Combat!

Combat is one of the tough things to deal with in video games. There’s pretty much only threeish ways that I’ve seen it handled.

1) With something akin to a d20 system. Tell the computer what you want to hit, the computer gnomes roll some dice, if you beat the enemies AC, you get to do YdX points of damage. (I’m thinking Knights of the Old Republic, primarily, but the Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dales work too. I mean, it’s pretty much cribbing from *THAT* kinda system.)

2) With the assumption that if the criteria in a certain formula are met, the hit is automatic and does a fixed amount of damage. Check the formula to see if they are in hitting distance and if you’ve used your weapon within the last certain amount of seconds. (I’m thinking Starcraft or other RTS kinda games here.)

3) With something akin to “real gun sights”. Point your gun, look down the thing and line up the skinny thing between the two chunky things on top of the thing you want to blow away and pull the trigger. If you didn’t screw anything up, you hit the thing. (I’m thinking Call of Duty or Mass Effect here.)

Sometimes the genre defines what combat you can or can’t use and, sometimes, the combat defines the genre in the first place.

The original Fallout, for example, gave you a handful of choices… you could shoot at the enemy and have a 65% chance to hit for 3 (or 4 or 5) action points… or you could take an aimed shot for 4 (or 5 or 6) action points and have a 60% chance to hit the torso of the enemy, a 50% chance to hit the right arm, 48% chance to hit the left arm, 52% chance to hit the right leg, 54% chance to hit the left leg, a 39% chance to hit the head and a 22% chance to hit the enemy in the eye… and if you got a critical when you were shooting at the eye, you could blind the creature and give yourself a bunch of chances (I’m looking at you, deathclaws!) that you might otherwise not be able to capitalize upon. (There was, of course, a BB gun in the game that gave you a 95% chance for criticals against eyes.)

Well, Fallout was translated *VERY* well into the modern era with Fallout 3. You could play it like you were playing a first person shooter, of course without jumping into the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (or VATS) where the computer would tell you what percentage chance you had to hit what part of the enemy’s useful bits.

What made this so very awesome was that if you wanted to play like it was Call of Duty, you could… but if you were someone whose skillset was less inclined toward twitch gaming, you could lean pretty heavily upon the VATS with no loss of enjoyment of gameplay (and, if you’re like me, you’re infinitely more likely to get a critical hit headshot while running backwards if you’re using VATS than if you’re not).

There was one exception that Fallout 3/NV made for this, though: Melee/Hand-to-Hand combat. It just gave you a percentage chance to hit. No shot at punching someone in the head or swinging a ripper at their kidneys or a crowbar at their knees… just a chance to hit. Hey, if you want to pop their heads like a potato in a microwave, you should go back to your sniper rifle.

Which brings us to Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

This has everything you know and love in your American RPGs. The missions, the factions, the ambiguities, the sandbox, the sidequests, and the gorgeous, gorgous amounts of customization. Moreover, this game has learned volumes from what Fallout 3 did right and what Fallout: New Vegas did better.

Except, of course, for the melee combat.

The archery is interesting (if not perfectly sighted) and the magic spellcasting alternates between harrowing and exhilarating… but the combat is swinging a sword. Or a mace. Or a dagger. Or an axe. There really isn’t much difference between these things, to be perfectly honest… and this makes the combat tedious. On top of that, the melee combat is the most efficient way to kill stuff at low to middlin’ levels so you’re going to be using it. A lot. (Though, the whole sneak attack thing with melee weapons is frickin’ awesome… but that doesn’t feel like combat at all.)

Which is too bad because the character development is a thing of beauty (they use constellations to describe skills… put points on different stars to activate certain abilities). The voice acting is much better than Oblivion. The conversation has been modified down to something sane. The smithing and alchemy is very much a delight. AND I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IN THE STORY!!! (Except, of course, for all of those side-quests that are very important too and probably should be finished first.)

It’s just that swinging a sword isn’t half as interesting as the rest of the game. This is bad when swinging the sword amounts to half of the game.