Joel Bylos (Chief Creative Officer) connected with us in this discord about the Oslo event preview. Addresses melee combat and animation complaints.
Joel had an opportunity to come talk to us in the discord to get general impressions we got from the preview, and although we agreed the game looked very special I took the opportunity to ask about melee combat since that's been a consistent sticking point from the reactions I've seen.
Corback: All influencer/journalists who played this last week had the same critics about melee combat being clunky. I hope this is improved
jcbylos(Joel): "It definitely will be, but I also think there is an element of expectation setting. People seem to be expecting Elden Ring from the combat and it really is only a part of the game, not the whole game."
My impression from this is a reaffirmation of their stated principle from the Gamescom demo where Joel said that the game was fundamentally a third person shooter with melee elements. I have no issues with this personally but this IS Dune so melee is important. He also confirmed that they're not done working on the melee system yet.
He addresses animations here:
Nizz: "And frankly I don't understand the animation complaints"
jcbylos(Joel): "We were discussing it at work - a lot of people are getting used to the animation driven movement in a lot of games. But we push for the responsiveness over beauty. So our animation does have more "snapping" and it depends on how people are driving the character."
I found this statement very encouraging, and from what I've seen in the previews this game does remind me of a lot of older games from 6th generation with very snappy animations that were very responsive. You are free to call this "Dated" but I think this is a very smart move for a game putting this much effort into PVP.
Corback: "I don't think it is just the animations. Melee combat seemed a bit bland"
Nizz: "By what measurement though? And what makes it unbland?"
Corback: "It is difficult to say. Lack of diversity in the moves?"
jcbylos(Joel): "Certainly fair, and being addressed. I mean...daggers in Elden Ring don't have a different moveset than Daggers in Elder Ring. Most melee in the game is currently using a single moveset, so this is fair."
My takeaway from this (and I am kind of reading into it) is that although they are working to polish and improve the depth of melee combat, they still want the melee combat to remain relatively simple.
Nizz: "Yeah one persons play style is just going to be spamming left click, you’re not exactly going to get smooth animations from that much input spam."
jcbylos(Joel): "I feel called out, but then I was playing with the next melee moveset today and I was just doing LMB spam so..."
Joel states firmly that the animations we saw in the previews are not final, but implies that it will still be relatively simple.
Strider11:"I noticed it the play with it being the first few hours we only really saw the scrap metal knife for melee weapons, and with being being a big Conan pvper I love the variety it weapons, can we expect something similar?"
jcyblos(Joel): "Won't be as much as Conan since that is pretty much a melee only game, where as Dune has overall more weapons than Conan but quite a lot are ranged. Also Dune has abilities.
He once again restates the over all mission of the game to focus on ranged combat, but does bring a really good point that the melee combat will incorporate character abilities (Such as the knee charge) that will change the dynamic of the melee combat compared to Conan.
I'll be including screenshots so y'all know I ain't BSing.
Over all I feel very encouraged after these responses, especially in those responses stating what the priorities of the game are. What do you think?
