Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Bob and Weave - Combat Animation

Characters that move next to each other should engage in combat (shuffling, jabbing, feinting, etc...) That would make the battles SO much cooler and would reflect what's going on in the game. The combatants are NOT standing in place.

One of the innovations of Neverwinter Nights when it followed BG2 was for the characters to dodge attacks, or block, etc. They looked like they were fighting instead of just taking their licks while someone attacked.

The "backstab" issue got me thinking. Characters (in the game world) aren't standing in place, facing one way. They are bobbing and weaving through combat, threatening the space all around them. That's why the current backstab shouldn't be there.

Also, if an attack "misses" because of armor, have the animation reflect that. I saw a streamer complaining that he kept "missing" an ogre and he couldn't understand why because the ogre was as wide as a barn. He had no idea that armor (or natural hide) was deflecting his attacks. Animations could show that. We could also get more nuanced messages instead of just "miss" you could see "blocked" "deflected" "couldn't penetrate" and that sort of thing. Make it obvious to the player what's happening both in messages and animation.

Yeah, I think it would be a good idea to not have the attack/spell visibly hit the target and then "miss" it somehow. Misses/blocks should be visually reflected as such.

Quite surprising it works like this, since they put all those extremely exaggerated animations when selecting action in order to improve readability.

I totally agree.
This is a goo suggestion for combats not visually like another fronzen TB game.

Yes, seeing a character dodge an arrow or firebolt would be awesome!

Just not having the sound of a "hit" and a visual of the character getting hit would go a long way. Dodging animations would be great, of course.

Cool idea, not something I want Larian to spend time on before they have polished the game as is, and improved their ruleset.

I'm not saying advanced dodging animations should be the priority (there's a lot of other animation-related stuff that seems more urgent), but you need to remember that Larian's resources aren't... entirely fluid, so to speak. Working on animations will hardly impact works on the ruleset. Done by different teams.

The coding of a "dodge & block" system would involve work from coders and not just animators. However, the team on this game is huge. Surely they are working on a lot of things at once.

Fair point, but I think it's trivial - something like "if hit, display animation 1/if miss, display animation 2". Idk, I could be wrong, I'm not a coder. Seems rather simple though, unless you want something more sophisticated, like when to dodge and when to block.

Yes it would actually be awesome. Archers shooting arrows with no consequences. Melee fighters dodging, blocking and parrying. Casters checking their spell book, preparing their spells or looking for ingredients in their pockets. I would personally love to see something like that.

It's a great idea.

To take it one step further, I'd like characters to engage in combat animation whenever they "threaten" another combatant in melee range. Basically the two (or three or whatever) combatants would look like they are in battle.

So even if it's the fighter's turn, the wizard and the goblin standing next to each other would be "fighting" because they are in each other's threatened space. It could be as simple as a combat stance, but even better would be feints, swings, blocks, etc... make it look like they are fighting (or at least aware of each other's presence).

That would be awesome if they could spare the animators. I hopes it gets implemented eventually - it would make turn-based a little bit more lively/immersive.