Possibility of Dark Souls combat in Skyrim?

[Servius1234]

I'm just wondering what the modding community's thoughts are regarding the possibility of making Skyrim's combat more like Dark Souls'. Dark Souls' combat, IMO at least, is superior to Skyrim's. Here are a few key differences that make it so:

 

- Lock-on: In Dark Souls, you can lock onto your target. This forces your avatar to always face your target. You can move towards and away from the target, and you can circle them, but you can't move diagonally at them. Just forcing a square-on facing makes things feel more realistic

 

- The hits really hurt: In Dark Souls, if you get hit, it usually really hurts. If you take more than 5 hits from an enemy, you're usually dead. And this is from 1H opponents. Those using 2H weapons can usually kill you in 2-3 hits. But even when I jack up the difficulty to Master in Skyrim, it usually takes 2x as many hits to die. Harder hits would lead to more blocking and more careful combat, and help move away from the skittish frenzy of dinky hits that make up most of Skyrim's battles.

 

- Terrain collision: In Dark Souls, if you try to sweep a blade from right to left in a narrow hallway, you're weapon will hit the wall and stop your attack. This means that certain weapons work better in certain environments. In Skyrim, this doesn't happen. You can swing right through the walls. This removes a penalty of big 2H weapons (they suck in close quarters)

 

- More kinds of weapons: Dark Souls has your standard 1H sword/axe/mace, 2H sword/axe/mace, bow, and shield, but it also has spears and halberds, and a few different types of each of them that have different kinds of special attacks

 

- Each type of weapon has a few normal attack types and a few power attack types: In Skyrim, you have a single normal attack and a single power attack. And all that's different is the animation, the execution time, and the damage. In Dark Souls, there are sweeps, thrusts, chops, cleaves... and each has some cost and some benefit.

[Roltak]

I'm just wondering what the modding community's thoughts are regarding the possibility of making Skyrim's combat more like Dark Souls'. Dark Souls' combat, IMO at least, is superior to Skyrim's. Here are a few key differences that make it so:

 

- Lock-on: In Dark Souls, you can lock onto your target. This forces your avatar to always face your target. You can move towards and away from the target, and you can circle them, but you can't move diagonally at them. Just forcing a square-on facing makes things feel more realistic

Wasn't possible in Oblivion since as far as I know you didn't really have a way to control which way your character is looking. May be possible in Skyrim but I seriously doubt it.

 

- The hits really hurt: In Dark Souls, if you get hit, it usually really hurts. If you take more than 5 hits from an enemy, you're usually dead. And this is from 1H opponents. Those using 2H weapons can usually kill you in 2-3 hits. But even when I jack up the difficulty to Master in Skyrim, it usually takes 2x as many hits to die. Harder hits would lead to more blocking and more careful combat, and help move away from the skittish frenzy of dinky hits that make up most of Skyrim's battles.

Easy, just crank up the damage enemies do, I think there was a mod that had even harder difficulty settings so if you really like getting killed with 1-5 hits ... check that one out.

 

 

- Terrain collision: In Dark Souls, if you try to sweep a blade from right to left in a narrow hallway, you're weapon will hit the wall and stop your attack. This means that certain weapons work better in certain environments. In Skyrim, this doesn't happen. You can swing right through the walls. This removes a penalty of big 2H weapons (they suck in close quarters)

Not possible

- More kinds of weapons: Dark Souls has your standard 1H sword/axe/mace, 2H sword/axe/mace, bow, and shield, but it also has spears and halberds, and a few different types of each of them that have different kinds of special attacks

Short Answer: Not possible

Long Answer: Most likely hard to impossible to do, since you will have to implement the skill, keep track of them, the animations etc. all yourself what would make it a really hard job and most likely with quite some tradeoffs

 

- Each type of weapon has a few normal attack types and a few power attack types: In Skyrim, you have a single normal attack and a single power attack. And all that's different is the animation, the execution time, and the damage. In Dark Souls, there are sweeps, thrusts, chops, cleaves... and each has some cost and some benefit.

May be possible depending on what you define as cost and benefit, for example look at Deadly Reflexes and Unnecessary Violence both for Oblivion, they have enhanced the game with new combat moves and something like that will most likely come for Skyrim too.

[somevagrant]

Yeah, this thread is old, but I feel like the fellow who answered had no real idea what he was talking about.

 

- Lock On

Could probably be done, but who ever did it would really have to know what they are doing and it would almost def. require a script extender.

- Hits Actually "Hurting"

 

There are injury mods, but in terms of difficulty there are also many combat mods that come close to what DS did. DUEL comes to mind.

 

- Terrain Collision

 

This is possible and was shown in the infamous Game Jam vid, and might be apart of a future update.

 

- More Kinds of Weapons

 

Spears have been the major one, but in terms of adding it in and animation I've heard things along the lines of "Skyrim's Engine couldnt handle it" which imho is bs, or "They'll be added at a later date". Honestly, I am sure almost any weapon within reason is possible in Skyrim, you just either have to look for a mod or make it yourself.

 

- More Attacks

There are animation mods that fix this, albeit most of them replace vanilla animations with whatever theirs is. In terms of them becoming unique animations after pressing a series of keys, I am sure this is possible since you can already do this, albeit the animations aren't really impressive.

 

In total:

Yeah, its all totally possible but altogether time consuming.