Hello, and welcome to New Frame Plus.
Every now and then, I like to pick just a single animation
from a game and really dig into it.
And, by patron request, today’s subject is the parry & riposte in Dark Souls.
But I say why stop at just one! Dark Souls didn’t, and neither shall we.
Let’s look at the parry & riposte in all three Dark Souls games
and see which one is animated the best.
Pop a humanity everybody, we are going on a JOURNEY.
Alright, first up: Dark Souls. Let’s give this thing a look ...
So, for the initial parry, the character takes a wide stance
and swats the enemy weapon away.
From there, they will either transition back to their idle animation
or the player can choose to follow up with a counterattack,
which varies by weapon type.
Now the parry is actually my favorite part of the whole thing.
I love how exaggerated this shield swipe is.
She’s not just carefully deflecting the attack,
she is swatting that sword away like GET OUTTA HERE.
There is a real sense of power behind this parry,
and a big part of that is the weight behind it.
Watch her hips:
You see how her center of gravity drops down and to the left
just before twisting to help whip the shield around?
She’s throwing her whole body into that parry.
Now, realistically, I would wager that throwing your shield out to the side like that
is probably not an ideal defensive parrying technique,
but I’m not an expert in swordsmanship.
And also, I don’t care!
In the context of a video game,
clarity is FAR more important than realism 99% of the time,
and the exaggeration on this shield swipe is very clear.
And a lot of that clarity is also thanks to the posing.
Look at the silhouette on this succession of poses…
The anticipation pose brings the shield way out to her right
(making sure it’s clear of her body so we can see it),
then she whips it all the way across to her left side
(again, clear of her body to maintain a nice silhouette),
and then the weight of the thing brings it down for the recovery…
even in the heat of combat, all of those poses are super clear.
Now, the enemy’s reaction to being parried is interesting…
Compared to the ferocity of the parry,
the enemy’s animation feels kinda soft and swimmy.
I mean, Dark Souls animation trends pretty slow compared to most games anyway,
but this almost feels like slow motion.
Maybe the original animation played back faster,
but when they started fine-tuning the combat,
they decided that the enemy needed to be vulnerable for more time,
so they just slowed the animation down a little.
Or maybe this was an aesthetically intentional choice
to help the player more quickly recognize the enemy’s vulnerability.
See, at first I was kinda wishing that there was
a little more sharpness to the start of this,
like more of a harsh bounce off of your shield to match the intensity of your parry,
but then I remembered that that’s what happens when you just do a regular block.
You see how much sharper that bounce is?
Maybe the softness here was designed to feel
tangibly different than a regular blocked hit,
to make the riposte vulnerability more immediately apparent.
Weird as it feels, I do have to admit that -
especially when combined with the sound effect -
it is IMMEDIATELY clear to the player that that parry was successful.
Now, if the player chooses to riposte here,
you’ll see the enemy’s position change instantly,
snapping to a spot right in front of the player character.
This warping happens because the riposte animation in Dark Souls
is what many of us call a “synced animation”.
See, when you need two different characters in a game
to physically interact in some complex way,
sometimes that interaction is only going to look right
if both characters are playing their respective animations at the exact same time
and in the correct position and orientation relative to each other.
Like, if this ogre is going to do a grab move on Wolf here,
then it’s only going to look right if his arms are actually wrapped around Wolf,
which means that the two characters need to be in the correct relative positions.
And if they AREN’T, well, then you gotta force it.
Because for game-play purposes,
you don’t want to make the player have to stand in the EXACT
pixel-perfect correct spot in front of the enemy for that riposte animation to work.
That would be super annoying.
So instead, if the enemy is vulnerable and the player hits the riposte button
while standing in GENERALLY the correct position and orientation,
both characters will warp and reorient themselves however is necessary
for that counterattack animation to play properly.
It may look a little janky when you slow it down, but it’s worth it.
So anyway: the riposte.
Once both characters are position correctly,
your character will wind up with their weapon of choice,
but the enemy fighter does something kind of... weird.
They will transition from their vulnerable parried animation
into this really neutral idle pose, which I don’t love.
It’s as if they’re intentionally lining themselves up to take the hit,
like they’re an amateur stunt person or something.
And, like, I get wanting to put them in a position where the deathblow is gonna look good,
and standing straight up and unguarded like this
does certainly makes them look super vulnerable to what’s about to hit them,
but this just makes it look like they’re coordinating with you.
Like: “Oh, you intend to riposte?
Capital! Here, let me get myself all situated... there we are.
Alright! OOF.
Very good, sirrrr….”
I think this would look way better if the moment before the riposte hit showed
the enemy trying to defend themselves,
like they see the riposte coming and they are making a futile attempt to recover in time.
Or maybe they could see the attack coming
and visibly recognize that they are screwed,
like a Punch-Out fighter.
Those guys wiff an attack and you can see it almost immediately in their eyes:
the realization that they are in very big trouble.
Something like that.
Or just keep them feeling off balance until the attack lands, whatever.
Anything but THIS.
It is a nitpick, but still.
Anyway, on to the deathblow itself.
The stab connects, the particle effects fly,
the camera does this great little zoom and shake to emphasize the moment,
and the drawn out finish where the enemy drops and
you kick them off of your sword looks awesome.
This is what a good synced animation can get you.
That said, you may have noticed that there’s a little bit of jank to that stab animation.
Watch the sword hand...
You see that little hitch?
It’s even more noticeable if you track the tip of the sword…
Now I’m not saying that these arcs have to be perfectly smooth or anything,
but this little hitch in the stabbing motion
really saps the move of some of its force.
It’s not as noticeable when played back at speed, but you definitely FEEL it.
And when I look at the stab animation more closely,
I’m actually not feeling a lot of impact from the animation itself.
At least, not as much as there could be.
It feels a little bit like the character's carefully placing the sword
in the right position and the camera and the particle effects
are doing all this work to make the attack feel powerful.
You can really see this when the character is
holding an extra long weapon like this one.
You see how soft that feels?
It does still work, but I think it would feel a lot punchier
if the animation was contributing more to the impact.
Speaking of different weapons, though, like I said before,
there are a few different versions of the riposte animation
for the different categories of weapons in the game,
but as you play, you’re quickly going to notice that the riposte animations
they use for some of these weapons seem... a little mismatched.
At the end of the day, there are a LOT of weapons in Dark Souls
and only a handful of riposte animations.
So you are occasionally going to see some very silly-looking stabs.
But I’m not super bothered about this one,
because if your two options are to either have some silly-looking ripostes in the game
OR significantly reduce the number of weapons just to avoid that problem,
I’ll take the silly ripostes.
This game kinda needs those little dashes of levity anyway.
Last point (and this one’s pretty small, but)
look at the player character as she settles back into her idle.
You notice that little last-second twist on her limbs?
I believe that this is a quick blend from the male’s idle pose
to their female version of that animation.
As best I can tell, both masculine and feminine player characters in Dark Souls
are animated using the same animation rig and skeleton.
As you can see here, the two characters have been designed
to not have different skeletal proportions.
Their limbs and such are all the same length.
And this would likely be done because they didn’t want to have
to make two versions of every animation, which is reasonable.
If everyone’s animated on the same skeleton,
then they can all pull from the same library of animations.
But the animators did create a slightly different idle stance for feminine characters,
just to make them feel just a little different.
And the problem appears to be that all of the animations are
designed to transition back into the standard idle animation,
not the feminine variant they made.
And so, as she finishes the riposte, we see her step back into the default pose first,
then quickly shift into the fem one that she is meant to be using.
It’s another tiny polish thing. Not that huge a deal.
Theoretically, this could be fixed by having that blend start much sooner
(like maybe here) so that by the time she hits this pose,
she’s already in the correct idle stance.
But maybe there’s some technical reason that wasn’t possible for them, I don’t know.
Alternatively, if they had some more room in their animation schedule,
an even better fix would be to create some custom transitions
so that fem characters could transition directly back into their own idle
instead of going to the masculine one first.
But I’m guessing this was considered a pretty low-priority problem,
so they just opted to accept that minor bit of jank and move on.
I would argue that just not having a different idle stance for the female characters
would be the preferable fix in this case but, alright. Fair enough.
Overall, though, I would say this animation is pretty successful.
Slightly lacking in polish maybe,
but that’s pretty par for the course for Dark Souls 1 animation,
What matters is that it feels great in the moment, the clarity is good...
Solid 4 out of 5 stars.
But let’s move on to the sequel: Dark Souls II...
The entire structure of the parry and riposte here is very different.
Parry the enemy’s attack and now they will fall on their butt.
And from there, after a slight delay you can follow up with the riposte.
First let’s talk about the good things:
that weird blend back into the feminine idle pose at the end?
That is now fixed.
It appears that both masculine and feminine characters use the same idle pose here,
so problem just kinda sorted itself out.
Hooray!
And that concludes my segment about the good things.
I hope you enjoyed it. NOW...
Let’s start with the parry. It is SIMILAR to the original, but the posing is weaker.
She’s not hitting that wide stance anymore,
which was a big part of what made the original parry look so powerful.
And look at how the movement ends.
You see the way she brings the shield even further around on the swing,
all the way behind her body?
Now on the one hand, it DOES make for a wider arc on that swing,
which could suggest more power behind it, right?
But that’s coming at the cost of clarity.
Look at the silhouette here at the end.
Now compare that to the posing in the original.
See how much more clear that looks?
You NEED that clarity in Souls combat.
And I would argue that the enemy’s reaction to
being parried is a pretty big downgrade too.
The original might have felt soft,
but seeing the enemy’s weapon get slapped away by that shield felt pretty great
AND it clearly conveyed that, hey, you deflected that incoming attack.
Good for you.
Here, the parry reaction seems to ignore the attack deflection entirely.
Instead, they react like your parry is more of a shield bash smashing them in the face.
Which... ok, that’s kinda fun too.
But in the heat of combat, I would argue it’s just slightly less clear as a reaction.
I’m definitely nitpicking at this point,
but those tiny clarity issues can pile up fast.
Then the guy just sits there, dazed, which
is kinda more goofy- looking than anything.
It’s like: oof, your parry just gave this hollow a LOT to think about…
And you have to wait for his fall animation to finish before you can do your riposte.
Hit the button too early and you’ll just attack,
completely losing your riposte opportunity.
WHICH FEELS REAL FINICKY.
AND BAD.
And the riposte itself is also not great!
The characters warp into position for the synced animation.
Then comes the attack
which, to their credit, doesn’t have those noticeable hitches that the original had.
But the clarity on this stabbing attack is baaaaaaad.
Your weapon making contact with the opponent is completely obscured by your character.
The camera still does it’s zoom (which is great)
but what is there to zoom and emphasize here?
you can’t see what happened!
In terms of both silhouette and clarity, this riposte is Very Bad.
Maybe it looks better with an axe…
...wow, not really!
I mean, the swing itself is more clear,
but something about the perspective makes it
feel like it almost isn't reaching the enemy.
Why DOES every one of these attacks seems to be aimed at the crotch, anyway?
I’m not saying it’s not effective, it’s just…
...like, right?
Listen, I love Dark Souls II, like, a LOT.
But yeah, this parry/riposte combo is a pretty major downgrade.
And that’s the thing, it’s not like there aren’t ways to improve upon the original!
Which makes the Dark Souls III version of the parry and riposte
even MORE baffling.
So Dark Souls III brought a lot of the player character
animations back to the way they looked and felt in the original,
so this parry and riposte are probably gonna looking pretty familiar.
And there are a couple of improvements here.
That little masculine-to-feminine idle blend? Fixed!
And the posing on this parry is even more clear!
Just look at the snappy extension on that arm as the shield comes around.
WhaBAM.
But the weird thing to me is that all of the rest of the polish
problems that existed in the original are STILL IN HERE.
That hitch in the stab animation?
Still there!
In fact, now there’s a even NEW hitch in the upper torso at the start of the parry.
How did that get in there?
And not only that, but the enemy character is back to
standing straight up in anticipation of the riposte,
just waiting for it to land.
It’s like the enemy just suddenly forgot you were fighting.
I don’t know what they’re going for here.
Especially because they’ve gotten this right before!
Look at the riposte reaction in Demon’s Souls!
You see how they hang in that parried state right up until the counterattack lands?
Sure, they look a little disoriented from having their attack deflected,
but they do still feel like they’re engaged in the fight you’re having.
And they nailed this recently with Sekiro too!
The enemy looks staggered and off balance right up until the deathblow connects.
The reason this works for me is because it feels like the attack
is catching them before they even have a chance to react.
Whereas this looks like the character IS reacting to your incoming attack,
just in a really bizarre, passive way.
Okay, to be a little more charitable about it,
I’m guessing the reason they brought this back is
either because they really wanted the animation to feel familiar to long-time fans,
which ...ok. Fair enough. I get it.
OR because they just decided to re-use the old animation
and save that time for other things.
And… fine, I get that too. Dang it.
Well, at least the axe riposte looks cool...
Hang on, is that a crotch shot again?
DARK SOULS. ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
You know, going into this,
I just assumed that Dark Souls III was going to take an easy win here,
but looking at all these together? Yeah, I’m giving it to Dark Souls 1.
Because that original animation was good enough for Dark
Souls III to borrow it without adding any polish on top.
And with that, I've just spent fifteen minutes proving to you once and for all that,
uh….
...Dark Souls is good.
You’re welcome.
Anyway, I think that’ll do it.
This animation topic was requested Dennis Bingham
(thank you, Dennis!)
and voted for by New Frame Plus’s Patreon supporters.
If you’d like to take part in future topic votes
or request an animation for me to analyze,
consider supporting the show on Patreon like all of these top notch individuals.
Look at ‘em! So great.
Anyway thanks for watching, and I will see you next time!
[music]