Bows and Arrows in video games

[Fisher321]

How many people have actually shot a bow on here? No they are not completely silent. And remember, arrows are designed to bleed out the target by cutting through its major arteries. An "insta-kill" with a bow is a rare phenomena. Go hunting with a bow and you know what I mean. So if one did try to stealthily take out enemies with a bow an arrow more than likely the first guy you hit would have enough time to set off an alarm/alert others before he bleeds out. Unless of-course, you magically hit him in the head.

Sorry to be nit-picky but its not called a silencer, its called a suppressor, because it doesn't completely "silence" the weapon.

OT

Stronghold Crusader.. Can never have enough Archers... Especially if you give them braziers.

 

[Fisher321]

Why wouldn't games that take place in the future feature bows? They're still used to this day. Arrows are bigger than bullets and bows are quieter.

Arrows have less destructive power than bullets. Arrows usually travel at around 300fps (feet per second) While a standard NATO 5.56mm round will travel at around 2800 FPS. Plus bullets are smaller, and you can carry more of them.

As for video games it just makes it more fun.

 

[yamy]

It doesn't actually really make sense to have bows in games in a modern setting. There's a reason why guns replaced bows. They simply aren't as lethal (as people above has pointed out). The take lots of training to do, and unlike in games you'll rarely ever one shot someone, and is much louder than you'd imagine (though no where near as loud as guns).


If you tried to take out a camp like in Far Cry 3 in real life with a recurve bow, chances are you will A. Miss or B. Hit something hard and reveal your location or C. Nail his foot and annoy him and be covered with bullet holes in you.

That said, archery is fun in game though, not disputing that.

 

[Christopher Fisher]

Best Archery in a game: War of the Roses

As for why bows are becoming popular...I assume it's just a symptom of many peoples' weariness with the modern military shooter and their trappings; the bow changes it up a bit.

 

[Jandau]

Compounds? Nope. Recurves maybe and traditional bows likely so.

Even modern bows are easier to maintain than an average assault rifle...

Yea, no. Unless you're clouting it or in a quite noisy area, you'll hear something specially when the arrow hits something very hard although the sound of the bow is somewhat indistinguishable to any other kind of twang. Even so, improper release can make a racket.

Yes, bows do produce some kind of sound. But compared to pretty much any firearm, it might as well not be there. A gun can be heard clearly in a very large radius.

Very debatable.

No, I don't think it is.

The real major downside of bows is the fact it isn't as lethal. Guns can almost grantee an instant kill whereas with bows you'll have to be pretty lucky as most of the time it's a death where you bleed to death rather than causing irreparable damage where they drop down dead.

At this point you are VERY much overestimating the lethality of guns. They don't guarantee a kill, unless you're in a Hollywood movie of something. Depending on the type of arrowhead used a bow can do more damage to the flesh than a bullet. Both are fatal if they hit a vital organ. While I'm not saying a bow will outperform a high-caliber sniper rifle or anything like that, a solid bowshot can at the very least match most small firearms.

Also there's the clunkiness, reload time,"rounds" per minute, health and safety to the archer.

These are all reasons why they aren't deployed in quantity anymore. All I'm saying is that they make sense as a specialist tool for certain situations. Also, health and safety to the archer? Really? Ok, then guns are a health risk because the kickback can punch you in the nose and the ejected spent casings can hit you if you hold it at a wrong angle...

Bows in games very often give a inaccurate representation and tend to make them more overpowered and accurate than they are actually in real life (Skyrim is a very good example).

You really hate bows don't you? Also, are you saying guns are accurately represented in games? Because if you are, well... just lol

EDIT: Oh, and before I forget - recycleable ammo. You fire a bullet, it's gone, but arrows can be recovered and reused, making it a factor in low resource/survival environments (which is where you usually see them). Also, an arrow is easier to make than a bullet...

 

[skywolfblue]

Less reality more "because it's awesome" IMO.

I liked the Torque bow from Gears of War (even though I sucked miserably with it, like seriously couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, darn boomers and their habit of moving at the last second...).

Skyrim was passable, but I had a lot of trouble as an archery character. Either stuff died in the first shot, or I'd stick 10 arrows in their head but they'd still be alive, and come over and stomp my sorry ass. It was very inconsistent.

BTW I also noticed the weird obsession with bows in modern or futursistc games lately. I'm honestly surprised we didn't see Shepard with an laser longbow in ME3.

Dangit... Now that you've mentioned it, I'd just totally love to see a Mass Effect-ized Crossbow/Longbow. All futuristic, with sexy curvy edges, or maybe harsh and kroganized.

 

[nsqared]

Thief was really good at using the bow as a tactical item, since you could extinguish torches and shoot ropes, rather than killing people.
However, I liked the bows in Skyrim, because as a tactical weapon, they were completely silent and didn't alert everyone in a 10 mile radius like in Far Cry 3. And once you found an Ebony bow and leveled up archery and sneak, everything was a one or two shot kill.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I honestly think they show up so much 'cos they're just so damn cool. There's very little (irl) as satisfying as hitting your mark with an arrow xD although I'd imagine being able to shoot well is also a good feeling.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I'm wondering where the argument that bows are silent come from. I went down to an archery range I found because I really wanted to learn to shoot a bow, sadly they only offered classes for younger people/kids. But while I was there it definitely wasn't silent, you could definitely hear the sounds of the arrows hitting the targets and even the sound of the string (?) made a sound when it let the arrow go.

Well, the sound of the arrow hitting thetarget isn't going to give your position away, and the sound of string is barely a whisper compared to even a silenced gunshot. Plus you can reduce the string sound if your technique is good, it only tends to be noisy if you're letting it slap your wrist at a harsh angle.

 

[Zio_IV]

The real major downside of bows is the fact it isn't as lethal. Guns can almost grantee an instant kill whereas with bows you'll have to be pretty lucky as most of the time it's a death where you bleed to death rather than causing irreparable damage where they drop down dead.

Lolwut? That sounds like Hollywood gun knowledge to me. Let me tell you, the only way a bullet is going to cause instant death is with one of two ways. Either:

A). the round strikes, and summarily obliterates the medulla oblongata, thereby causing all of those neat little functions, such as autonomous thought, breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to stop working for good.

-or-

B). You strike an unarmored opponent with a projectile that either borderlines on cannon classification, or is one itself. I hope I don't have to explain why.

If neither of those things occur, you will survive the bullet. The question is for how long or to what degree. You can have your lung perforated, and survive. You can get shot almost anywhere and survive. You just need medical attention (how quickly depends on the wound). It's funny you mention the bullet causing "irreparable" damage and say the arrow causes you to bleed to death, because blood-loss is one half of the equation for how bullets kill people, the other half being hydrostatic shock. Even if the impact from the round doesn't end up causing heavy damage to surrounding tissue/organs/spine, you're still going to be losing blood.

Bows are fantastic for a ranged weapon option, even today. There are definitely things guns can accomplish that bows cannot, and vice-verse, but they are certainly no less lethal.

 

[KingHodor]

Compounds? Nope. Recurves maybe and traditional bows likely so.

Even modern bows are easier to maintain than an average assault rifle...

A modern compound bow uses strings made from ultra high modulus polyethylene (i.e. the same stuff that top-of-the-line bulletproof vests are made from) and requires a bow press to be re-strung. Pressing a modern parallel limb compound bow in an outdated press can lead to damage to the limbs (complex laminated things that have to be produced using high-pressure equipment) or the riser (CNC-machined from aircraft-grade aluminium alloys). Also, a compound bow occasionally has to be checked for cam timing (although this should be less of a problem with modern Hybrid and Binary cam systems).

Yea, no. Unless you're clouting it or in a quite noisy area, you'll hear something specially when the arrow hits something very hard although the sound of the bow is somewhat indistinguishable to any other kind of twang. Even so, improper release can make a racket.

Yes, bows do produce some kind of sound. But compared to pretty much any firearm, it might as well not be there. A gun can be heard clearly in a very large radius.

I'll give you that. Recurves are pretty silent, as are modern compound bows thanks to all the vibration absorbing rubber doohickeys. Guns can be silenced relatively effectively with silencers and subsonic ammo, but the former may mean extra dirt and ajustments to the gas system to function properly, and the latter means a significant loss of kinetic energy (unless the gun has been designed from the ground up to fire super-heavy subsonic bullets, like the VSS Vintorez). If you're going to take a compound bow on your mission, you might as well take a specialized subsonic gun.

The real major downside of bows is the fact it isn't as lethal. Guns can almost grantee an instant kill whereas with bows you'll have to be pretty lucky as most of the time it's a death where you bleed to death rather than causing irreparable damage where they drop down dead.

At this point you are VERY much overestimating the lethality of guns. They don't guarantee a kill, unless you're in a Hollywood movie of something. Depending on the type of arrowhead used a bow can do more damage to the flesh than a bullet. Both are fatal if they hit a vital organ. While I'm not saying a bow will outperform a high-caliber sniper rifle or anything like that, a solid bowshot can at the very least match most small firearms.

The advantage of a gun is that you can instantly take out an enemy by putting a bullet through his skull, while bone penetration for arrows is pretty poor (on the other hand, they do cut through flesh like butter, allowing even African big game to be humanely taken with a compound bow). A 4-bladed broadhead arrow can easily lead to loss of conscioussness within seconds if both lungs and/or the heart are hit, but that means not only getting close to your target, but also approaching it from the right angle.

Bows in games very often give a inaccurate representation and tend to make them more overpowered and accurate than they are actually in real life (Skyrim is a very good example).

You really hate bows don't you?

Actually, I'd wager his opinion stems from having atleast some experience with archery.

EDIT: Oh, and before I forget - recycleable ammo. You fire a bullet, it's gone, but arrows can be recovered and reused, making it a factor in low resource/survival environments (which is where you usually see them). Also, an arrow is easier to make than a bullet...

Modern compound bows fire arrows made from carbon fiber. Even complex jacketed bullets like JHPs can be swaged using hand-powered tools, and it is similarly simple to refill old cartridge casings with gunpowder and stick the bullet on top using a fairly compact, hand-powered re-loading tool, while I'm pretty sure making carbon fiber arrows requires heavy powered machinery. Also, re-using a carbon fiber arrow that missed can be risky because a damaged arrow may burst under the acceleration while being shot, driving pieces of carbon fiber into the shooter's hand.

 

[maninahat]

Thief. It's not particularly big or powerful, but it has the best sound effects for any bow ever. With a bit of nice sound design, a ten year old game still beats all the tacticool super bazooka bows of modern gaming.

The real major downside of bows is the fact it isn't as lethal. Guns can almost grantee an instant kill whereas with bows you'll have to be pretty lucky as most of the time it's a death where you bleed to death rather than causing irreparable damage where they drop down dead.

That's sorta true but not quite. The reality is that with rapid enough medical attention you are likely to survive both gunshot and arrow wounds (even wounds to vital organs). Bullet wounds are the harder of the two to repair, but I think it is a stretch to say that you'd have to be "lucky" to get a killing shot with a bow. Both will kill you if you are left to bleed out, and both will probably floor you as well, due to the massive involuntary muscle spasms caused when a big foreign object lodges itself in you (NB: not because of the actual force of impact - this isn't Hollywood). Realistically, if bows weren't effective at stopping enemies, they probably wouldn't have seen so much use on battlefields in the first place.

The main difference in killing power is that a gun can put multiple bullets in a person, often within a fraction of a second, whereas it is far harder for a bowman to put multiple arrows into the same person in rapid succession.

 

[Nieroshai]

They're silent weapons with retrievable ammo. A crossbow might be better, but then there's the problem of reload speed. I'm sad they didn't implement it in Far Cry 3, but the ammo for bows is more easily craftable than guns. In Crysis 3, I'd say the only good reason is that the super suit lets you put a ridiculous amount of draw strength into the bow, with the payoff of at least twice the velocity and penetration of a normally shot arrow. Thus, a silenced sniper weapon with more lethality than a low-caliber full metal jacket.

Other than that, I don't know. I just wanna see how Lara can do backflips while firing a bow. Or is this before she won the Olympic gold medal for gymnastics?

 

[maninahat]

Oh, and before I forget - recycleable ammo. You fire a bullet, it's gone, but arrows can be recovered and reused, making it a factor in low resource/survival environments (which is where you usually see them). Also, an arrow is easier to make than a bullet...

That's one claim I'd like to dispute. Arrows are actually quite hard to pull out of someone, and you'll usually lose the arrow head in the process (with war arrowheads often being specifically designed not to come out). The muscles tend to contract around a foreign body, whilst bones and organs get snagged up in the tissue. The general recommended way to remove a crossbow bolt or arrow is not to yank it out, but to push it through the person and out the other side - which is a fairly delicate procedure. Basically, you can't expect to retrieve an arrow quickly - that's assuming that what you hit with it dies conveniently close too, as you won't have time to get a second shot.

As for making arrows. Well - who actually knows how to make arrows? In a survival situation, bow and arrows are hardly the most sensible tools to be manufacturing.

 

[KingHodor]

They're silent weapons with retrievable ammo. A crossbow might be better, but then there's the problem of reload speed. I'm sad they didn't implement it in Far Cry 3, but the ammo for bows is more easily craftable than guns.

In Crysis 3, I'd say the only good reason is that the super suit lets you put a ridiculous amount of draw strength into the bow, with the payoff of at least twice the velocity and penetration of a normally shot arrow. Thus, a silenced sniper weapon with more lethality than a low-caliber full metal jacket.

Wooden arrows may be easier to craft than bullets, but they are also not particularly stable. Making carbon (not to mention aluminium-carbon composite) arrows is harder than making smokeless powder, casting/swaging bullets and re-loading empty casings. Re-using possibly damaged carbon arrows is nothing less than dangerous.

Regarding your super-bow example: When you're putting in 4 times the kinetic energy to make an arrow fly twice as fast (remember, KE = m*v²), then that arrow is suddenly going to be way too light for all the energy you're putting into it. Which means there is a good chance that it will break under the acceleration, especially if it's a retrieved arrow, driving pieces of the shaft into your hand and/or arm. I don't have to mention that this is going to very painful, and you won't be shooting a bow anytime soon.

 

[srm79]

This.


Hours of fun for everyone!

 

[Pink Gregory]

One thing I do wonder...

Crossbows in Morrowind.

No Crossbows in Oblivion or Skyrim.

Then again I suppose that transition removed quite a few individual weapon types, but it seems like a thing that's been forgotten recently in RPGs, Mount & Blade notwithstanding.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Shadow of the Colossus did a pretty good show at portraying the bow and arrow as a trusty method for catching attention but ineffectual at causing any damage against massive colossi. I always thought they did the flying right - straight shot up close, but with an arc in the long run. The unlimited arrow supply always bothered me a bit though. I like a game where arrows are numbered and you get the choice of retrieving those you shoot, regardless of whether you hit anything with them. Like I Am Alive. That was a fun bow/arrow experience!

 

[mad825]

The real major downside of bows is the fact it isn't as lethal. Guns can almost grantee an instant kill whereas with bows you'll have to be pretty lucky as most of the time it's a death where you bleed to death rather than causing irreparable damage where they drop down dead.

That's sorta true but not quite. The reality is that with rapid enough medical attention you are likely to survive both gunshot and arrow wounds (even wounds to vital organs). Bullet wounds are the harder of the two to repair, but I think it is a stretch to say that you'd have to be "lucky" to get a killing shot with a bow. Both will kill you if you are left to bleed out, and both will probably floor you as well, due to the massive involuntary muscle spasms caused when a big foreign object lodges itself in you (NB: not because of the actual force of impact - this isn't Hollywood).

The main difference in killing power is that a gun can put multiple bullets in a person, often within a fraction of a second, whereas it is far harder for a bowman to put multiple arrows into the same person in rapid succession.

You're getting into semantics.

If one guy got shot in the head with a English longbow and the other with a SA80, I would try to save the guy with the arrow sticking out. If someone was shot in the head with a rifle, you ain't going to do CPR.

Archers who hunt will try to aim for the heart however the ribcage will present a problem for a instant kill. Crossbows can easily elmiate this problem however their range is very limited. marksmen can and will almost likely aim for the head, the brain due to the gun's ability to penetrate bone. The heart and upper spinal column is another lethal shot that can be done with greater accuracy and likelihood.

Bullets and arrows are different in nature, they have different physics and different physical properties such as the shape,size and mass. Arrows are heaver, larger and travel at much lower velocities while bullets are lighter, smaller and travel at much higher velocities (more self-contained energy).

The ability to inflict a lethal blow is situational under circumstances of reality , I know. Distance, angle, type of weapon and projectile is a major factor but I would always place my money on a gun.

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Even modern bows are easier to maintain than an average assault rifle...

With the average assault rifle you can take it apart in the field. Compounds, you need a workshop.

No, I don't think it is.

Guns need to be clean, bowstrings need to be waxed. Guns can get blocked, bowstrings can snap/fray/come loose. guns are rust resistant metal, bows (limbs) are typically wood/fibreglass.

Guns and bows are both weapons, they require the same care and attention. Unless you're an idiot.

At this point you are VERY much overestimating the lethality of guns. They don't guarantee a kill, unless you're in a Hollywood movie of something. Depending on the type of arrowhead used a bow can do more damage to the flesh than a bullet. Both are fatal if they hit a vital organ. While I'm not saying a bow will outperform a high-caliber sniper rifle or anything like that, a solid bowshot can at the very least match most small firearms.

That is what I'm saying. The best of bows don't outmatch the best of guns.

Even so, Long bows are not comparable to handguns.

You really hate bows don't you? Also, are you saying guns are accurately represented in games? Because if you are, well... just lol

You're putting words in my mouth. That's has never been the argument.

 

[KingHodor]

It's good that at least some of the people in this thread know their archery.

Also, to re-iterate my point on why the "bows are great because you can re-use arrows" argument is flawed: Do a Google Image search on "carbon arrow injury". Or better yet, save yourself from nightmares and don't, and take my word that you do *not* want to put your hand in front of a slightly cracked piece of carbon fiber that's about to be accelerated from 0 to 325 fps over a distance of 23 inches.