in this essay i wi-... no wait for real though hear me out
games are built on systems. systems in a project with clean code interact cleanly. that is, each system has an interface, with inputs and outputs. clean code is reliable, that is to say when you give a system a certain input it will produce an expected output
and that's boring. games are fun not in the way systems behave uniformly and expectedly, they're fun in the way that you, the player, can modify the inputs in a way that the system yields a new, less expected output. game systems have to be built to accommodate this. what that means is that game systems have a bunch of exceptions built in by design! for example:
"if the zombie touches you while on fire, you get set on fire ... unless you're wearing the asbestos gear or have enough innate fire resist"
now of course some pedant is going to come in and be like "um, aksjually you can cleanly systemize that specific interaction and in fact all interactions" to which i have to say, yeah. if you're freehold games and you've got 20+ years to sink into the development of a game called caves of qud maybe. most gamedevs are mere mortals however, and need to get things done within a more reasonable timeframe, so shortcuts will be required
those shortcuts make code messy. but that mess is also where all the fun in games is to be had. which means games with clean code are boring. think of modern MMOs, which always have extremely clean systems, and can feel like you're playing an interactive spreadsheet
i rest my case, your honor
the black knight greatsword is, as far as i'm aware, the only weapon with the special power of shooting whatever it hits into the stratosphere when you do the baseball player stance heavy attack. it's a uniquely coded animation trigger on hit that can't be repeated with any other weapon or setup.
it is, for that reason alone, my favorite weapon in all of dark souls.
