I was recently re-watching Borgia, the show centred on Pope Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, the start of the Italian Wars, and with guest appearances by one Pope Julius II (such a good evil man!). And to be clear, I’m talking about the good show, the one created by Tom Fontana. Why is this the good show? Because it captured the correct feeling of those times. I wanted to see the Jeremy Irons version as well, but seeing Cardinal della Rovere, before he became Pope Julius II, being portrayed as a pious and moral man made me turn off the show after a few minutes. Pope Julius II was not a school boy! He is the War Pope!
If you are like me, and you want more of that authentic feel of Italian Renaissance, and you want to hear more about imperfect men (and a few wonderfully crazy women) doing extraordinary feats before finding a tragic ending, I recommand you to start listening to podcast episodes from The Art of Arms, the Maestro Wars in particular.
Around the same time, I was playing a bit of Elden Ring, trying out the new DLC. And no, it’s not for me. Yes, I can defeat the bosses and all that, but the experience leaves me empty. I still enjoy Dark Souls I and the feeling of weight and purpose in performing an action. But enemies flailing around in a light-show that makes it impossible to see what’s going on, moving in a way that defies physics and the sense of gravity is not more, but less engaging for me. I can defeat a boss using the game mechanics provided, but I’m not engaged in the game, and I’m not having fun as a result.
Video games suffer too much from betting on the cool factor at the expense of the weight and impact of reality. And that is a shame, since we know that games grounded in history such as Kingdom Come Deliverance and its sequel are appreciated and anticipated as an engaging experience by fans. Which is why I started by mentioning the Art of Arms podcasts.
Now, let us look at a game that Matt Easton, on his scholagladiatoria channel, promoted as part of a paid advert (and I’m happy he got paid). The game in question: En Garde!
You had a good look at the picture? Good! Now, I can forgive the history adjacent setting as just a matter of flavour. I can even let go of the tired trope of a female protagonist that spews one-liners that she’s better than a man… as every other line of dialogue (Shakespeare this is not). But who thought that a top quillon being bent towards the hand was a good idea on a rapier? What can you expect from a game designer that doesn’t even understand the basic of a sword, or historical reality? Crap, the answer is crap, there’s no secret, we all know that!
By comparison, Berserk, the Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kentaro Miura, the series that is known for its dark fantasy word and a protagonist that wields an unwieldingly large sword, has realistic and functional swords in it. That’s why the fantasy works so well, because the author understands reality as a starting point.
For anyone unfamiliar with Berserk, here’s a succinct 21 hours video on the story up to Miura’s recent death (the age restriction on the video is due to the dark themes of Berserk, not due to anything explicit in the video itself). The story is ongoing…
So while blogs and podcast may offer lazy writers or future AI script generators with ideas of what shows to make (cough, a series on the Bentivoglio family; again, follow The Art of Arms), video games still need better animations centred around actual fencing systems.
Kane Shen, a review of modern sharp swords and designer of an upcoming video game Fortune Favours The Bold, has released an animation pack for Unreal Engine based on the motion capture of using real swords. Look at the real moves and their representation in the game engine. It’s simple, but at the same time it’s effective, and it opens the door for such engaging experiences.
Last, it doesn’t matter if this or that move was not executed in the best way, or that the side-swords passed through the larger shield in the animation compared to the real life sopra il braccio (over the arm) action performed with a smaller buckler. All these can be improved on in real life or fixed in game engine. I simply want to applaud the start of something better, something that I personally crave. I want to see a simple game mechanic that accounts for realistic sword movements, and I want to see compelling stories inspired by micro-history events.
Down the line, this may even be a way to teach fencing to a virtual classroom spread across the globe. And as a perpetual student, there are plenty of times I wished I could zoom in and rotate the video examples, so I could see and understand a technique better.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any individuals I mentioned in this post, nor am I to gain financial compensations from this.