Guard Your Necks; Decapitations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Sabatiello Yovino noticed something a little different thrown into the Skyrim in-game trailer Bethesda recently released. In the latest trailer there seems to be a scene in which the hero decapitates his enemy. Of course many of us didn’t notice as the scene flew by too quickly, but that didn’t stop Sabatiello. He decided to slow it down a bit and take screenshots of this scene frame by frame. This decapitation isn’t quite a clean cut as the spinal cord is still attached, maybe his blade was a little worn?

Here’s what Sabatiello had to say about it:

“Upon further looking into the shots I noticed that this so called ‘Decapitation” may not be a decapitation at all. Actually It may be an attempt at a decapitation. There is definitely beheading or an attempt at a beheading here just looks like the player didn’t swing hard enough. Actually looks to me that from shots 1 through 12 he took the Head clean off, but if you look carefully at shots 13 through 18, the head recoils and it is hanging by a mutilated spinal cord. THE HEAD IS STILL ATTACHED! OUCH! That’s gotta hurt! Looks like there is a possibility of not only dismemberment and beheadings but also depending on how hard you swing, you can leave major deadly wounds or be just a thread of a muscle or ligament short of full dismemberment. Which leads me to believe we should discuss a new topic: The possibility of partial dismemberment and how powerful your attack effects the outcome of the damage caused. What do you all think?”