How realistic is WITCHER style combat? FUNCTIONAL FANDOM

night night we have problems you said to get armored yeah no we've got problems like what type of problems goblins goblins everywhere goblins you sure it's goblins oh I'm sure and what how how can you be sure it's Goblin all right all the Hops are missing and every single goat is pregnant the Hops are missing they hope they're missing I've decided to become a Witcher you know monsters we've got monster issues best we all we all know the best way to deal with monsters is become a Witcher yeah ready so it's like oh I mean sure that's gonna work oh I haven't thought about that yeah anyway I know a guy [Music] greetings Chad I am out here in my journeyman level Witcher kit to try to do some experiments and figure out how it is that a Witcher might actually fight taking some inspiration from The Witcher 3 wild Hunt mostly because that is a fantastic visual representation of how the witchers might move uh and maybe a little bit from the Netflix show we will see but I think the thing that we should start out with is understanding the context in which we are analyzing this which is in the context that the witchers actually are which is a fantasy Universe the witchers are essentially superhuman they have enhanced reflexes enhanced speed and they are trained to fight in this very particular way very often when we are seeing a Witcher fight he is fighting against an untrained opponent whether that is just some sort of brigand or something like that or a monster of some sort which obviously would not have taken a fencing class and this can help I think inform a little bit of how it is that The Witcher style developed with all sorts of pirouettes and Dodges because it's very very different if you are engaging in like a formal duel with another gentleman who has the same level of training than you are than it is if you are essentially killing actual creatures and people that are far below your own skill level and I think that it makes sense for the witchers to have developed this very uh agile dodging fighting style rather than focusing on guards and positions like that because when you're fighting a group of people where you're going to be overwhelmed you can't really rely on defense because eventually you're just not going to be able to defend from the amount of Gremlins or whatever that is attacking you so the ability to stay very mobile and attack very quickly in a bunch of different directions I think is very important and the amount of dodging and the amount of acrobatics that we may see with a Witcher is backed up by the idea that if you are fighting a very large creature like a griffin or a dragon or a troll or something like that one hit and you're done you it doesn't matter if you're wearing armor it doesn't matter if you are in the correct Ward you're going to get hit and that's just gonna be the end of the story so the only way around a situation like that is to simply not get hit and try to incapacitate the enemies as quickly as possible and this is exactly what we see in geralt's fighting style in both the Witcher 3 and actually in the Netflix show where he is almost at a very like high IQ level scene openings and ways to punish his opponents that isn't really done like in real life I know that this is potentially like a uh a subject that is gonna be a little controversial right because there are people that study Hema they're very very good at it and now we're talking about a fantasy fighting style that everyone agrees most people could not accomplish but what we see with geralt is consistently a very fast and brutal and unpredictable fighting style and the strategy I think there is to try to incapacitate as many opponents as quickly as possible so that the chances that he's going to get overwhelmed diminished considerably very very quickly by the time the fight really is actually even beginning whereas a a less experienced Fighters say might try to strike a guard and not really know where the openings are and there's a lot of just sort of testing the waters like this geralt he almost like doesn't really have a set fighting stance he sort of just is ready and I think that's a little bit of an intimidation tactic I don't know if uh you've seen that video there's a there's a gorilla that charges a guy and he just stands stop still and the gorilla goes oh that's he's not reacting at all I don't want to mess with him and I think that is the same idea here where what whatever it is that you do geralt is just simply going to punish you because he is just so well versed in the tactics and the variations of his own fighting style that there's pretty much nothing you can do that is going to surprise him it's a mind game so he stands very still and then there are very sudden movements and I this is maybe the first thing about the games that I think could change maybe slightly to make it a little bit more realistic there are lots of opening moves where he spots an opening and instead of just like going for it and it can be a little bit more fancy than just an extension like that um but he he sees an opening and then he like Waits time to like spin into it not entirely short that that's necessary we'll get into spins and Dodges a little bit in a second but the overall idea here is that geralt is so masterful with the sword and I think we could say the witches in general are so masterful in what it is that they're trained to do which is kill monsters and yes sometimes people that he uses his weapon in a way that most people would not consider doing and it's just simply effective because you're not used to seeing it or fighting against it so he can see these very very quick lines where a person is more focused on defense he's just so confident that he people are just lining up to be like geralt fence me and geralt's just like no and it's and it's over there's not even a chance to react to him so is there precedent uh in any sort of historical form of fighting for this sort of very wide circular movement and yes maybe even spins and I think that the answer is very large War swords like this vihander where the weapon is just so big that you have to keep the momentum moving in order to just not fatigue yourself and the idea there also is that the weapon is so large and your reach is so long that you are able to offend multiple opponents and defend yourself from multiple opponents so I would say that actually um with maybe a couple of tweaks geralt's fighting style for the most part is like a vihander fighting style but using a shorter weapon which again if we're considering what it is that he's generally fighting which is either multiple groups of humanoids or multiple groups of monsters that makes a lot of sense because you don't want to get surrounded you need to be able to offend everything all at once and when we're talking especially about a very large sword that is where spinning can come in because in good swordsmanship you are not going to want to fight against the mechanics of your weapon this has a way that it wants to move and you need to let it move the way that it wants to otherwise you're going to get tangled up and that's no good so there are situations where in order to keep the momentum going you are going to have to spin and so long as the weapon is continuing around you are offending your opponent if your reach is longer it's it's unlikely that someone is going to come in and try to take advantage of that and stab you in the back especially if you're super quick especially if you are aware when all of that is happening so that you're not just swinging as if there's nobody around but you're doing it with some intelligence and that is just up to the expertise of The Swordsman so to help illustrate that point I have a longer much heavier steel sword here stage combat weapon um and it's not as my hand or I don't have as vihander but I think that it will help get the same point across that in situations where you are attempting to keep the momentum going sometimes you just want to let that continue around and to not really worry about it too much and I'm obviously using this slower than a Witcher does because I'm not as strong as a Witcher and it's very different to watch someone do something and then be able to see all of the openings that you could exploit because I mean you can really only ever guard maybe two lines of attack at a time anyway there's always openings but to be able to actually take advantage of those openings in a real world scenario where if you fail you are going to be injured that's a very different uh that's a very different ball game I think and when you know you're fighting against a Witcher and he's wielding a sword like this super super quickly I don't know how many people would would really have the nerve to try to punish him for doing that in fact I'm going to do that right now so if I take everything off much more like Geral from the books he's just wearing a leather jacket I think I'm just wearing a canvas and all of a sudden I'm able to do a lot more acrobatic sort of things which as we've established is what you would want if you were fighting the types of enemies that geralt is going to be fighting and something that I'm noticing is that a lot of these attacks are attacks that you could do without spinning you're just adding a spin into it so this sort of strike right here which you could do advancing forward or coming backwards something like that it is the same movement as it is in the uh whirl attack animation from The Witcher 3 wild Hunt where instead of just doing this he's doing this uh and it's just adding that little extra bit of Mobility because if you're coming here I mean this is more defensive it this is where it comes down to the uh the expertise and the experience of the fighter himself or herself uh whether or not it is better for him to make those two attacks while keeping his guard up or whether or not he thinks positionally it's going to be better to have a step here where he's going to do a rotation and if he gets to follow through with that attack then great but maybe he sees that there's someone coming instead of wanting to block it he wants to reposition his body so that he's here the opponent I was just attacking is still here and now there's someone here I mean arguably you could just do that attack and then come here but it's a it's a position geographical sort of thing so it is that same sort of positional uh choice that the fighter has to make when it comes to doing something like a uh grip change as well now we've established that this is very limited it looks a little silly there's not really a reason that you'd want to do this but Chad actually has a very excellent uh fight scene autopsy on the blavacan fight with geralt in the Netflix show and he points out that there are a very rare number of instances where you actually would want your sword like this and that is if uh say that you were in very close quarters and now that because your sword is like this you actually do have a slight Advantage with what it is that you're able to do uh whereas someone who is very close like this like you could try to do a drawing cut or something like that or strike with the pommel it's really just up to the fighter now the problem of course comes with that uh reverse grip where I think at least specifically from a choreography standpoint if you are here for too long it starts to be very odd because you do want to be here this is just a very natural way to want to use a sword if a character is holding it here for like the majority of the fight as the preferred fighting style I don't buy that it just doesn't look as martially sound but if it's used sparingly and quickly as a transition from one attack here to another and then back again I think that can work just fine so say I'll do that same thing again here saying that there is an opponent here and attacking my right leg and I go to block now there are a number of things like here I could do um of course again up to the discretion of the warrior what the person thinks is going to be the most advantageous so you block you could come in here with a stab you could circle around and come here there's lots of things you could do but what I'm proposing is a grip change if you were going to close the distance and come in here for a quick strike especially if you're able to control that arm down here you're going to come in as with all of these things the spins the Dodges the grip changes there are other ways to go about that but I guess what I'm arguing is that they can also be viable in the correct circumstances if a person can do them then a person can do that so there's an attack coming in you block and then come in for a grip change and then the key here is not to stay here and then try to fight the rest of the people like this for some reason you're controlling the opponent's weapon you're hitting them in the neck you're hitting them in the face whatever it is with this choreography but the key with this is that you are choosing to come into a grip change because you think it's advantageous and then immediately transitioning back into a normal sword grip that's just a lot of fun when it lands properly I'm just sandwiching my sword in between my hands and Swinging it around again I it feels very cool when I pull it off and the final idea that I'd like to hypothesize about is with the game versus reality the game because it's essentially just zeros and ones programmed into a computer it always has to look the same way so there are move sets but to just try to replicate those move sets in real life and say that now I'm fighting like a Witcher is not entirely correct because a move set is really more of a drill that you practice in order to get the muscle memory into your body so that later you can take those moves and do them in any order and then that is how an actual fight works because fights are unpredictable you don't know what's going to happen you just need to know this is the position I'm in these are the things that work I'm gonna do this thing because I have future prospects with this set of lines I know that this line turns out a specific way so what I'm really trying to experiment with personally is yes to use the uh Witcher movesets from the game as a way to drill that uh movement style into my body but then to be able to improvise and do sort of my own variations and it does just look like flourishing because I'm doing it by myself and I'm not really at the point where I would feel confident going up against other people and doing this because I'm a human being and I don't want to get hit and I don't want to look like an idiot so of course but I don't think that there is really a reason why someone that was very very good at this couldn't do it so as an example this is seen in the game it is a drill that Siri does it is a drill that escal does and it's actually pretty simple it's just a snake in a figure eight maybe a couple times into a backspin you come into a guard position here and then it's a and then it's a jumping attack and and that's the entire thing so it's it's a pretty it's a pretty simple strain of movements but that you wouldn't want to do that all in succession unless someone was letting you do that and people aren't going to let you do that but it's just nice to have the option available because I've trained it and I have actually been in fights where a spin has worked or where a jump has worked and I'm not just trying to use it wherever I can you have to know when to use the Gambit you got to know when to use the tool otherwise it's not going to work but when you know that you can get away with it it feels really really good geralt occasionally does this thing where he will actually jump from either side and that is another thing that I think is very very odd this is my sword hand this is my right hand I think it makes a lot more sense to jump so that I'm rotating essentially in the same direction as I would be if I was just doing a simple spin so that jump would look like this um but he also launches in from this side which makes less sense because if you're spinning in that direction you're presenting your non-dominant hand and your entire back to your opponent before the sword comes and that is a huge Telegraph this isn't quite as bad if you are still offending your opponent here with the sword and you're stepping back and you're going for it this there's a whole Space here where there's just nothing so turning that way doesn't make any sense if it was a spin it could work because that does work in in the in the world um in the world animation there's a lot of directional changes and the theme Here Again is that the weapon is constantly moving if I get into a position where I have to do a snake I do a snake if I get into a position where I have to come over hand I come over hand and the interesting thing about flourishes is they're of course easy to disregard because it's not it's not principled fighting um it's not sound in the sense that it's very easy to exploit when you're fighting someone that is going to exploit it not everyone is going to do that but I think flourishing as a practice to become more familiar with your movements you of course want to always be cognizant of what you're doing not just like flailing around do you want to be really meticulous and aware of what it is that your body is doing and learn from it and figure out what works and doesn't work and I think it is a valuable tool to tap into um so long as you're doing it for the right reasons and not just like to show off or whatever you always want to be able to come into a guard position because if I'm flourishing here right the mean is all I would just get stabbed but if I'm flourishing here and someone tries to stab I'm not going to let you do that you know if I'm if I'm like doing a flourish you know this is this is a block across the chest this is a block across the chest this is a block across the chest like I'm not just gonna let someone hit me uh because I have to finish the flourish the point is that this is a tool it can stop at any point and they're really just transitions between different positions that might be advantageous of all of the sort of odd fanciful moves that we see that witchers perform whether it be the spins or whether it be the jumps the Dodge rolls are actually the thing that I think makes the least sense and has the least applicability pretty much anywhere but it is faster to just sidestep it would be faster to just thin out of the way than it would be to like get to the ground and then stand up again a lot of you is exposed you can't see what your opponent is doing I think Dodgers make the least sense I'm gonna step back here and as I'm just playing around with the weapon letting it do its thing and I'm just moving my body around it and controlling it um it is a lot more fluid no matter whether I'm jumping whether I'm spinning that all does work fluidly together but the second I start trying to add roles in there's just a serious wall that I hit in terms of my forward momentum and that is where you're gonna get punished probably guys guys I've been watching Kramer's video and on what oh oh well well is this the width I it is it is going great and I found this uh magical uh looking glass of knowing and I'll tell you what the dungeon I had to go through to get this it's called The Apple Store oh that sounds that sounds like one of those really highly polished dungeons it was it was it was and and when you start to use this thing you just you need to know how to fight trolls just there's trolls everywhere yeah yeah that's that's fair magical devices usually have something exactly give us a look at this this have a look at this look the rolls that's not that's not look at the world I could do that oh you reckon okay what do you mean do I yes I could do that well come on then you're always like you've got old knees you can't do anything show me what your young needs can do fine I will then I don't think it works reverse grip damn it I wasn't ready so technically I won with reverse grip in a roll I'm not sure the role is out of here all right let's just see what Kramer does let's just see what he does yeah okay oh sorry wrong tap embarrassing oh look I swear I don't look at Griffin's like that all the time I mean I didn't realize there was such a thing called horn Hub but I mean okay there is a reason why rules have a place in parkour it's to protect yourself if you're falling it is to it is to transition to another acrobatic move like that I don't think it works in Sword Play pretty much ever I've seen examples in Hima I think I remember seeing one guy do it and he just took his opponent by surprise so you may get one in so generally speaking I would say that the uh that the Dodge roll is the least sound the least viable option unless you are doing it for a specific purpose to position yourself if you're dodging because you want to end up on your knee or something like I don't know why you'd want to do that but if that is what you wanted to do you could roll into that if you wanted to gain a bit of distance too there's a little bit of a disconnect actually where on the one hand it does make sense that the witchers are going to be incredibly fast and Incredibly violent with their attacks so that they can eliminate as many of their opponents as possible so they don't get overwhelmed but then adding in a spin or adding in a jump or adding in a Dodge roll is an extra unnecessary movement that doesn't really fit with that very sort of Zen idea of I'm going to I'm going to deal with this threat in as few movements and as quickly as possible because I'm that good it's almost counterintuitive to that idea because if some were to come in right and I I like I could do like all of this fancy stuff and and cut them down that way I mean could right um but the perhaps it'd be interesting to see a Witcher that was just so efficient that it's you know sword strike is coming in rather than like doing this or like doing a doing a spin or something like that it's just a very quick very uh it's almost in keeping with the style of weapon which is like a medieval Katana with a long handle and the shorter blade so again to that end like you could roll if you wanted to end up in this position or you could just like you just kneel so I am really struggling to think of ways that a role would be viable because it's faster to just run it's even faster to cartwheel again don't don't cartwheel I've gotten away with it because some people just get surprised they're like what do I do um but like it's the Gambit idea you're probably not always going to get away with it you're probably only going to get away with it like maybe 30 of the time something like that if that that might be a very generous estimate a lot of The Witcher fighting style really boiled down I think is the idea of a Gambit it is high risk High reward um and very Dynamic the idea being that you are so fast and so aggressive that no one's really going to be able to deal with it and so if we look at little combination of strikes here where I'm coming across the block and then I'm delivering an attack that is a that is a fairly marshally sound response and it is also the same thing if I do a jump and positionally those things accomplish very different ends and it's nice to have all of those things as options especially when we're considering a Witcher who essentially has cheat mode enabled superhuman reflexes superhuman strength superhuman speed they're mutants so they can get away with it where as a normal person probably couldn't but having the ability to very dynamically deal with multiple opponents where instead of just coming here I mean that also works but the ability to really move around the terrain and deal with multiple opponents that way um whereas probably the sound thing well most people might do would be to just like sort of back up and try to hang on as desperately as possible The Witcher is a lot less concerned I think with personal safety and so that allows The Witcher that really allows The Witcher to dynamically influence the way the combat is going so that he has a tactical advantage in addition to a physical Superior advantage so a lot of what I'm doing here for the demonstrations uh just because it's a bad habit I gotta get out of is having all of the movements essentially be the same tempo which is not what you would want if you were actually in combat so I think it's good if the Witcher is constantly keeping that sword moving because an attack can come from any point here but what it would really look like more is is if there were the flourishes in between as as the moves to maybe confuse the less intelligent opponents not know where things are going to be coming from but then when the actual when the actual strike comes there's a Tempo change which is harder to do in a game because you have to be able to predict uh things like that but in in choreography for either TV or movies or if you were to try to do this stuff in real life you really want to make sure that uh you have those those quick Tempo changes to indicate strike is happening rather than having everything just sort of be nice and flowy that doesn't make as much sense so this idea of keeping the sword constantly moving maybe to confuse a a small monster enemy so that a strike can quickly come and accelerate in um becomes very difficult once we start trying to do that with uh the witcher's jumping attack uh spin it might be a little bit easier but with a jumping attack I'm almost thinking that the attack should come before you actually land choreography wise I think it might be like prettier uh to do it the way that I'm demonstrating in the video right now which is to have the attack land at the same time that your feet hit the ground but I think marshallally it makes more sense to try to have the attack come sooner so I'm going to give that a try so this is like the the pretty non-martial version and this is an attempt at a slightly more martial version trying to make the attack come before the landing we'll see how it works the ground is so soft which brings up another point about the way that the witchers fight if the way that the witchers fight rely on having like the perfect Terrain in order to pull off each of their attacks that makes it not very viable in a ton of different situations like it's really slippery where I am right now medieval boots don't have a lot of traction to begin with so that's what I've got Chad very excited to hear what your thoughts are on the matter I have run out of stamina at this point so it's time for me to take a little meditation back to you my friend Craig Matt thanks and that was genuinely brilliant my favorite point that he was making was the fact that witches they fight monsters more often and therefore dodging and more specifically spinning because he's probably fighting multiple opponents is going to be vastly more viable bit more viable yeah especially compared to something like Hema where it's a lot of one-on-one so when you're doing spin attacks on crowd control as we know from some of the things with Hema it it can work and crime was showing that it that it well you've got to imagine everybody there but Kramer was still showing that it could work well you you hit the nail on the head because there is some hematitises that explore multiple opponents and that's with montante right and we see spinning in montante with crowd control and it's like The Witcher mentality is taking that same mentality because not only the spins and not just attacks they're also Wards threats to keep the opponent at Bay and so the just flailing and spinning the sword around okay is actually a viable thing to try and maintain distance and it makes complete sense because in a in a lot of I suppose human Warfare where you've got people versus people their formations or their small packs and groups of people that are used to fighting with each other whereas when you have in historical manuals when you've got crowd control it's a massive people they're all unorganized just like beasts out in the world or Monsters out in the world it's completely unorganized and you're trying to keep everyone at Bay until you can isolate an attack and then go for that and animals depending on what type of animal and what type of monster they would get intimidated by this flashy bit of Steel in their face so The Witcher mentality is basically taking the philosophy of kind of montante crowd control and applying it to long swords and more kind of smaller monster dealing swords and I think you actually hit something that is subconsciously going to work on a realistic level too because creatures when they're trying to threaten an opponent they get bigger yes and when you start swinging a giants like you have an area of a threat that you just you become two to three to four times as big and it would give you a moment to attack exactly this would keep a monster at Bay but as we see in the montante tree this is right you can switch these into attacks pretty quickly and so this is actually a constant cutting motion but it is a spin and it's ready to go into the other direction side because the montante one they have attacks which go one side that side that side and they're constantly spinning around not that last one I've added that images but there are move sets that literally are fit in one side and then they go in for a cut and then they offend one side cut one side cut and they're just moving back and forth I have seen that as well and there's a lot of zigzagging movements for when they're defending castle walls and Castle doors and it isn't static or back and forward like a lot of the other behema it is zigzagging specifically for crowd control and then possibly isolating a Target they don't really go into to that part with that that element but and then I think it's I think it's yeah and then they have the wide attacks where just like attack attack attack attack attack where you're warding all around and you can incorporate this into a spin so you're going warding back front back front spin back front and you can keep and you're warding the back side as you keep doing it actually that maneuver is actually a bodyguard maneuver as well when you're doing those big spins it is designed to be able to have say a maiden that is ducking down while you're actually chopping away at everyone who's trying to to get to to her so it kind of translates to the game as well because I mean how many NPCs do you have to figure out where the Run speed or walk speed is exactly the right speed but you're protecting an NPC as you go through so there's a lot of realistic real-life stuff that we can take that I think actually comes into this well also there is an interesting utility in throwing in an actual spin because yes this is a spinning attack right and so people might say why would you then do an actual body spin instead of just maintaining this that's it you get to look behind you to see if any enemy is coming you actually are able to keep your eyes on more of the battlefields are you there and just quickly glance is a safe and so by doing this you're actually able to constantly see the entire Battlefield and where the enemies are and it works for humans and animals as well eye contact makes people back off a little bit in a threatening situation so it's a classic thing where I don't know if anybody's ever been chased by a dog but stopping to look at them usually stops them in their tracks and especially we've done things like this at our training where you're fighting multiple opponents at the same time and if you turn to look at them they suffering dancing on you for half a second so being able to spin keep an entire keep everyone at threat but then make sure you've got your range where you need it I think that's perfect and you know what this is making me realize we need to re-look at the whole spinning tactic and narrative in swordsmanship I suppose we have actually started to be a proponent for this haven't we well I I've said that there are some spins at work and some that don't and once upon a time a lot of people saying no spin is viable at all but then when we see montante it's like there and also other martial arts there are there are spins in those martial arts that are viable and functional so we need to do a deep dive and test it I think so because we've seen some of this stuff with with weapons even in modern octagons as well work so that sounds good that sounds that sounds good we'll have to find uh Tyrant thing trying to get the roles yeah everything happens well at the same time it's just like rolls like more dubious on Kramer was pointing out some interesting points with the roles and but we'll we'll test that as well we can and we saw sort of in our little middle thing that we threw in there that the roles there is just it is so so exaggerated you can see exactly what's coming but well well something to look forward to on the future videos here on chat diversity we're going to do Deep dive spin sword fighting tests sparring and stuff we hope to see you there and of course until that time yeah well foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

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Id: L_4e4jaeq7Q

Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023