of hitpoint bloat and damage increase (2 of the most overused and boring parts of RPG combat), get better by learning new moves and techniques while still remaining fragile and doing the same damage. That way, when you run into a bunch of low level peasants during late game, you have the tools to dispose of them, but if you don't use them properly, they can still kill you, instead of you just one-shotting them with a fireball or a gunshot. Also try to keep things balanced by keeping them realistic, even if you are a really well trained badass, that means you can easily kill enemies 1v1, maybe 1v2, but when significantly outnumbered, maybe it would be better if you lost. This would create more realistic and interesting worlds, and make the player think more throughout the game, about the kind of shit they want to get involved in.
