17/05/2013

"I'm Not Left-Handed"- Lessons from The Princess Bride

I saw again today the swordfight scene from The Princess Bride. A great movie and this scene is a good example that a round by round fight can still be awesome if dealt with properly. So here are five lessons from this scene about how to improve our fights:

  1.  "You are using Bonetti's defence against me, uh?" Using famous names and techniques while fighting makes the fighters seem more professional, like they know what they are doing, and helps them look totally badass when they do that. Note how Inigo looks as though he knows what his rival will do.
  2. "Cliffs of Insanity". I talked about it yesterday in another post in more detail, but it belongs to here also. The terrain of the battle has a huge influence on the cool factor of the battle. Reward using it and it will be even better.
  3. "He flips over a beam and lands next to his sword". Tumbling and acrobatics as a way to move. The enemy already knows how to guard his surroundings so you'll have to trick him if it was a real fight. Why not in a game?
  4.  "I am not left-handed". If you always go by the rules, you'll become predictable and boring (both mechanically and in other aspects). In a fight, you begin by learning the rules, and then you break them to gain that important advantage. It's a gamble, yeah, but without it there's no way to finish the fight. Another great example of this, from another movie, though, is in Pirates of the Caribbean, when Jack pulls the gun to get that so important advantage against Will.
  5. "Please understand I hold you in the highest respect." Battles don't have to be a life or death situation. Battles should be more than a "you win or you die" situation. Always present, or at least don't say no, to other endings to the fights: Surrendering and running away are only 2 other possibilities out of other, uncountable possibilities...
So these are my 5 lessons from this scene. Have you spotted another thing? Do you use any of them? A completely different thing?

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