Yes, but I’m not making a real time game. I’m making a turn based game… turn based is different from real time with pause. It’s actually kind of a different genre.
You guys are killing me.
Does anyone have some examples of ‘low fantasy’ games that have fun visual combat?
I didn’t say anything about realtime (the Star Wars thing was just an example). The point is that there is a single turn for the player and the enemy each (not broken up between the teammates), so the player has to set up the attacks of all their team members at once for that turn. Does that make sense? I think a turn-based game would work better that way.
Thank you so much for posting a video of a melee based combat game! 
Anyone have other good examples?
Watched the first minute of that video. For me the most immersion breaking thing was how almost a dozen soldiers with loaded rifles does not even try to shoot the assassin while he brutally murders their friends one by one. I can get over some Orcs not attacking in the most sensible manner but, but trained soldiers with rifles not shooting and instead standing around patiently waiting for their turn to be murdered is pushing it…
I’m pretty sure that project is far enough in development that such changes are no longer feasible.
I suggest watching all the reference videos with the sound off too, so that you can really focus on the visuals. Imho the most important factor for making it feel gritty and grounded is attacks not clipping through objects unless it’s meant to actually be a lethal stab. Of course that’s not easily realized without a big animation budget. Particle effects might be the “biggest bang for the buck”. I’d try sparks for metal on metal hits and suble puffs of dust for everything else, plus blood splatter for hits that do damage of course.
At the beginning of this video you see how Dark Souls 3 handles these impacts. I think it would need to be toned down a fair bit for your game but the concept seems solid:
OK…Yeah, I was kinda unclear what you were going for before, now I think I’m starting to get it a little more. I thought it was supposed to be a straight action game.
The thing that bothers me about this kind of turn based system is when the characters can move real time, and it’s just the actions that are turn based. It kinda breaks the 4th wall of it all, because you are always questioning why you can run up to the guy, and he does nothing in response to you doing stuff.
The idea of turn based battle is to simulate as much of the battle as you can, so you can just focus solely on the strategy, and worry less about the tactics.
I think the biggest problem you have in terms of aesthetics is using that one static camera for everything. If you are controlling multiple characters against a mob of enemies, it might be better to us an overhead, wide shot camera of some sort while you are selecting your actions, then when you are doing the fighting, cut to an action cam, which is already framed up nicely on the two participants in the action, sorta like the little framed action cams you got in Final Fantasy X during some parts of the battle, or the kill animations you see in Assassin’s Creed Multiplayer. That would give you the more cinematic experience you’re looking for.
And for the logistics of a system like that, you might want to put the movement on rails a little more. That way you don’t have to guess where the camera is gonna need to be for every cinematic cut. So when you are taking action, you move the two characters as subtly as possible to a position where they are lined up cleanly, then move the camera where you want it to be for the nice tight shot.
I think another problem is the fact that the characters being attacked don’t look like they are aware the attack is coming, and just kinda stand there oblivious to the world, so if they had a little bit of reaction to the idea of being hit, like they looked scared, or like they are trying to prepare to take the hit, then it might also create a better look as well.
More Mad Max:
The reason I am using turn based is because I have a party and perma death, it has nothing to do with strategy. I can’t have perma death without absolute player control. I am under no pretense of strategy.
Have any good examples to share?
Looking at all this stuff is pretty amazing - absolutely everything is derivative of assassins creed no? Everything uses almost the same tricks, it’s just a matter of how much camera shake and how much you slow time on the impacts.
I love the sound design for ryse - everything is booming. It’s like over the top trailer effects all the way.
Actually, I love almost everything about ryse, from the hud to the quicktime events, same stuff as everything else but really slick.
Here’s the most similar mechanic I know of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-0RY4TTNwE
Valkyria chronicles.
Turn-based combat with free-form movement. When it is your turn, you can move around, stop at one point and shoot.
While you’re moving enemy that is guarding and can see you will be firing at you. So you’ll want to end your movement in cover.
The weirdest thing about your clip is that the enemies don’t stop moving completely. I’d expect them to freeze. Or almost freeze.
This game is one of my major inspirations along with mordheim city of the damned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yfOV0LBYHM
In terms of how much motion out of turn - it’s delicate. I’m trying to push some boundary a little and do something just a tad different. We’ll see how it turns out.
I appreciate all the advice and stuff - but really - I’m looking for great looking games that I can learn from and improve off of.
Nah it’s normal for jrpg combat, enemies and player are always animated. This is good because frozen looks a bit crap.
I know, however in your average jrpg it doesn’t look weird and here it does. probably because enemies do not seem to be completely pinned to the ground (because root motion). Also, I played Valkyria chronicles. In the clip something is off.
Well, see the list from before. Severance/Blade of Darkness, Enclave, Dark messiah of might and magic, Dark Souls, Heretic/Hexen, Thief, etc. oh, right and Final Fantasy games - i think that variations of combat system in XIII, XIII-2 and lightning returns might be of interest.
You won’t find this specific control scheme, most likely (it is rare), but you should get plenty of ideas.
I am not looking for games that use my control scheme.
I’m looking for games that have top quality combat visuals. Like Witcher, Assassins Creed, Ryse, etc.
Thanks though.
Erm. 
.
Oh well.
Try Gothic: Arcania, Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen, Lightning Returns, Dark Souls 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Tales of Zesteria.
Aside from Witcher and Dark Souls I don’t remember many of “high-budget top quality visuals” games being released on PC platform recently.
Dragon’s Dogma:
Tales of Zestiria:
Lightning Returns:
I’m really looking more for stuff like this - like really high quality visuals - feels solid - particle effects don’t break a low magic aesthetic. Really, a lot of rpgs lean very heavily on stuff glowing and particle effects, so it’s hard to find examples of games that don’t rely on these but still deliver high quality combat.
Looking for more visual examples of things that don’t seem very magical, but are still awesome to look at and feel top quality.
I understand that I cannot reach the quality of these games, but I’d like to kind of study them.
The problem is that there aren’t many of those games, and most of them aren’t “high quality”. Gothic, Enclave, Risen, Blade of darkness, Dark Souls… Witcher. And that’s pretty much it. Maybe there are some hidden gems I’m not aware of, though…
The problem is that none of these games have particularly good looking combat except Witcher.
I’m not trying to say these games don’t have fun combat or aren’t great looking games in general, but visually the combat in these games is not anywhere near top quality like Ryse, Assassins Creed, Shadow of Mordor or Witcher.
And yes - in general there aren’t many of those games, and it is hard to find them - this is why I started this thread 
How about Devil May Cry, then?
Also, you may want to define what you call “good looking”. Dark Souls combat is pretty impressive visually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCoreh1whEU
The videos you posted before resemble batman arkham asylum games and look bland/unimpressive to me. Meaning it is highly-scripted combat sequences with quicktime events and huuge reaction window. That includes witcher combat which, frankly, always looked quite bad (with exception of 1st witcher which had absolutely amazing animations, especially on group style).
If you want to go this route you’ll need to check batman games, maybe god of war, etc. It is hack and slash gameplay.
The reason why combat there looks good is because of their HUGE animation budget.
You should still check out Severance, though. Nothings adds more to “grittiness” than dismemberment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6YFdkacQ2E
Either way, I think that I’m done here.
In my opinion, in low-fantasy melee combat scenario grittiness will pretty much amount to:
And that’s pretty much it. I don’t think there are any additional secrets.
I actually agree with this - Ryse also leans heavily on dismemberment - and it can actually be very cheap to do (just code).
I don’t think this is entirely true - sure the elaborate executions and stuff play the biggest role. But there is so much going on visually in some of these games that you or I could learn from and reproduce cheaply - the time shifting, post effects, particle fx, HUD effects, and camera tricks.
It’s these things that I’m trying to find best of breed examples for (as stated quite plainly in the OP post).
If you look at those games as a game dev there is a ton to learn, and many of those things can be recreated (at least in part) by any solid programmer solo.
The big problem is that most of the ‘cheap’ ways to make games look good involve bright glowing stuff - either particle effects or hud effects and huge ‘larger than life’ style visuals. The main problem wth a “low fantasy” aesthetic is that it removes a lot of the most accessible techniques for ‘juicing’ up stuff like combat. The reason for this thread is to find other examples of games that didn’t rely on glowing particles or tremendous trails but still present best of breed visual juice.
//Opinion.
Sorry, I just don’t think so. For example, if you have time shifting, you need to be damn sure that every frame of your animation is polished. Because if it isn’t polished, every minor issue in your animation will be 50 times more obvious for a user.
So, you pretty much want to cheaply replicate something that took dozen people to create in the first place.
For example, here’s this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8q795GrCI8
See those two muscular hulk-like things fight each other? The scene last 5 minutes or so. It took 6 months to finish (they say this in commentary).
//Opinion.
No, there’s nothing to learn for a programmer. Assassin creed combat has complexity of dance dance revolution pretty much. The rest is polish on animation side of things. In the examples you presented, there are a lot of hours spent polishing visuals and animations, not programming (which is quite obvious when you play witcher, because geralt does not exactly have smooth combat controls).
You CAN’T cheaply replicate this. The only option here is to just sit and keep working on character animation, until your animation quality approaches mocap level.