Age of Conan dev video diary 5: melee combat!
by William Dobson 
Mar 17th 2008 at 11:01AM
Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan, Game mechanics, Interviews, New titles
Melee combat. It's one of the main reasons that a lot of people have so much interest in Age of Conan, and it's definitely something that makes the game stand out next to other MMOs. Having thrown out the traditional "auto-attack" altogether, AoC plays more like an action game, and in the newly released Developer Video Diary 5, we get an explanation of some of the finer points of this combat system.The video features Gaute Godager, Andrew Griffin, and Evan Michaels from the AoC team. We are told about the importance of weapon swings hitting multiple enemies at once, and how choosing between weapons will be more than just comparing damage, seeing as they will likely have different swinging arcs. The game's shielding and directional attacking features are also discussed, as well as knockbacks and other combos.
Of course, there's a lot of fan service (read: decapitations) too, so there's something for everyone. We're not too sure if the video features the new ground textures or not, but it all looks pretty nice. And bloody. Get a feel for the visceral combat by downloading the video diary here.
Of course, there's a lot of fan service (read: decapitations) too, so there's something for everyone. We're not too sure if the video features the new ground textures or not, but it all looks pretty nice. And bloody. Get a feel for the visceral combat by downloading the video diary here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Arabica said on 12:29PM 3-17-2008
Awesome video. Awesome ideas. That being said, the implementation is what customers will care about. Funcom always struck me as a developer that shot for the moon and as cool as that is no company can sit on their product forever as they redefine the genre.
Are they going to release on-time? Are the features that were advertised all making it into the game when it goes live? Forget revolutionary...is the combat system finished?
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TwistedBishop said on 1:13PM 3-17-2008
From what we've seen and heard, the combat system in principle has been done for a long time. It was the addition of hotbutton combo triggers, as a way to ease people into the combat system, which precipitated their delay back in October.
Age of Conan is coming up on the same amount of time in development as World of Warcraft. These things just take a while to construct, and rushing to meet a release date has never helped anyone.
That said, I have a good feeling about the May 20th release date based simply on the amount of press and marketing Funcom is putting out.
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