ohhh, and there was a game on Xbox live, i only played it for a bit, it was Ascend:Hand of Kul, and it had some cool executions, when you defeat another player who aligned with another god, you pulled out the "sacred dagger" of your god and when they fell to their knees you just stabbed them over and over in the chest and blood was everywhere, its the kind of brutal and humiliating execution we need, because it makes the person doing it feel badass, and the person it is getting done to probably feels humiliated
I think in some of those cases you guys are mistaking distinguishable for cartoony. When examined close up, the animations are a bit cartoony, but in live gameplay you wouldn't be seeing most of those animations at clean angles up close and personal. You'd most likely see them from a distance or at odd angles. That style of animation is somewhat like the practice of using inks and dry brushes in model painting, it highlights certain things so they're distinguishable even when they're tiny. Warhammer online was the counter-example of this. They had pretty simple animations by comparison with realistic detail. When you looked at a character in WAR up close, you could see a lot of intricate detail that was actually quite impressive at times. However, when the game is actually being played, all that intricate detail becomes a blur because of how subtle it is. Another example: Space marine. No matter how distinguishable you made your character in the customization screen, the most someone else would ever notice is some kind of color pattern. I couldn't tell if they were wearing a beakie helmet, a relic helmet, mark VIII or whatever else, because none of that was highlighted against the background. Special cases, however, such as the custom Black Templar or Blood Angel skins were notable on the battlefield because they had that certain highlight against the background that made it stand out. These animations are that highlight.
Still the nature of the animations are of comical relief borderline goofy And that is what the people are really saying in the end
I don't see that, some of them are quite violent. Sure, the Orks are goofy, but that's what Orks are there for. But if I had a choice of seeing either the Space Marine executions or the kinds of executions like that Khorne Berzerker burying his chainaxe in that guardsman, I'd take the latter any day because I can tell what's going on from any angle or distance.
To be honest, I quite enjoyed that first two handed chainaxe 'execution', minus the guardsman twitching like that.
The bike animations and ork animations shows a pattern that while not all the animation on the game might have been of comical relief/goofy a good amount of them would be (or some, enough to be immersion breaking) One could argue that executions are focused towards the executioner and the victim, not by bypassers (which makes sense, on a large scale battle with things going frantically around you, you, a bystander would not sit for a moment and watch someone else performing an execution)
What guys, you don't want your space marine entering a looted tank (yeah, astartes loot tanks like random orks now, this is heresy no more) as if he was diving for a big splash in a swimming pool (maybe was he going for a big bio hazard deadly fart though, urh urh ruh... orky, me like) ?!! Would be freakingly awesome to see that yet, wouldn't be ? D:
Personally I think the executions shouldn't be too long and intricate. As the player, performing an execution, has to be invulnerable for its duration, you shouldn't give him too much time of invulnerability. If he is not invulnerable while executing, then execution is a bad thing to do, as you are stuck in animation and prone to whatever violence. Another point - seeing one animation over and over is tiresome, and if an execution animation is too long, pretty soon it will be a pain to see it. Thus, 'fatalities' have to be plentiful (possibly situational, depending on the angle the characters are to each other) and fast-paced. If the game is about teamwork, getting stuck in animations while your team needs your help, is not a best thing. And also some 10 seconds mean so much in a battle, everything around can change very drastically in that period.
