SHINAI

Video game project. New logs on Sundays!

1. Swords in games

Let me tell you about my favourite weapon type in video games. A whistling white blur, a trail of light, a flexible and natural extension of the body. The Master Sword, the Keyblade, the Nail, the Saw Cleaver. All of these are wielded with such ease that the enemy can do nothing but be enraged and lash out, provoking the player's defensive instinct. Blocked, parried, dodged. All with a single button press. The player character will perform incredible feats of agility without breaking a sweat. Therefore, for the player, the difficulty of the game is not about performing the moves, but about getting the timing right and managing your resources. In the Souls series, players memorise attack patterns until they can dodge or parry within a window of a tenth of a second, just so they can go for an extra hit. It's brilliant. And when a boss is finally defeated, the reward is the feeling of the utter domination of an apex predator.

But what about the games that get closer to realistic swordplay? In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Ubisoft's For Honor, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, players can feint, attack or defend at specific angles in an especially deadly game of rock-paper-scissors. Among the three games, while Deliverance certainly had the weight, rhythm, and danger of medieval combat, there is something so incredibly intuitive about using the Wii remote to aim Link's skyward sword. What I'm burning to know is what else could be done in the design space. How long is it until we see a game that feels like swordfighting but has a completely new control scheme? I have some thoughts about where this could go and how the mechanics could be implemented, and that's the purpose of this project.

16th June 2024