Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Interview
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Q: Though there were plenty of options for spell-casting and stealth-oriented gameplay, sooner or later you found yourself swinging a sword. What's the new combat model like? The previous game relied on both statistics and reflex-based action. Does Oblivion maintain this balance?
A: It does retain that balance. It's part action, part stats. There's simply more things you can do. So your skills determine what combat moves you can do. As you level-up you unlock special moves that do more damage, can disarm your opponent, add more knockback to your strikes, and more. Whether you actually hit with this move is entirely action-based. You have to swing the sword and make contact. Your stats then determine how much damage is done. So your strength and weapon skill together do that, and then it gets modified by your opponent's armor skills and the actual armor you hit.
Blocking is also under your control, but its effectiveness is driven by skills. We also want to keep the fight moving. Any time it works for you to be successful by just standing there and clicking, we changed it up. We want you to move, look of openings, and use the most effective attack. The last thing we did with it was purely visual. We want it to really feel like guys bashing swords into each other. So how they react when hit, stumbling backwards, with great sound effects for the weapons and armor and blood flying realistically in and onto the right surfaces. So even though we have this really deep RPG, we recognized that no matter how many parts the game has -- combat is the number one thing people do a lot of, so we need to make it great.
