left- handed

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A strange game indeed this IWD II seems like every pc is left-handed although most people are right-handed. It is said that being left-handed comes from having high values of testosteron in your body, so this would mean that every pc ( and maybe npc haven't checked that) in IWD is an extreme male show-off or a very mascular woman. I hope that the things iw rote or correct in english since it isn't my native languege

 

It's not only IWD2, it's something that many, many games have. Not only cRPG, but also RTS-es, IIRC. I don't understand why they have to make it this way.

 

I thought it was just where they attacked - from left, left-handed; from right, right-handed. I don't usually see the weapons at all. Mostly the shields.

 

Use two handed weapons if that bothers you.

 

Nah, it's a bug or oversight in the later editions of the Infinity Engine. The effect is called "sprite mirroring" and it's a way of only needing half the animations for one avatar, by just flipping some. You're supposed to be able to switch it on and off to conserve memory on low-end systems, but it seems locked to "on" in every game since BG2. In BG1, everyone was right-handed all the time, because they hadn't thought of using that technique. Personally, I reckon it's either a bug (the .bam files where animations are stored aren't being accessed correctly) or laziness; the BioWare artists couldn't be bothered to draw and code for all the animations, so just mirrored the sprites' actions by default, thus halving the amount of work they'd have to do.

Of course, the truth may never be known...

 

@The Magpie: as far as I can remember it happened with BG1 too...

Just imagine that characters keep shifting weapons around to confuse their adversaries (like in the duels in Dune -the movie)

 

@Caradhras: nope, in BG1 characters were consistently right-handed. Of course, they were all right-handed, which is another kind of unrealistic.

But yes, my in-game explanation for the constant flipping of handedness is either Dune-style switching or adherence to the "correct" daisho style in kendo, where the katana is wielded in the left hand, and the companion sword in the right. That excuse works quite well when armed with, say, CF and Kundane.

 

As a curious tidbit, Polish nobles in the renaissance and baroque time were extremely well trained in sabre. They could easily stand ground against professional enemy soldiers in duels. One of the favourite tricks was throwing the weapon from the right hand to the left hand and leading the blow from there. Heck, I can do that pretty well. It also helps to be able to fence with your left hand if you don't have a supersized bicep and the fight is going to last. I remember one broadsword fight I would never have survived with just my right hand.