Klimat
[13] Hero
Important note: a character wielding a tower shield to the side in battle will look a complete moron on top of all other problems. That is not how a tower shield is supposed to be used historically and/or logically.
Soul Calibur VI: General discussion
- Thread starter SSfox
- Start date
DanteSC3
[14] Master
I included Elysium because she has a unique take on Pyrrha Omega, as well as that being her “canon” style, as it were. Her Pyrrha Omega modifications, especially with her unique Critical Edge, makes the style play as differently as Pyrrha Omega does from Pyrrha.
I didn’t include Link because it’s not feasible for him to return (see SoulCalibur II HD Online), due to Nintendo.
WuHT
Premium Moderator
also consider the running forward animation. Look at how Sophitia/Cassandra run with bucklers, a larger shield can't be animated the same (for gameplay reasons)
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Ehhh, not really--or, not even remotely, if you'll forgive the bluntness: she gets a few frame advantages on a handful of attacks and some animations that are slightly tweaked to look more like Sophitia. And her unique critical edge is utilized whatever style she is emulating. Pyrrha and Pyrrha Omega meanwhile are as radically different as you can get within the S&S subdomain.
Yeah, but you were talking about a pie-in-the-sky concept anyway--those characters are almost certain to never all be in the same game, much as I wish it were otherwise--so you might as well go hog wild! ;)
Well, if we are going to criticize on that level, let's be more precise: in terms of how a tower shield would be used as a historical/logical matter, it might actually be held at any orientation relative to the axis of the body, because it was typically used in formation fighting, be it a shield wall or testudo (tortoise shell) formation. It's the entire context that would be off here, not how the shield was held relative to the body. Now, would a soldier want to hold the shield directly in front of them and poke around it if they decided to fight one-on-one with the shield? I guess, maybe? You would kind of have to move it to the side quite a bit if you wanted to try to get an effective strike, in truth--otherwise you'd really never have the chance to go on the offensive and your opponent could just wear you down by circling you and forcing you to constantly re-orient the shield (ineffective in this context) to defend glancing blows, and it would wear you down fast.
So technically, if you were married to the idea of fighting with that shield, you'd probably eventually have to leave it quite wide just to engage. But all of this just emphasizes the point that no trained soldier would be likely to try to fight like this: faced with a one-on-one situation, they would almost certainly just throw down the tower shield and engage with their primary weapon alone. Unless it was close quarters or some other situation that might justify its use--and even then, we're again talking about a highly contextual call.
Yup, significant problem there. Many tower shields were significantly above the knees, but they still weren't meant for running at a full-out sprint and it's hard to imagine a shield beyond a given size not looking awkward within a SC run animation.
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Klimat
[13] Hero
Nobody would just throw away a shield in real life no matter what, you should watch less Hollywood movies, lol
.That's the primary method, but not the only one. In fact in ancient Rome there were multiple gladiator types equipped with Scutum tower shields meant not to fight in formations.
Here is an ancient mosaic showing Secutor gladiators doing just that:
Here are some Roman Scutum 1-on-1 techniques:
SSfox
[14] Master
Agreed, but still Raven > Master Raven.
DanteSC3
[14] Master
I don’t agree. Pyrrha and Pyrrha Omega are both excessively Sophitia-inspired. They’re quite similar, despite the radical change in Pyrrha’s personality. Meek Pyrrha is just as down with mercilessly stabbing or grappling inappropriately as Angry Pyrrha, the latter is just more explosive about it. Cassandra and Sophitia are radically different. There was hardly any Cassandra in either Pyrrha style. Patroklos got those genes, I suppose.
So backstepping to this, just being more Sophitia-like from the berserker style, along with the Critical Edge (that I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about, I know she uses it on all the styles she mimicks, but I’m only talking about the Elysium that’s locked into Pyrrha Omega style, in that context), allowing a lot more interesting chains and follow-ups, it makes for quite the different style. I know there’s more actual moves different between Pyrrha and Pyrrha Omega than Pyrrha Omega and Elysium Omega, but all three of them are quite similar to one another, and yet have different nuances that make playing them unique from each other as well.
KostasGR
[14] Master
Ι 100% agree Raven had a great role in Tekken 5 and Tekken 6 and unexplained he was replaced by M.Raven! I like her but they should gave her another Ninjutsu style, no Raven's style!
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SSfox
[14] Master
I like both Pat and Pyrrah, but for Pyrrah i think she still looks a bit like Cassandra, more work in her design to make her more unique.
Also Pyrrah P2 is one of the best outfit ever.
Also Pyrrah P2 is one of the best outfit ever.
sytus
[14] Master
Raven is Master Raven's student, it makes perfect sense for them to share moves. They're not exactly the same like say Christie and Eddy are, Raven had duplication moves while Maven teleports. This also causes them to use the moveset they share in different ways.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
That's such an absurd and misinformed generalization I'm not even going to engage with it. And while the weapons arts I have practiced are from a very different school from those we are talking about here, my views on this are more informed from pragmatic experience than 'hollywood movies'--and that argument is an ad hominem distraction in any event. But I'll say this in response: I'm going to go out on a limb and guess I have seen a lot more practical sparring in this area than you have, just by playing the numbers game. Also, I don't really watch contemporary films set in the medieval era; my limited experience of the crusader period dramas of the last couple of decades has been that they are mostly rubbish.Nobody would just throw away a shield in real life no matter what, you should watch less Hollywood movies, lol
Yeah, and notice that the shield depicted is about half the size of the type we are generally referring to when we are talking about a scutum or anything that might qualify as a "tower shield".
I actually like that video, but here's two observations: 1) some HEMA enthusiast speculation / reenactment techniques are not necessarily always the gold standard for understanding how these weapons were utilized in actual warfare, and 2) even if we credit this a reasonable summary of how to utilize the shield with a sword (and at a minimum it at least gives us a decent indication of the speed of the movements someone with the right conditioning can achieve with weapons of presumably more or less period appropriate weight) the video doesn't really support your position to the extent you suggest: much of it seems to presume very little lateral movement and there's no reason to believe they aren't just sharing established doctrine for how to strike while in the shield formation or similar close quarters fighting, but they are merely demonstrating these strikes one on one because of course that's the only way to do it for a youtube video demonstration.
[Edit: Also, not for nothing, but the video demonstrates an approximation of real world fighting between two goes with more or less identical weapons and similar proportions and normal rules of physiology and physics: all of those things would go out the window if we're talking about how they might try to render this all of this in practice for the game.]
And look, I'm sympathetic to your credulity here, and of course I can't say for a certainty that no historical warrior would opt to choose the security of a shield, or even that for some of them it might not turn out to be the right decisions, but there are some factors you don't seem to be taking account of (or at least are not appreciating the full impact of) which significantly limit the feasibility of that strategy when utilizing the heaviest of shields. Again my experience does not involve shields, but as a general matter in weapons training, I can tell you that defense is more exhausting than you might think--in fact, if your opponent is setting the pace of the fight and your armaments (whether it is your weaponry, your shield, or even your protective gear) are substantially heavier, it can actually be more fatiguing to be on the defense than on the offense--you're actually bruning more calories and building up more lactic acid and strain in your muscles over a longer period.
If you had two theoretical trained period warriors, of equal skill and experience, and one is lugging around a heavier variant of the scutum (note, these would be heavier than those in the video you posted), then the other combatant, provided enough room to maneuver, is just going to make the other guy chase him around. And if scutum guy's only answer to that is to try to stab over the top of the shield on offense and angle said shield to deflect blows on defense, he's not going to have much luck doing anything other than wasting his stamina while lifting that shield (which blocks his ability to attack almost as thoroughly as it does his opponent's at any given instant) to absorb blows. Meanwhile, his own strikes are far from ideal, coming from a severely restricted range of motion, and the shieldless fellow can still parry pretty effectively. Scutum guy can use the shield itself to feint and create distance, maybe even glance his opponent's weapon wide and have enough time to strike, but trying to find these opportunities would, again, quickly prove exhausting.
Look, I'm not going to pretend to have the confidence that I can 100% predict who would come out on top at the end of that fight--I just don't know these weapons well enough to have that level of confidence. And that video has given me pause for thought by demonstrating the strikes where the shield is flipped along the transverse plane over the incoming blade (I find that a very nifty maneuver). But I can tell you what my instincts say about who I think I'd like to be in that scenario, if we were talking about a life or death struggle. And those instincts are informed by some significant practical knowledge, not whatever Orlando Bloom might be doing in some awful film. Am I potentially biased by a pressure to seek out what is a little more familiar to me? Maybe, but let me put it this way: my main thing is tonfa, which weigh waaaaay less than a steel tower shield and gladius, and yet it's still exhausting to be on the defense. Even if you rarely spar and are mostly just drilling, trust me when I say that absorbing impacts through your forearms is a tiring exercise.
Anyway, that's my hot take. Wow, we really got off an quite a tangent here and away from the original topic of how feasible it might be to simulate the style in Soulcalibur terms. Not that I'm complaining. Even with the 'hollywood' snark, I'm enjoying the discussion: at a time like this I could use a little contact sport, but of course that's about at the tippity top of stupid things one could do right now :[
[Edit: Also, not for nothing, but the video demonstrates an approximation of real world fighting between two goes with more or less identical weapons and similar proportions and normal rules of physiology and physics: all of those things would go out the window if we're talking about how they might try to render this all of this in practice for the game.]
And look, I'm sympathetic to your credulity here, and of course I can't say for a certainty that no historical warrior would opt to choose the security of a shield, or even that for some of them it might not turn out to be the right decisions, but there are some factors you don't seem to be taking account of (or at least are not appreciating the full impact of) which significantly limit the feasibility of that strategy when utilizing the heaviest of shields. Again my experience does not involve shields, but as a general matter in weapons training, I can tell you that defense is more exhausting than you might think--in fact, if your opponent is setting the pace of the fight and your armaments (whether it is your weaponry, your shield, or even your protective gear) are substantially heavier, it can actually be more fatiguing to be on the defense than on the offense--you're actually bruning more calories and building up more lactic acid and strain in your muscles over a longer period.
If you had two theoretical trained period warriors, of equal skill and experience, and one is lugging around a heavier variant of the scutum (note, these would be heavier than those in the video you posted), then the other combatant, provided enough room to maneuver, is just going to make the other guy chase him around. And if scutum guy's only answer to that is to try to stab over the top of the shield on offense and angle said shield to deflect blows on defense, he's not going to have much luck doing anything other than wasting his stamina while lifting that shield (which blocks his ability to attack almost as thoroughly as it does his opponent's at any given instant) to absorb blows. Meanwhile, his own strikes are far from ideal, coming from a severely restricted range of motion, and the shieldless fellow can still parry pretty effectively. Scutum guy can use the shield itself to feint and create distance, maybe even glance his opponent's weapon wide and have enough time to strike, but trying to find these opportunities would, again, quickly prove exhausting.
Look, I'm not going to pretend to have the confidence that I can 100% predict who would come out on top at the end of that fight--I just don't know these weapons well enough to have that level of confidence. And that video has given me pause for thought by demonstrating the strikes where the shield is flipped along the transverse plane over the incoming blade (I find that a very nifty maneuver). But I can tell you what my instincts say about who I think I'd like to be in that scenario, if we were talking about a life or death struggle. And those instincts are informed by some significant practical knowledge, not whatever Orlando Bloom might be doing in some awful film. Am I potentially biased by a pressure to seek out what is a little more familiar to me? Maybe, but let me put it this way: my main thing is tonfa, which weigh waaaaay less than a steel tower shield and gladius, and yet it's still exhausting to be on the defense. Even if you rarely spar and are mostly just drilling, trust me when I say that absorbing impacts through your forearms is a tiring exercise.
Anyway, that's my hot take. Wow, we really got off an quite a tangent here and away from the original topic of how feasible it might be to simulate the style in Soulcalibur terms. Not that I'm complaining. Even with the 'hollywood' snark, I'm enjoying the discussion: at a time like this I could use a little contact sport, but of course that's about at the tippity top of stupid things one could do right now :[
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Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Eh, point is, the practical differences between Pyrrha Omega Vanilla and Pyrrha Omega Elysium are nowhere near as massive as those between Pyrrha and Pyrrha Omega; that bit you rushed past at the end about there being more moves different in the latter comparison--which I will adjust to the more appropriate "many more moves"--is rather the whole point. I know part of this comes down to a difference in philosophy: thematics mean a lot to you in how you classify things. But still we are literally talking about movesets here, and the number of actual moves in common and the closeness in how the characters handle are the appropriate metrics.
And in those terms, I don't think we can count Elysium as constituting a whole extra sword and shield style just because when she mimics P.O. she gets some buffs and a very small handful of slightly altered moves with some frame advantages. I still say if we are going to reach to inflate the total, we should include Link in the list instead. Yes, of course you are correct that his being re-licensed ever is a pipe dream. But that's not the point: at least he's a genuine independent moveset to add to the list while we daydream about that perfect Soulcalibur game. ;)
Klimat
[13] Hero
By that logic it must be better to go to battle stark naked instead of wearing a set of heavy full plate, which is obviously a complete nonsense.
The guy with a shield don't have to chase anyone around, he can just stand there and wait for the other party to attack and should the other party decide to run away, exposing their back, Roman soldiers had pilum for that.
Again, your speculations can't survive the simplest scrutiny. Scutum shields were actually historically used in 1-on-1 combat by multiple gladiator types, that's a fact you can't escape (also I guess you can ignore it in your response like it was nothing).
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
That's a complete non-sequitor and a false choice and you must know it. There is a wide spectrum of levels of armour between 'stark naked' and full plate mail, gimme a break. And yeah, there are plenty of contexts in which you would not want to weighed down that much..this can't be news to you.
The same is true of his opponent--the point is that the guy who is manuvering the greater weight as they are doing whatever movement they may do is under a more significant prolongued effort.
Actually I did respond to that issue by pointing out that the shields utilized in the gladitorial context were likely to have significantly different dimensions from those used by the legions for formation fighting. But okay homie, if you really insist on having this conversation under such heavily scrutinized empirical terms and at that level of granularity, where is your historical or research source for the exact types of shields used in the gladitorial context, their size, and how much they weighed?
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Crash X
[14] Master
LisaK
[14] Master
Although not playable, she apparently uses Sophitia's moveset in Lost Swords. Our friend Inferno became a variation between Nightmare / Night Terror. maybe she ends up becoming 'Sophitia's replacement' in the future instead of Omega who could just be a variation of Pyrrha when activating Soul Charge.
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Hey come on, I've been doing my best to be nice, not withstanding the difference of opinion--you can't tell me I haven't. ;P It's the type of thing we ought to be able to civilly disagree over with a minimum of snideness.
Maybe! But the list was contemplating previous styles: "Wouldn't it be nice to see all of these in the same game." I mean, technically it was Dante who said it and she may have had something else in mind, but I think if we are going to discuss what a future game might look like in terms of roster selections, it is important to recognize that, to the degree that the number of previous movesets influence that discussion, there have been seven sword and shield fighters: Sophitia, Lizardman, Cassandra, Abelia, Patroklos, Pyrrha, and Pyrrha Omega. Eight if we count Link, and i'd say that's probably reasonable even if he is by far the biggest outlier in terms of both tone and mechanics.
Klimat
[13] Hero
Are those shields big enough for your tastes?
The first one is Zliten mosaic, the second one is a fresco from Pompeii.
Scutum parameters are not a mistery at all by the way, at least check up Wikipedia before asking questions:
"The scutum was a 10-kilogram (22 lb) large rectangle curved shield made from three sheets of wood glued together and covered with canvas and leather, usually with a spindle shaped boss along the vertical length of the shield. The best surviving example, from Dura-Europos in Syria, was 105.5 centimetres (41.5 in) high, 41 centimetres (16 in) across, and 30 centimetres (12 in) deep (due to its semicylindrical nature), with a thickness of 5-6mm., some source prove it weighed about 5.8 kg (13 pounds) to 6.8 kg (15 pounds)."
Scutum - Wikipedia
Rusted Blade
[14] Master
Most of what you present runs counter to your argument. I was well aware of the basic standard size, weight, and composition of a scutum utilized by a legionnaire. And I've seen the "best surviving example" referenced in that excerpt above: it is definitely not designed for anything but formation fighting--it, like most scutus used by the legionaries--is highly convex and would be incredibly ineffective/self-defeating for one-on-one combat. To the extent that scutus were used in gladiatorial combat, it is likely that they were adapted to be hybrids of more reasonable size. Even if they weren't, there's some things you need to understand to fully contextualize their use in gladiatorial games: the armaments of the gladiators were far form always chosen by preference of the combatants; they were selected for spectacle, with the various combatants given the armour and weapons of particular cultures to fit the thematics of famous battles being alluded to by the pitched fights. Life was cheap in the arenas and flare was more important than effective weapons for a slave who in many cases was meant to die against stacked odds, regardless. Indeed, for most of the history of the games, very few gladiators even had any military training.Are those shields big enough for your tastes?
View attachment 75797
View attachment 75798
The first one is Zliten mosaic, the second one is a fresco from Pompeii.
Scutum parameters are not a mistery at all by the way, at least check up Wikipedia before asking questions:
"The scutum was a 10-kilogram (22 lb) large rectangle curved shield made from three sheets of wood glued together and covered with canvas and leather, usually with a spindle shaped boss along the vertical length of the shield. The best surviving example, from Dura-Europos in Syria, was 105.5 centimetres (41.5 in) high, 41 centimetres (16 in) across, and 30 centimetres (12 in) deep (due to its semicylindrical nature), with a thickness of 5-6mm., some source prove it weighed about 5.8 kg (13 pounds) to 6.8 kg (15 pounds)."
There sources if you press the link.Scutum - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
But let's take a step back here: the goal posts keep moving, so let's see if we can try to pull the different elements apart:
.
- I presume we are still in agreement as to the original point: that the tower shield is likely to be awkward and difficult to map to Soulcalibur mechanics.
- Beyond that, there is the question of whether the scutum, or any shield that is fairly described as a tower shield, is a good choice for one-on-one combat. I think the answer to that is clearly no: there is some flex in this question because of the variability in sizes that the legionnaire shield evolved through in the republican era. However, if we are talking about the most prototypical and longest lasting variant that was in use for most of the years of Roman military expansionism from the late republic through the following few centuries, then no---those sheilds would have been (to varying extents) far from ideal for non-formation fighting--they were fairly specialized kit.
- However, even if we were agreed on this, there would remain the more specific question along the lines of your objection: would a fighter rather have that shield over no shield? well again, that would depend on the specific of the shield (which, you haven't really established just by linking to a Wikipedia page and saying "it has sources"), it would depend on the numbers of combatants involved, their skillset, what weapons they were given/allowed/forced to use with (or against) the shields, the layout of the fight environment and just oh so many other factors. But what I can say is that your categorical rejection of the notion that a fighter might cast a shield aside in favour of a different tactic is clearly an inaccurate generalization; there are many potential contexts (in the gladiatorial context or otherwise) where this might happen--where a tower shield would be reasonably perceived as more trouble than it is worth--for all the reasons discussed above.
- Even if we did grant that the shield could be used with effective offensive options that all allowed the fighter to strike over and around the shield without ever exposing the trunk of the body, in Soucalibur terms there's no way they could animate enough moves to flesh out a full moveset within those restrictions (there's only so many variants on a downward or sidewise poke). whether ti made sense with regard to real combat or not, they would have to open up that guard to accommodate their usual stylized combat flow. Which I will grant is just more reason why it doesn't work, which initial point of yours I continue to agree with.
Anyway, that is the extent of what I have to say on the matter. if you want to get in the final rebuttal, it's by all means open to you, but I think we're likely to only end up going in circles from her, possibly yo be the point were we become increasingly discourteous, so I'm going to leave my piece at that.
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Crash X
[14] Master
I’m sure you’re trying, but if it gets out of hand it would be best to take it to the PMs to avoid a natural disaster that occurs in here usually every month.