Fallout 4: 10 Core Lessons It Must Learn From Skyrim

9. Lose The Kill Animations

In an attempt to make the combat of the game more visually striking and perhaps to make players feel that they were doing more than just aimlessly swinging their weapons in the hope that they will cross an enemies path and fell them; combat encounters in Skyrim would occasionally end in a brief, staged scene where an enemy is finished off with some strike or flourish. In theory, these should be very cool. Leaping assassinations in any of the Assassin's Creed games work in a similar way and it looks incredibly satisfying to see your character hurl himself from a rooftop and strike an enemy down in one swift action. In practice however, the result was nowhere near as impressive in Skyrim. Though it was graphically impressive for the most part, a few lingering problems with clunky physics and apparent "air strikes" where the player's weapons seem to just slash the air meant that these kill animations never really captured the imagination or had the desired, awe-inspiring effect intended. Enemies often fell unnaturally against the player's strikes and never really sold the experience. Animations like this have previously been included in the Fallout series as well, most notably when the V.A.T.S system was employed, but have always suffered the same underwhelming visual effect that they do in Skyrim. It may be time for Bethesda to quit flogging this dead horse and cut these from the game. The overall experience would not suffer for this.