often characters with super strength seem to be lifting things with touch-based magic. Swinging a 400kg hammer when you weigh 100kg would do some very weird things in real life! 😂
@@blumineck Yeah, in one setting I read there were shown examples of this. One person body was quit fit, but his superhuman feats came from the magic that engulfed his body. He was the type that could lift a car and only bend the hood a bit rather than crumble that entire area. Another character in the story was superhumanly strong, but it was due to how his body functioned rather than any magic enhancing it and its surroundings. He had to be constantly cautious because him exerting any form of strength as he walked could easily crack the ground he stood on. Any use of strength was a game of delicate balance for him. He wouldn’t be able to lift a car from the front since the part would just crumble and bend from his grip as he attempted to lift it up.
From Devil May Cry, the swords (excluding Yamato) are large mainly for Comical/lore purposes. The Sparda is big because the original owner (Sparda) was a super powerful demon guy
Also, the huge swords in Devil May Cry games are usually stupidly elaborate in design. Rebellion's hilt is an incredibly detailed skeleton, Alastor has a dragon's head wrapping around the blade, etc. It'd just be a muddy mess outside of the inventory screen if you made them normal-sized. Yamato, on the other hand, is a relatively normal odachi, with nothing spectacular about its design, so it can afford to be smaller. Heck, even the handguns of choice for the series are deliberately large, because you're not going to see anything interesting about something the scale a 9mm would be.
I own a metal Rebellion replica and its not even the full length, it’s roughly 8 lbs (heavy for a sword) and I swing it around for exercise and practice. I just love swords :D
Another big reason for oversized weapons, in videogames at least, is graphical detail. It's harder to appreciate the visual style of a normal sized weapon with a zoomed out camera and loads of distractions on the screen. And especially in the early days of 3d gaming, games like FF7 and WoW also had to be extremely mindful of polygon counts and performance bottlenecks. But the side effect of these early and influential games using this technique was cementing and popularizing the "big bulky equipment" aesthetic. So what was once primarily a practical design compromise has become a stylistic choice, and one that has bled into other fantasy media as well.
I came here to say this! Technical limitations, plus the fact that you need to be able to see them when zoomed out so you can appreciate the cool new weapon you just got 😁
Final Fantasy 7 is the first ever game where human wielding giant swords came into play right? I wanna bring this up since there's no real discussion on this. But the first two I've ever seen giant weapons were from Cloud and Sephiroth. My mind was blown at that time and now, a lot of modern games took to that and so many characters are having giant weapons.
Recently i just rewatched God of War 2 gameplay, i am pretty surprised at how the swords there from Kratos' blade to standard mooks swords were slightly bigger than what i remembered, with Xiphos wielded by NPCs being almost the size of greatswords
And that is actually why the Greatsword in Monster Hunter is so good! It is literally so heavy that you see several points in its animations where the weapon's heft is dragging the hunter along with its momentum!
Yeah Monster Hunter shows why heavy weapons shouldn't work but there they work cause enemies are slower and more or less predictable so you basically position yourself to become a trap for monster... or more like greatsword pros play like that
@@D_Wito Slow? The games may make them look slow, but MonHun's wyverns/Elder Dragons are definitely fast as fuck lorewise, especially since a lot of them can fly.
Another thing, especially in video games, is that a bigger weapon tends to read better when animating. When the weapon is bigger, it’s much easier to tell what exactly the character and/or the enemy is doing at any given moment
the huge weapons in BG3 annoyed me until I realized that I can literally see what's happening in that game's battles much better than in the first two. it still makes me shake my head when SH is swinging a mace with a haft thicker than her thighs and a head bigger than her own but.... now I chuckle afterward.
Yes, that's why even in 3D action games like the Dark Souls series or Elden Ring, most bosses and mob enemies are twice as big as the player, even if they are human-type, and they use huge weapons. This is because it is very difficult to accurately gauge the distance to the enemy from the over-the-shoulder perspective of the character, which is often used in third-person action games. Also, by increasing visibility, it becomes easier to see that enemy attacks are coming, and it helps to reduce the player's feeling of injustice. And in order to fill this gap and reduce the sense of incongruity, the hit detection of the player character's weapon has a longer range than it actually looks.
I was about to say, I've noticed even with weapons that are supposed to be more historically accurate in video games they tend to be slightly bigger than they should be. Most of the time you don't even notice until you move the camera right up to it and notice that things just a touch too big. I just assumed that for those kinds of weapons companies just don't bother to focus too much on the size details as long as the player can comfortably see it from the usual camera angle
In fiction in general it also directly shows the audience the strength of the character without having to explain it. Especially with anime characters that have giant swords like Ichigo or Cloud Strife they can still move them with the speed and efficiency of a regular sized one. The more super strength a character has the bigger a weapon they can wield effectively, which in turn should also do more damage since force is mass times velocity and if you keep the same velocity and up the mass something like Cloud's Buster Sword can hit with some insane force.
Especially with how detailed modern character design gets. If you can perfectly read what the two inch tall character is holding among all that visual mess on that scale? You’ve officially got super vision
I like that you bring up weapons in comparison to equivalent tools because most weapons are just tools that are just translating their use to be against humans
Ordinary humans in fiction also have a tendency to simply be stronger than people irl. It’s not just the power ceiling that’s ridiculously high, the floor is quite elevated too
He did mention of this but just because you strong doesn't mean you are heavy, you can drag or push something heavy than yourself if you have super strength and you could lift but heavy weapon than yourself would more likely to swing you
@@tiglishnobody8750 To be fair a lot of these fictional characters do make themselves heavier with armor that's also built out of fantasy metal and a lot of anime characters wear weighted training gear
Another point is that if they have the strength to swing an obnoxiously big weapon, then they can use that strength to swing a regularly sized big weapon much faster and harder.
In 3D action games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, the actual hit range of the player's weapon is set larger than the apparent size of the weapon. Otherwise, the reach of these weapons, which are mainly used from the character's over-the-shoulder perspective, will feel very short, which will make the gameplay feel strange and stressful. On the other hand, in PVP, the opponent's attack will hit at a longer distance than it actually appears, so even if you try to avoid it, you may still be hit, which will make the person being attacked feel a little strange. Well, these are all a matter of balancing whether to give more weight to PVE or PVP in a third-person 3D action game.
@@犬まにまに That's...A really bad solution in every way to be honest and it does explain my experiences with Souls PVP. So not only is the netcode completely trash, the weapon hitboxes themselves have a ton of ghost range. Alternatively, you could've made the camera perspective tighter so you have a better understanding of what your character is doing. Have the reach of your weapon match the model, let the player learn how to judge the range themselves. There, I fixed those games xD
@@Yorikoification its a good solution in singleplayer, but definitely not in multiplayer. Tho in case of souls games I would still blame it on netcode
there's also a narrative theme of the overpowered badguy getting beaten by the skilled underdog hero. And the easiest way of conveying this visually is oversized weapons for the bigger bad guys. Which was co-opted by certain hero characters on the assumption that they looked cool on those villains, so this hero should have a cool oversized weapon too
To me another good example is seeing Spider-Man pulling a helicopter to him that has already taken off while he has super strength I feel but am not positive that his weight is a bigger factor and would allow the helicopter to drag Spider-Man with it.
@@Zivilin It doesn't work that way. All the strength in the universe doesn't matter if your feet aren't attached to the ground. This is why tug-o-war is less a contest of strength, and more a matter of which side is heaviest. No matter how hard you pull, if you can't keep your footing, you'll just end up pulling yourself farther forward.
I love your videos. Not only do you talk about the real world applications of things in fantasy, but you also say "but the fantasy stuff is still cool though"
Fair! But I appreciate that you include that, rather than a more killjoy approach. It makes it feel like more of a balanced critique, because yeah, a big part of why fantasy weapons are ridiculously huge is rule of cool, which tends to be a powerful force within fiction. And fiction doesn’t need to be realistic, so long as it feels sufficiently believable.
about the weapon swinging you, there was a japan exclusive berserk videogame for the ps2 where combat mechanics really made the heft of the dragonslayer feel real, with most of the attacks involving a sort of pendulum motion of swinging the sword, it swinging you, and using the conserved momentum to make another attack, it was tricky to get used to but felt really good when you got the hang of it! i've always preferred it when media plays more with the idea of incredibly heavy weapons beyond "big stronk swing hard"
This is why shard plate and shard blades from Stormlight Archive are great. When you have armor that grants you great strength, and a giant sword that has very little weight, you can afford to have people swinging giant swords on the battlefield.
My favorite movie physics trope remains the idea that you can strengthen just one part of the body and then use it to exert huge forces without ripping the rest of your body apart.
With video games especially but any visual medium, visual clarity is also a big factor. You need to be able to know what's going in at a glance, bigger weapons are easier to read.
This is the big reason for me, the one that will never go away entirely, particularly considering that a lot of these games have pvp elements to them and latency eats into your reaction time.
"The large motion that puts the weight of the body into the attack reflects the great size of their adversaries long ago." -Black Knight Halbred from DS1
Big and solid is the way we all like, just like my pet snake that had a twin that got crushed by a giant metal gear. Tho the snake survived like a boss, before a fox bit it which caused it to die.
The size of fantasy weapons is also for silhouettes when still, and being able to tell what you’re looking at when in motion. Both for animated/live action fight choreography, and also for video game “what do my buttons do” reasons
It's pretty funny how it's handled in Berserk cause only Guts has a big ahh sword and everyone is like "wait that's not possible". Even the narrator himself says it's more of a big chunk of iron than a sword. And Guts uses that just because why not ?
dragon slayer are literally a weapon that godot made to specifically kill dragon as requested by the king that he have to flee from. because even guts old sword which is somewhat similar sized to a normal two handler but slightly bigger breaks easily when he started hunting those apostle.
They're not really special in that way as they also incorporate buster sword designs in their giant weaponry and I believe one of the weapons is actually swinging a motherfluffin bell at your foes.
@@Yorikoificationthere's plenty of perfectly reasonable weapons as well, the zweihander is just like the real world counterpart. That's why I love fromsoft-you want a giant anime sword you get it, you want to use a fairly accurate to real world sword and shield no problem we got that too
@@il0917 Ok...Many fantasy universes are like that. You should praise The Elder Scrolls as well. The iron and steel weapons look just like regular real life existing weapons but the further up in the tiers you go the more fantastical they become until we get to the unergonomical, jaggedy mess that is the Daedric weapons. In all kinds of fantasy weapons you have some real life equivalent of equipment. However that's usually given to low tier gear or given to nameless NPC's.
@@Yorikoification are you stupid? You can say "i like how this company does a thing" without having to list off every single other game that does the thing.
Usually, it’s convey the strength of the welder. Most other combatants would be unable to wield such weaponry, such as Guts in Berserk or Cloud in Final Fantasy
One thing that goes unmentioned is that real-life weapons are generally designed to fight just humans, or in a few cases, horses or whatever steed is expected of enemy cavalry. Not, you know, a dragon the size of a house, or a five-story-tall giant.
i have a theory that one of the reasons video games has huge weapons was that early games had grafical limitations that would make more reasonable sized weapons hard to see in like 8-bit or 16-bit graphics and it kinda just hung around even when it became possible to make more realistic sized weaponry clear and visible, and then what you said visual themes and conveying certain ideas like power and strength
Seeing logic and realism in these medieval settings (even in fantasy) really increases my admiration for the people back then who had to use these things. I can only imagine how amazed (or even terrified) a commoner might have seen a knight or a warrior back in those times.
You know, I never thought about it before, but a medieval knight in full plate might be wearing enough metal to build a house out of. Or at least subsidize a considerable amount of it...
Swords were a noble's sidearm for a reason -- they took schooling to use, they had to be commissioned from a specialist craftsman, and the only thing they're good for is killing. Same thing with plate armor of any kind. And if you're wearing the full suit, you're on horseback (full plate was rarely worn on foot) and that means you can afford the warhorse, the shield, a lance, the maintenance and care of all of your equipment... War was the real sport of kings.
@@Msatthewwell an M1 abrams cost about as much as a upper middle class residential home, and a suit of armor is essentially the tank of the Middle Ages… so checks out.
@thefez-cat By the 14th and 15th century, swords had been made available to a much larger audience than prior. If you look at equipment lists from the time (or laws banning farmers from openly carrying their swords) you will find quite a few swords. Plate armor was also very common and even required in certain ordinances, although people fighting on foot, like a lot of pike/spear carrying burghers did, often left out the leg armor for further mobility.
@@thefez-cat a butchers knife and a sturdy scythe say hi People don't believe that you can split platehelmets, with a sturdy scythe, till I show it off. People don't expect the from-up-to-downward swing to be that fast
For me, when I oversize weapons in character design it's commonly to add to the silhouette and recognizable design of the character. So that's another reason for the oversizing of weapons. If a character were to have an average sword, that is cool, but if you make it bigger, everything pops and is more iconic.
For video games, slower animations to give you reaction time, plus seeing the weapon easier, and more visual detail would be why. Especially if third person instead of first person. Also love the pole and olympic barbell
I always took it as an "identifier", like how in stage plays, anime, and even games in the 90s and 00s, major characters have notable hairstyles or colors, notable clothing, they might have a unique accent or phrase, and they often speak with broad, sweeping gestures. We associate Sherlock Holmes with the deerhunter hat because that's the hat they gave him in the stage plays so the people in the back knew where he was at all times. You can pick Guts and Yugi out of the crowd or from a distance by one's sword and the other's hair alone. It's why in old Resident Evil games, when a character speaks, they speak with their hands. And you know a character from One Piece by their laugh alone. A giant sword could not only make the character stand out in a crowd but ensure you can follow the character's attacks too. It's why weapon trails exist. It's why every in DragonBall Z have an aura. So you can follow the movement. And like Sherlock's hat, they've become iconic to the characters or the franchise. And it's why a lot of media became bland and brown at one point. When the image is that clear, why do you need an identifier? Sorry for the rant.
I also feel that the obsession with large weapons are due to many fights have the charters fighting large creature or monsters so I think that even if a small weapon would realistically do more damage it seems more fitting to have a large weapon
I remember when Heroes of the Storm released Alextraza people were talking about how bulkier her modeling is. The devs replied that this is MOBA, not an MMORPG, so they had to make her motions be more recognizable for the players, thus making her thicker.
Nice mention to HotS even if I don't really understand the relevance. It's the case for most heroes like Uther and Arthas, herited of course for the STR view itself. And especially Hanzo because we can directy compare with Overwatch, although it's less the case for Genji ; because it's more about hit boxes and gameplay balances (once again the main antagonist to concerns of realism). Alex on her hand literally has a "mommy energy" being the Dragon Queen, with the plus of being aboe to morph however she wants. So it makes sense that as soon as she'd be freed from the standardized WoW blood elf rig still used in Dragonflight, she would get thicker hips and all. I wonder if they could make an acceptable elf model out of Draeneï or even Kul Tiran.
Gotta love how Blumineck manages to perfectly utilize his poledancing skillset to illustrate his weaponry knowledge and the physics thereof. Like, you don't even _think_ of "I can show what happens if you try to swing a melee weapon heavier than yourself by trying to 'swing' a dancing pole, its heavy base serving as a hypothetical weapon's head, and then holding onto the pole as it lifts me instead" unless you happen to have the exact sets of skills and knowledge converging in him. Let alone pull off actually filming yourself doing it.
"it swinging you instead" is a concept Berserk actually tries to touch on at times. Gut's fighting technique in some panels shows him practically being lifted off the ground by his Dragonslayer.
yeah DMC can get away with it since the characters using those sqords are all half demons. now lady doing tricks with her rocket launcher I have no idea
he was literally crumbling apart from not having demonic energy but the point still stands. Lady’s physics on how she can do her backflips with her rocket launcher still make no sense though
I always liked the idea of the giant war hammers, being a weapon to be so heavy that it doesn’t matter what armor or shield you have as if you get hit by it, you will get messed up. It might not break through your armor, but that impact will leave you with a concussion or internal bleeding. The big obvious problem to this however is how extremely slow it is making it easy to dodge or counter attack.
One thing is for sure, it's that I would never want to break into this man's home, haha. He'd be ready for anyone or anything. He's definitely surviving Ragnorak when it rolls around!
why ? because ain't no way normal sized zweihandler are going to cut a dragon when they have legs with diameter the size of and old tree with 30+ rings in it.
Dain's hammer's size is borderline reasonable. Plus he's a dwarf so he's strong. The Witch-King of Angmar's flail is stupidly huge but the size it has makes it look cool. Plus he's like seven feet tall and not only jacked but also dark magic so I think it's reasonable for him to be able to use it.
Indeed. It’s a bit like the matter of some jests in the Thor films, in which at least then (even if it seems to be Shrödinger’s hammer, given the magical paradoxical weight shenanigans) Thor can throw himself with his hammer Mjolnir, given its sheer inertia. Whereas other media doesn’t seem to often account for the fact that no matter how strong you are, if you’re lighter than something that you’re trying to change the direction of, it’s going to push you around. That said, I suppose ‘The Incredibles’ did demonstrate that with Mr Incredible stopping a train but being pushed along by the sheer inertia of something that big, so that’s something.
@@OtisCluck Yes, as is rock roast... which BotW Link eats, if you consider HW:AC to be a canon portrayal of Link despite being a non-canon story. There's no way Link's body is a normal density for Hylians... (he also weighs five (5) apples)
Yet in the aptly named Monster Hunter your weapons have a reason to be so big - they’re giant tools for damaging giant creatures. The Guild even says they’re not to be wielded against other humans.
Menacingly walking with double his weight over his head and dropping it on enemy and as it misses swings him around the pole and attacks with blades on legs, If gets attacked with "weapon" still up, trips and executes non dodgable swing body attack
not how superhuman strength works, if someone is superhuman enough to swing something heavier than them, they are using such force that gravity doesnt have time to tip you over before you've already swung it over your head. You are not superhuman so you take much too long to swing the heavier object, and thus it swings you. but superhumans have such strength that they can fight gravity simply with a heave of their chest or adjustment of posture, because their strength is ALSO beyond their own weight, and thus can apply force downward greater than a heavier object can by just exsisting.
It's more about momentum than gravity, at first. Even if he were strong enough to actually swing that pole and base, he would rip bits of the ground out from under him, then gravity would take over and he'd end up falling on his arse. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
That's not how it works. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any force you use to swing a sword is force that's also being exerted on your own body. You just don't notice, because you weigh more than the sword so the sword moves instead of you. If the sword weighs more than you do, then you'll swing yourself instead of the sword.
The only actual sword i can think of that even comes close to fantasy weapons is the greatsword. Then again, im sure theres others that i just dont know about
This is one of the reasons I really like rapiers and katanas in fantasy. If the scale and proportions are too far off, they really don't look like what they're intended to be anymore, so artists tend to get them closer to accurate more than not.
Hi there just wanted to say I’m a big fan of your content and it has inspired me to take up archery myself In fact I recently jioned the archery team at my school and your videos are making more and more sense😅
I appreciate your ability to convey reason for historical details while acknowledging the pop-culture aesthetic choices that serve as narration devices.
In oldskool games with sprites, having the characters use oversized weapons means they can just animate them swinging the weapon without stepping into the opponent's space, and have a seperate animation for the opponent getting hit. You only need to overlap the weapon for that to work. Whereas actually animating multiple types of attacks and the interaction between different characters etc. would have been way too much work.
more distinctive weapons also add to the silhouette, making a character more recognizable. there are other ways to make a distinct silhouette, but weapons are very reliable.
From a writer's perspective, large weapons can convey so many things... especially with how it's held and used, what kind of weapon it is, what it looks like, what its abilities are, and most importantly, who wields it. It can connect to any weapon from real history and the tones and implications that brings, along with its own fictional history and reputation. It can represent a character's aspect they carry with them, such as family/bloodline drama, the power of friendship, inner turmoil, war, politics, sins, virtues, vices, creeds, talent/skill... the list is as endless as there are things humans can think deeply about. I like to think big weapons not only look cool, but sometimes, recognizing your worth enough to realize the weight you hold in this world through your sheer presence alone - and then learning to USE that power... it can /feel/ like you're carrying and learning to master your own massive weapon. Butting heads with others can Feel like you're having a tactical fantasy battle, and the more your opponent has trained on their own to harness their own energy (or if it's a skill that comes to them easier than most) the harder it is to spar with them. Weapons in general are just... such good allegories for the heart, soul, mind, and any of the factors at play that influence your life or the lives of those around you ♡
This is why great swords are my least favourite weapon in Genshin Impact, it’s way too slow for fast paced fighting so, for the way I play, they’re pretty useless if I want to deal lots of damage. Also, there’s a lot more room to be interrupted mid attack.
Two exceptions: Shotput and Tetsubo. The tetsubo was said to be for taking out a horse’s legs, I imagine it was handy in a melee where the horseman was surrounded and a single solid blow was more desirable. One could perhaps add the longest lances and pikes.
Also, kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared, which means that speed is actually more important than mass, having something light allows you to swing it faster and that means that… more energy is generated by using a lighter weapon!
I really enjoy using whimsically-large weapons. Favourites are the fullblade and the guandao. The weight of the blades and the fact they can throw the wielder can absolutely be used to their advantage.
To compliment this video about big weapons, you should do a video on the Korean Tong-ah. It was an overdraw device that allowed them pull a very short arrow to full draw length. Supposedly it was much faster and had a higher range than standard length arrows.
"it swinging you instead" love the way you basically illustrated that like a cartoon would
Class: pole dancer
I cannot comprehend the core strength he has to trust himself to be able to do that.
When you're strong but lightweight. I assume ants frequently have this problem.
often characters with super strength seem to be lifting things with touch-based magic. Swinging a 400kg hammer when you weigh 100kg would do some very weird things in real life! 😂
@@blumineck Yeah, in one setting I read there were shown examples of this.
One person body was quit fit, but his superhuman feats came from the magic that engulfed his body. He was the type that could lift a car and only bend the hood a bit rather than crumble that entire area.
Another character in the story was superhumanly strong, but it was due to how his body functioned rather than any magic enhancing it and its surroundings.
He had to be constantly cautious because him exerting any form of strength as he walked could easily crack the ground he stood on. Any use of strength was a game of delicate balance for him.
He wouldn’t be able to lift a car from the front since the part would just crumble and bend from his grip as he attempted to lift it up.
From Devil May Cry, the swords (excluding Yamato) are large mainly for Comical/lore purposes. The Sparda is big because the original owner (Sparda) was a super powerful demon guy
Kinda the same reason Devil Sword Dante is so big since we first saw it with SDT Dante
@ exactly that,
@@xAhad1x and Devil Sword Dante is big af also cause it's Rebellion merged with Devil Sword Sparda which was Huge af too
Also, the huge swords in Devil May Cry games are usually stupidly elaborate in design. Rebellion's hilt is an incredibly detailed skeleton, Alastor has a dragon's head wrapping around the blade, etc. It'd just be a muddy mess outside of the inventory screen if you made them normal-sized. Yamato, on the other hand, is a relatively normal odachi, with nothing spectacular about its design, so it can afford to be smaller.
Heck, even the handguns of choice for the series are deliberately large, because you're not going to see anything interesting about something the scale a 9mm would be.
I own a metal Rebellion replica and its not even the full length, it’s roughly 8 lbs (heavy for a sword) and I swing it around for exercise and practice.
I just love swords :D
Another big reason for oversized weapons, in videogames at least, is graphical detail. It's harder to appreciate the visual style of a normal sized weapon with a zoomed out camera and loads of distractions on the screen.
And especially in the early days of 3d gaming, games like FF7 and WoW also had to be extremely mindful of polygon counts and performance bottlenecks. But the side effect of these early and influential games using this technique was cementing and popularizing the "big bulky equipment" aesthetic. So what was once primarily a practical design compromise has become a stylistic choice, and one that has bled into other fantasy media as well.
I came here to say this! Technical limitations, plus the fact that you need to be able to see them when zoomed out so you can appreciate the cool new weapon you just got 😁
Final Fantasy 7 is the first ever game where human wielding giant swords came into play right? I wanna bring this up since there's no real discussion on this.
But the first two I've ever seen giant weapons were from Cloud and Sephiroth. My mind was blown at that time and now, a lot of modern games took to that and so many characters are having giant weapons.
@@Ratio429 giant swords like cloud's buster were first popularized by the manga Berserk, afaik.
@@Orynae So Berserk came first when it comes to wielding giant swords?
Recently i just rewatched God of War 2 gameplay, i am pretty surprised at how the swords there from Kratos' blade to standard mooks swords were slightly bigger than what i remembered, with Xiphos wielded by NPCs being almost the size of greatswords
And that is actually why the Greatsword in Monster Hunter is so good! It is literally so heavy that you see several points in its animations where the weapon's heft is dragging the hunter along with its momentum!
Yeah Monster Hunter shows why heavy weapons shouldn't work but there they work cause enemies are slower and more or less predictable so you basically position yourself to become a trap for monster... or more like greatsword pros play like that
@@D_Wito Slow? The games may make them look slow, but MonHun's wyverns/Elder Dragons are definitely fast as fuck lorewise, especially since a lot of them can fly.
Another thing, especially in video games, is that a bigger weapon tends to read better when animating. When the weapon is bigger, it’s much easier to tell what exactly the character and/or the enemy is doing at any given moment
the huge weapons in BG3 annoyed me until I realized that I can literally see what's happening in that game's battles much better than in the first two. it still makes me shake my head when SH is swinging a mace with a haft thicker than her thighs and a head bigger than her own but.... now I chuckle afterward.
Yes, that's why even in 3D action games like the Dark Souls series or Elden Ring, most bosses and mob enemies are twice as big as the player, even if they are human-type, and they use huge weapons. This is because it is very difficult to accurately gauge the distance to the enemy from the over-the-shoulder perspective of the character, which is often used in third-person action games. Also, by increasing visibility, it becomes easier to see that enemy attacks are coming, and it helps to reduce the player's feeling of injustice. And in order to fill this gap and reduce the sense of incongruity, the hit detection of the player character's weapon has a longer range than it actually looks.
I was about to say, I've noticed even with weapons that are supposed to be more historically accurate in video games they tend to be slightly bigger than they should be. Most of the time you don't even notice until you move the camera right up to it and notice that things just a touch too big.
I just assumed that for those kinds of weapons companies just don't bother to focus too much on the size details as long as the player can comfortably see it from the usual camera angle
In fiction in general it also directly shows the audience the strength of the character without having to explain it. Especially with anime characters that have giant swords like Ichigo or Cloud Strife they can still move them with the speed and efficiency of a regular sized one. The more super strength a character has the bigger a weapon they can wield effectively, which in turn should also do more damage since force is mass times velocity and if you keep the same velocity and up the mass something like Cloud's Buster Sword can hit with some insane force.
Especially with how detailed modern character design gets. If you can perfectly read what the two inch tall character is holding among all that visual mess on that scale? You’ve officially got super vision
I like that you bring up weapons in comparison to equivalent tools because most weapons are just tools that are just translating their use to be against humans
Ordinary humans in fiction also have a tendency to simply be stronger than people irl. It’s not just the power ceiling that’s ridiculously high, the floor is quite elevated too
Well said!
He did mention of this but just because you strong doesn't mean you are heavy, you can drag or push something heavy than yourself if you have super strength and you could lift but heavy weapon than yourself would more likely to swing you
@ that’s not how fantasy physics work
@@tiglishnobody8750 To be fair a lot of these fictional characters do make themselves heavier with armor that's also built out of fantasy metal and a lot of anime characters wear weighted training gear
@@Link9058 Are you talking to me?
Another point is that if they have the strength to swing an obnoxiously big weapon, then they can use that strength to swing a regularly sized big weapon much faster and harder.
There's also a practical consideration in video games; a big weapon shows up better onscreen.
True. The Buster Sword is probably mostly a product of PS1 era graphics.
Yeah I love not seeing what my enemy is doing because my 4 square meter hammer is blocking my vision
In 3D action games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, the actual hit range of the player's weapon is set larger than the apparent size of the weapon. Otherwise, the reach of these weapons, which are mainly used from the character's over-the-shoulder perspective, will feel very short, which will make the gameplay feel strange and stressful. On the other hand, in PVP, the opponent's attack will hit at a longer distance than it actually appears, so even if you try to avoid it, you may still be hit, which will make the person being attacked feel a little strange. Well, these are all a matter of balancing whether to give more weight to PVE or PVP in a third-person 3D action game.
@@犬まにまに That's...A really bad solution in every way to be honest and it does explain my experiences with Souls PVP. So not only is the netcode completely trash, the weapon hitboxes themselves have a ton of ghost range.
Alternatively, you could've made the camera perspective tighter so you have a better understanding of what your character is doing. Have the reach of your weapon match the model, let the player learn how to judge the range themselves.
There, I fixed those games xD
@@Yorikoification its a good solution in singleplayer, but definitely not in multiplayer.
Tho in case of souls games I would still blame it on netcode
there's also a narrative theme of the overpowered badguy getting beaten by the skilled underdog hero. And the easiest way of conveying this visually is oversized weapons for the bigger bad guys.
Which was co-opted by certain hero characters on the assumption that they looked cool on those villains, so this hero should have a cool oversized weapon too
The weapon swinging you thing is what I always thing about seeing some of those ridiculous hammers.
Think*
Fortunately for videogame characters they have the extraordinary superhuman strength to not get swung by their weapons.
To me another good example is seeing Spider-Man pulling a helicopter to him that has already taken off while he has super strength I feel but am not positive that his weight is a bigger factor and would allow the helicopter to drag Spider-Man with it.
@@Zivilin It doesn't work that way. All the strength in the universe doesn't matter if your feet aren't attached to the ground.
This is why tug-o-war is less a contest of strength, and more a matter of which side is heaviest. No matter how hard you pull, if you can't keep your footing, you'll just end up pulling yourself farther forward.
@@Yonkage-ik5qb It does work like that in games. It's not like real life physics.
I like the use of your pole as a demonstration. Nice mix of talents.
“But unfortunately real life is subject to the laws of physics” XD
Repeal the laws of physics.
There's a quote in rock climbing circles "the law of gravity is strictly enforced"
@@ghaznavid unless you gain the powers of a toon, that one is one law that will always apply
The Colossus Hammer is subject to the laws of physics! It makes creatures lose flying!
In Baldur's Gate 1, 2, Icewind Dale... You could go with a gnome with 18/00 strenght with Halberds and Long Composite Bows because... Yes.
If you're fighting a big monster, a big sword sounds appropriate.
I love your videos. Not only do you talk about the real world applications of things in fantasy, but you also say "but the fantasy stuff is still cool though"
Because it is+😂😂
I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t find fantasy very cool!
Fair! But I appreciate that you include that, rather than a more killjoy approach. It makes it feel like more of a balanced critique, because yeah, a big part of why fantasy weapons are ridiculously huge is rule of cool, which tends to be a powerful force within fiction. And fiction doesn’t need to be realistic, so long as it feels sufficiently believable.
about the weapon swinging you, there was a japan exclusive berserk videogame for the ps2 where combat mechanics really made the heft of the dragonslayer feel real, with most of the attacks involving a sort of pendulum motion of swinging the sword, it swinging you, and using the conserved momentum to make another attack, it was tricky to get used to but felt really good when you got the hang of it! i've always preferred it when media plays more with the idea of incredibly heavy weapons beyond "big stronk swing hard"
Because it gives the weapon designers a ton of room and visual real estate to implement sick ass designs!
Some real world historical examples are amazingly detailed... except you'd never see the detail, doubly so because they'd move faster
This is why shard plate and shard blades from Stormlight Archive are great. When you have armor that grants you great strength, and a giant sword that has very little weight, you can afford to have people swinging giant swords on the battlefield.
Casually reminding the audience about the stripper pole. lol
Fantastic way to make the point.
Hey man, the pole is just a pole. Don’t tell it how to live its life
I think that enemy got… the point
“It ends up swinging you” 😏
My favorite movie physics trope remains the idea that you can strengthen just one part of the body and then use it to exert huge forces without ripping the rest of your body apart.
With video games especially but any visual medium, visual clarity is also a big factor. You need to be able to know what's going in at a glance, bigger weapons are easier to read.
Meanwhile in real combat you explicitly want the opposite so as to have the advantage of unpredictability!
This is the big reason for me, the one that will never go away entirely, particularly considering that a lot of these games have pvp elements to them and latency eats into your reaction time.
"The large motion that puts the weight of the
body into the attack reflects the great size
of their adversaries long ago." -Black Knight Halbred from DS1
the part about "the pole swinging you" was hilarious imo
Your profile picture is really cool!
I love synt
In soviet russia, the pole swings you
Big and solid is the way we all like, just like my pet snake that had a twin that got crushed by a giant metal gear. Tho the snake survived like a boss, before a fox bit it which caused it to die.
Mythical RUclips comment
Thats crazy
I think visibly is something that's often overlooked.
As well as, a big weapon is easier to draw than a thin delecit blade.
Links master sword literally can't come out of its sheath if it's on his back without clipping through it
They mean draw as in, an artists render, but I see where the confusion was, I had the same misconception for a moment
This is also the reason we consider giant eggplants so impressive.
The size of fantasy weapons is also for silhouettes when still, and being able to tell what you’re looking at when in motion. Both for animated/live action fight choreography, and also for video game “what do my buttons do” reasons
It's pretty funny how it's handled in Berserk cause only Guts has a big ahh sword and everyone is like "wait that's not possible". Even the narrator himself says it's more of a big chunk of iron than a sword. And Guts uses that just because why not ?
dragon slayer are literally a weapon that godot made to specifically kill dragon as requested by the king that he have to flee from. because even guts old sword which is somewhat similar sized to a normal two handler but slightly bigger breaks easily when he started hunting those apostle.
I love your Ghirahim icon! He’s my favorite villain of Legend of Zelda☺️
@@KeybladeCia14 oh thanks ! he's my favorite too
This is called lampshading
I also love that he isn't like, magically or scientifically enhanced to be able to do so, he's just some dude that can randomly do it
Making the weapons bigger also improves the clarity of what the character is doing
I like FromSoft's approach of making it like real world weapons, but twice as long, as if built for a giant like Grut Pier.
They're not really special in that way as they also incorporate buster sword designs in their giant weaponry and I believe one of the weapons is actually swinging a motherfluffin bell at your foes.
@@Yorikoificationthere's plenty of perfectly reasonable weapons as well, the zweihander is just like the real world counterpart. That's why I love fromsoft-you want a giant anime sword you get it, you want to use a fairly accurate to real world sword and shield no problem we got that too
@@il0917 Ok...Many fantasy universes are like that. You should praise The Elder Scrolls as well. The iron and steel weapons look just like regular real life existing weapons but the further up in the tiers you go the more fantastical they become until we get to the unergonomical, jaggedy mess that is the Daedric weapons.
In all kinds of fantasy weapons you have some real life equivalent of equipment. However that's usually given to low tier gear or given to nameless NPC's.
@@Yorikoification are you stupid? You can say "i like how this company does a thing" without having to list off every single other game that does the thing.
@Yorikoification I don't know if you remember what skyrim's swords look like but they're chunky as hell, swords were never that fat
Usually, it’s convey the strength of the welder. Most other combatants would be unable to wield such weaponry, such as Guts in Berserk or Cloud in Final Fantasy
In berserk with the dragon slayer everyone thinks guts cant weild it until he does.
One thing that goes unmentioned is that real-life weapons are generally designed to fight just humans, or in a few cases, horses or whatever steed is expected of enemy cavalry.
Not, you know, a dragon the size of a house, or a five-story-tall giant.
Physics is such a party pooper😂
It's doing the best it can!
But it can also be a good comedian 😂
i have a theory that one of the reasons video games has huge weapons was that early games had grafical limitations that would make more reasonable sized weapons hard to see in like 8-bit or 16-bit graphics and it kinda just hung around even when it became possible to make more realistic sized weaponry clear and visible, and then what you said visual themes and conveying certain ideas like power and strength
Love the colossus hammer
Hammer Time!
Mtg reference?
@@Nalead37 Yes, Hammer Time is a Modern deck
Dante does it became he knows its cool and nothing else. Because he just- can.
Seeing logic and realism in these medieval settings (even in fantasy) really increases my admiration for the people back then who had to use these things.
I can only imagine how amazed (or even terrified) a commoner might have seen a knight or a warrior back in those times.
You know, I never thought about it before, but a medieval knight in full plate might be wearing enough metal to build a house out of. Or at least subsidize a considerable amount of it...
Swords were a noble's sidearm for a reason -- they took schooling to use, they had to be commissioned from a specialist craftsman, and the only thing they're good for is killing. Same thing with plate armor of any kind. And if you're wearing the full suit, you're on horseback (full plate was rarely worn on foot) and that means you can afford the warhorse, the shield, a lance, the maintenance and care of all of your equipment...
War was the real sport of kings.
@@Msatthewwell an M1 abrams cost about as much as a upper middle class residential home, and a suit of armor is essentially the tank of the Middle Ages… so checks out.
@thefez-cat By the 14th and 15th century, swords had been made available to a much larger audience than prior. If you look at equipment lists from the time (or laws banning farmers from openly carrying their swords) you will find quite a few swords. Plate armor was also very common and even required in certain ordinances, although people fighting on foot, like a lot of pike/spear carrying burghers did, often left out the leg armor for further mobility.
@@thefez-cat a butchers knife and a sturdy scythe say hi
People don't believe that you can split platehelmets, with a sturdy scythe, till I show it off. People don't expect the
from-up-to-downward swing to be that fast
For me, when I oversize weapons in character design it's commonly to add to the silhouette and recognizable design of the character. So that's another reason for the oversizing of weapons. If a character were to have an average sword, that is cool, but if you make it bigger, everything pops and is more iconic.
Are we just going to ignore the fact he's still barefooted when it started to freeze?
No.
@blumineck What's your source of soleless footwear? I'm another crazy guy going to the limits in this respect.
I forgot people wear shoes outside of work when it's not snowing.
All battles are either through swift violence or attritional warfare, slow and heavy things never really work.
For video games, slower animations to give you reaction time, plus seeing the weapon easier, and more visual detail would be why. Especially if third person instead of first person. Also love the pole and olympic barbell
I always took it as an "identifier", like how in stage plays, anime, and even games in the 90s and 00s, major characters have notable hairstyles or colors, notable clothing, they might have a unique accent or phrase, and they often speak with broad, sweeping gestures.
We associate Sherlock Holmes with the deerhunter hat because that's the hat they gave him in the stage plays so the people in the back knew where he was at all times. You can pick Guts and Yugi out of the crowd or from a distance by one's sword and the other's hair alone. It's why in old Resident Evil games, when a character speaks, they speak with their hands. And you know a character from One Piece by their laugh alone.
A giant sword could not only make the character stand out in a crowd but ensure you can follow the character's attacks too. It's why weapon trails exist. It's why every in DragonBall Z have an aura. So you can follow the movement.
And like Sherlock's hat, they've become iconic to the characters or the franchise. And it's why a lot of media became bland and brown at one point. When the image is that clear, why do you need an identifier?
Sorry for the rant.
I also feel that the obsession with large weapons are due to many fights have the charters fighting large creature or monsters so I think that even if a small weapon would realistically do more damage it seems more fitting to have a large weapon
I remember when Heroes of the Storm released Alextraza people were talking about how bulkier her modeling is. The devs replied that this is MOBA, not an MMORPG, so they had to make her motions be more recognizable for the players, thus making her thicker.
Nice mention to HotS even if I don't really understand the relevance. It's the case for most heroes like Uther and Arthas, herited of course for the STR view itself.
And especially Hanzo because we can directy compare with Overwatch, although it's less the case for Genji ; because it's more about hit boxes and gameplay balances (once again the main antagonist to concerns of realism).
Alex on her hand literally has a "mommy energy" being the Dragon Queen, with the plus of being aboe to morph however she wants. So it makes sense that as soon as she'd be freed from the standardized WoW blood elf rig still used in Dragonflight, she would get thicker hips and all. I wonder if they could make an acceptable elf model out of Draeneï or even Kul Tiran.
Gotta love how Blumineck manages to perfectly utilize his poledancing skillset to illustrate his weaponry knowledge and the physics thereof.
Like, you don't even _think_ of "I can show what happens if you try to swing a melee weapon heavier than yourself by trying to 'swing' a dancing pole, its heavy base serving as a hypothetical weapon's head, and then holding onto the pole as it lifts me instead" unless you happen to have the exact sets of skills and knowledge converging in him.
Let alone pull off actually filming yourself doing it.
"it swinging you instead" is a concept Berserk actually tries to touch on at times. Gut's fighting technique in some panels shows him practically being lifted off the ground by his Dragonslayer.
every single time I watch one of your videos, I constantly think ' don't hit the camera '
great work :)
im happy to see DANTE
Characters with big weapons:
*Are you compensating for something or are you happy to see me?*
To be fair if you could swing a huge greatsword as fast as guts I think it would be pretty damn effective 💀
Seeing this man try to swing his pole only to get swung back was something I didn't know I needed
DMC 5 kinda proves that Dante, Vergil and Nero are the only ones that can hold their weapons. V was having trouble carrying Sparda
yeah DMC can get away with it since the characters using those sqords are all half demons. now lady doing tricks with her rocket launcher I have no idea
Devil May Cry in general runs on the rule of cool... and smashing stuff.
The fact V struggles really hits it home, when you remember he's half of Vergil.
he was literally crumbling apart from not having demonic energy but the point still stands. Lady’s physics on how she can do her backflips with her rocket launcher still make no sense though
I always liked the idea of the giant war hammers, being a weapon to be so heavy that it doesn’t matter what armor or shield you have as if you get hit by it, you will get messed up. It might not break through your armor, but that impact will leave you with a concussion or internal bleeding.
The big obvious problem to this however is how extremely slow it is making it easy to dodge or counter attack.
The rule of cool and bigger is always better. (At least with physical and structural damage). 😁
One thing is for sure, it's that I would never want to break into this man's home, haha. He'd be ready for anyone or anything. He's definitely surviving Ragnorak when it rolls around!
why ? because ain't no way normal sized zweihandler are going to cut a dragon when they have legs with diameter the size of and old tree with 30+ rings in it.
(Rings are caused by differing growth rates, usually by seasons, so each ring is about one year excluding anomalous natural phenomenon)
I strive to no longer be subject to the laws of physics
Dain's hammer's size is borderline reasonable. Plus he's a dwarf so he's strong. The Witch-King of Angmar's flail is stupidly huge but the size it has makes it look cool. Plus he's like seven feet tall and not only jacked but also dark magic so I think it's reasonable for him to be able to use it.
not to mention the flail is a cursed magical weapon and he even swings it like its fucking huge which is a plus
@sephiroaone-of-nine101 it is huge lmao
Indeed. It’s a bit like the matter of some jests in the Thor films, in which at least then (even if it seems to be Shrödinger’s hammer, given the magical paradoxical weight shenanigans) Thor can throw himself with his hammer Mjolnir, given its sheer inertia.
Whereas other media doesn’t seem to often account for the fact that no matter how strong you are, if you’re lighter than something that you’re trying to change the direction of, it’s going to push you around.
That said, I suppose ‘The Incredibles’ did demonstrate that with Mr Incredible stopping a train but being pushed along by the sheer inertia of something that big, so that’s something.
fantasy should lean into it more tbh, none of this "slightly" larger nonsense. Just swing a hammer the size of a small car lets goooooooooo
True it looks very cool seeing a guy swing a big ass hammer compared to normal sized hammer
MGR:R had it all right
Just my opinion, but I think it looks kind of silly. I don’t really like it that much.
“In it swinging you instead.”
*was about to serve respectfully on said weapon*
Anime Logic. Yay😊🎉
"Real life weapons tend to be smaller" jokes on you my bardiche Suzanne commands to differ
To be fair to botw, the weapon you showed is a hammer and not a weapon
Isn’t it also meant for Gorons?
@@OtisCluck Yes, as is rock roast... which BotW Link eats, if you consider HW:AC to be a canon portrayal of Link despite being a non-canon story. There's no way Link's body is a normal density for Hylians... (he also weighs five (5) apples)
“The neighbor has his bow out again”
Monster Hunter is one of the prime examples there.
Yet in the aptly named Monster Hunter your weapons have a reason to be so big - they’re giant tools for damaging giant creatures. The Guild even says they’re not to be wielded against other humans.
Just imagine a character that instead of swinging his weapon, the weapon swings him instead.
Menacingly walking with double his weight over his head and dropping it on enemy and as it misses swings him around the pole and attacks with blades on legs, If gets attacked with "weapon" still up, trips and executes non dodgable swing body attack
not how superhuman strength works, if someone is superhuman enough to swing something heavier than them, they are using such force that gravity doesnt have time to tip you over before you've already swung it over your head.
You are not superhuman so you take much too long to swing the heavier object, and thus it swings you. but superhumans have such strength that they can fight gravity simply with a heave of their chest or adjustment of posture, because their strength is ALSO beyond their own weight, and thus can apply force downward greater than a heavier object can by just exsisting.
It's more about momentum than gravity, at first. Even if he were strong enough to actually swing that pole and base, he would rip bits of the ground out from under him, then gravity would take over and he'd end up falling on his arse. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
That's not how it works. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any force you use to swing a sword is force that's also being exerted on your own body. You just don't notice, because you weigh more than the sword so the sword moves instead of you. If the sword weighs more than you do, then you'll swing yourself instead of the sword.
This guy is the equivalent to what I thought I looked like wielding my grandma's gardening tools
In Russia, sword swing you.
I love how the whole time you’re listing the real world problems you’re also saying, but I enjoy watching it too.
The only actual sword i can think of that even comes close to fantasy weapons is the greatsword. Then again, im sure theres others that i just dont know about
This is one of the reasons I really like rapiers and katanas in fantasy. If the scale and proportions are too far off, they really don't look like what they're intended to be anymore, so artists tend to get them closer to accurate more than not.
Bro… i think you are so fucking cool. Love your Shorts
Genuinely need a game that does fast weapons>big weapon. Like a dueling game or something
A dwarf wearing the heaviest armor just so he can swing his favorite hammer.
Technically Guts is able to swing the dragonslayer very fast. Faster than most swordsman are able to react to anyways.
Hi there just wanted to say I’m a big fan of your content and it has inspired me to take up archery myself In fact I recently jioned the archery team at my school and your videos are making more and more sense😅
So in other words, what homie is saying is, it’s not the size of the vessel; It’s the motion in the ocean?
Another W for me
Okay you swinging that bar at the end was impressive as hell!!
he almost killed the camera at the end
I appreciate your ability to convey reason for historical details while acknowledging the pop-culture aesthetic choices that serve as narration devices.
i literally cant escape dante
atleast ONCE
every day i get a dante jumpscare
im not joking
me with vergil dude, i cant escape him. hes everywhere
YOUR CALISTHENICS SKILLS ARE INCREDIBLE BRO
Yeah you pretty much nailed it on the head. It's simply because it just looks so darned badass.
In oldskool games with sprites, having the characters use oversized weapons means they can just animate them swinging the weapon without stepping into the opponent's space, and have a seperate animation for the opponent getting hit. You only need to overlap the weapon for that to work. Whereas actually animating multiple types of attacks and the interaction between different characters etc. would have been way too much work.
Did anyone notice the crazy core strength of how you held on to the pole when it fell over?
more distinctive weapons also add to the silhouette, making a character more recognizable. there are other ways to make a distinct silhouette, but weapons are very reliable.
Listen, Devil Sword Sparda being swung around like it's nothing is cool as shit. 😂
That dark souls greatsword swing you ended the video with was perfect. Even got the recovery frames right XD
From a writer's perspective, large weapons can convey so many things... especially with how it's held and used, what kind of weapon it is, what it looks like, what its abilities are, and most importantly, who wields it. It can connect to any weapon from real history and the tones and implications that brings, along with its own fictional history and reputation. It can represent a character's aspect they carry with them, such as family/bloodline drama, the power of friendship, inner turmoil, war, politics, sins, virtues, vices, creeds, talent/skill... the list is as endless as there are things humans can think deeply about. I like to think big weapons not only look cool, but sometimes, recognizing your worth enough to realize the weight you hold in this world through your sheer presence alone - and then learning to USE that power... it can /feel/ like you're carrying and learning to master your own massive weapon. Butting heads with others can Feel like you're having a tactical fantasy battle, and the more your opponent has trained on their own to harness their own energy (or if it's a skill that comes to them easier than most) the harder it is to spar with them. Weapons in general are just... such good allegories for the heart, soul, mind, and any of the factors at play that influence your life or the lives of those around you ♡
This is why great swords are my least favourite weapon in Genshin Impact, it’s way too slow for fast paced fighting so, for the way I play, they’re pretty useless if I want to deal lots of damage. Also, there’s a lot more room to be interrupted mid attack.
Two exceptions:
Shotput and Tetsubo.
The tetsubo was said to be for taking out a horse’s legs, I imagine it was handy in a melee where the horseman was surrounded and a single solid blow was more desirable.
One could perhaps add the longest lances and pikes.
Thanks again for the joy you spread by being the nerdy angel you.
Idea for a weapon: metal yo-yo ball.
You can easily conceal it in your pockets, and yet it’s “deadlily” blunt!
Also, kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared, which means that speed is actually more important than mass, having something light allows you to swing it faster and that means that… more energy is generated by using a lighter weapon!
I really enjoy using whimsically-large weapons. Favourites are the fullblade and the guandao. The weight of the blades and the fact they can throw the wielder can absolutely be used to their advantage.
To compliment this video about big weapons, you should do a video on the Korean Tong-ah. It was an overdraw device that allowed them pull a very short arrow to full draw length. Supposedly it was much faster and had a higher range than standard length arrows.
it's also a matter of characterisation, giving more space for design and conveying what's important about the character
The big weapons are like characters unto themselves. You can't imagine Cloud not having his Buster sword, etc