It’s a Tuesday night in Edinburgh, Scotland, and in the basement hall of a Church, there’s a fight brewing. A group of men and women wearing fencing jackets stand around a small ring of chairs. They include a medical doctor, a PhD mathematics student, an actress, a banker, and one exhausted games writer.
Inside the ring are two men, sporting heavy gambesons, thick padded gloves and sword-proof masks. Facing each other, they ready their weapons. From outside the ring, someone yells “Play”, and slowly the two begin to circle one another. It isn’t long before one makes a move, swinging his blade forward in a diagonal cut. The other steps neatly to one side, and there is a burst of sparks as the swords clash violently.
The blades stay together as the two duellers tussle. They aren’t locked as you might see in a film, they slide and roll over each other in movements too quick to keep track of. A few moments later the fight is over. I don’t remember who won, but I do remember the expression on Martin’s face as he lifted his mask for a breath of fresh air.
“Did you see the sparks?” he says. “That was pretty cool.”
Martin Page is President of the Dawn Duellists Society, which for almost twenty years has taught and researched sword-fighting with a wide range of weaponry, including Agrippa Rapier, Military Sabre, Sword and Buckler, and Martin’s own speciality – Medieval German Longsword. My attendance at his training session marks our second meeting. A few weeks earlier, I sat down with him and Guy Windsor – Chief Instructor at the School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, and one of the founders of Dawn, to discuss the representation of sword-fighting in games.
If you swing with your sword, and the other man parries, in real life that stops your sword, or moves your sword in some way. In the game there’s nothing stopping the swing from going through.
Historically, games have been fascinated with swords even longer than they have with guns, ever since the D&D inspired RPG found its way onto computers in the 1980s. Unfortunately, in terms of sword-fighting, any chance of a realistic portrayal has been hobbled by dice-rolls and stats. Recently however there has been a spike in popularity of games which ostensibly present the art of sword-fighting in a more authentic manner. The likes of Skyrim, Dark Souls and Dishonored place less emphasis on numbers and more on player skill. But how much closer are these games to a genuinely accurate portrayal of sword-fighting?
Sadly, the short answer is: not very. There are a whole host of problems with realistically depicting how swords work in games. “From a swordsmanship perspective, it’s all wrong,” Guy says. “You can’t model swordsmanship if you’re pressing a button.” This if the foremost issue with sword-fighting games. Conventional control systems simply aren’t built to represent sword-fighting accurately. The binary on/off nature of mouse buttons and gamepad triggers are completely at odds with the fluid, intricate nature of swinging a sword.
Motion controllers hold more potential, but there are complications here too. Guy does motion-capture work for Neal Stephenson’s ambitious virtual sword-fighting project Clang!, which will use custom motion controllers, but there are certain issues that he believes are very difficult to resolve. “If you swing with your sword, and the other man parries, in real life that stops your sword, or moves your sword in some way. In the game there’s nothing stopping the swing from going through, and that is the single most challenging problem we have to deal with.”
Even the basic action of swinging a sword is wrongly depicted in gaming. In The Witcher 2, for example, sword-fights often consist of a series of traded blows. You swing, the enemy dodges or parries, then the enemy swings and you parry. A real sword-fight is a far more complex, nuanced affair. “We’ve got only two things that look remotely like a parry in the traditional sense." Martin says. “It’s entirely possible, with a two-handed weapon, to parry an incoming blow with one end of your sword while cutting the top of the other guy’s head off with the tip. So you’re basically parrying and attacking with the same weapon at the same time.”
It’s entirely possible, with a two-handed weapon, to parry an incoming blow with one end of your sword while cutting the top of the other guy’s head off with the tip.
I saw this for myself while training with Dawn (the simultaneous parrying and attacking, not the cutting off of heads. Safety is paramount here; Martin even apologises when I get overenthusiastic and pull a muscle in my leg). After training, the more experienced members of the society duel competitively. Most fights were determined in a matter of seconds, and usually involved a single clash of blades, followed by a series of more delicate manoeuvres as both parties tried to score a hit using the tip of the sword while defending their own bodies with the rest of the blade. “There’s very little mechanical difference between defensive actions and offensive actions in real swordplay,” Guy says.
This quickly became apparent while training too. There is a simple technique in German Longsword called Zornhau – the first one which Martin teaches. It’s a diagonal cut performed by essentially punching the hands forward from gripping the sword upright at your side. This can be used both offensively and defensively depending on your footwork. Step forward, and it can be used to attack, yet step to the side and it can block that exact same technique if it is used against you.
Another aspect of sword-fighting which tends to be lacking in games is an understanding of fighting styles. In many games such as Skyrim, style is often limited to choosing between light and heavy attacks and the direction of your swing. Dark Souls fares slightly better, as it takes into account that different swords are used in different ways. In fact, Dark Souls has probably the best depiction of sword-fighting using a conventional gaming control system thus far, as it also emphasises footwork and taking advantage of your weapon’s reach*.
Dark Souls got a lot right, but it's still far from representative.
But style isn’t restricted to individual weapons. Martin specialises in German Longsword, whereas Guy specialises in Italian Longsword. These differing styles are largely dependent on the source material from which understanding of techniques is derived, though there are also certain techniques unique to each style. “German Longsword is more metal,” Martin summarises.
European martial arts dominated the globe. Every modern army is using European martial arts because they are the most effective.
All of this might sound disheartening, but it’s important to emphasise that the lack of realism in the way games portray sword-fighting isn’t entirely gaming’s fault. These discussions should always come with the caveat that games aren’t necessarily intended to be realistic. Sure, the sword styles in Dark Souls might not be wholly accurate, but neither is fighting a giant fire-breathing gargoyle with an axe for a tail. I think it’s safe to say no sword style on the planet has been designed for dealing effectively with that. Furthermore, unlike, say, firing a gun, to become a proficient dueller can take years of practice, so representing swordplay realistically in a game while keeping it accessible is a monumentally difficult task.
Yet the most significant reason for the lack of realistic sword-fighting in games actually has little to do with games. Rather, it is an ongoing issue with our understanding of European sword-fighting. Western martial arts have historically been focussed on technological and tactical advancement, with little consideration for tradition. Consequently, a lot of the knowledge about how medieval knights and men-at-arms fought has been lost. In comparison, Chinese and Japanese martial arts, for which tradition has always been a defining factor, are much better understood.
“Japanese martial arts get all kinds of government support and government funding. And they have been hugely spread across the globe since the 1950s when the GIs brought them back from occupying Japan,” Guy points out. “They get a whole lot of credibility, which they perfectly well deserve, but which detracts from our own culture, our own cultural heritage. European martial arts dominated the globe. Every modern army is using European martial arts because they are the most effective.”
Link: not the world's most realistic sword-fighter, but MotionPlus helped.
In the last twenty years there has been a more concerted effort into researching and rediscovering traditional western fighting styles, mainly by groups like Dawn and the European school rather than Universities or government-supported bodies. Even if you have the desire to do the research and the appropriate material to do it with, however, you still have to deal with the issue of interpreting an instruction manual for sword-fighting which is written in medieval German or Italian.
If it breaks for an individual they need to work on their style of the art. If it breaks for the class, then there is something missing in the syllabus.
“The thing is, the medievals loved to try – because they had nothing to do all day – to try and compress one word with like a million meanings,” Martin emphasises. “And you go ‘which did he mean?’ when actually he meant all of them.“ Guy has just completed an interpretation of one Italian text which he has been working on for over ten years.
The challenges don’t end there, either. Interpretations of sword-styles are constantly fluctuating as new evidence is uncovered and new ideas emerge. “We have an intermediate class, where basically what happens is I push until something breaks.” Guy says. “If it breaks for an individual they need to work on their style of the art. If it breaks for the class, then there is something missing in the syllabus, and so I develop a drill to fix that problem.”
So not only have gaming technology and mechanics been thus far inadequate for creating a convincing sword-fighting game, the knowledge-base about traditional western martial arts has been insufficient for transposition into entertainment mediums. Only now have the two reached a stage where creating a compelling sword-fighting game is plausible, which is why Guy is cautiously optimistic about Clang! “We will have succeeded if somebody who plays the game turns up to one of my beginner’s courses and has an advantage over those who haven’t played the game, because he understands how the system works,” he says.
Until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with gaming’s existing repertoire of wildly unrealistic but massively entertaining blade styles. Or just prostate ourselves before Bushido Blade.
*Thanks to Hugh Hancock for his input on Dark Souls.
Rick Lane is the appropriate freelancer for various magazines and websites. You can ask him for careers advice on Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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