emphasis mine.
i think there's already been a fair amount of evidence in the demos and in the descriptions of the progression of the combat mechanics to determine that the complexity of unarmed melee combat does change as you invest in those skills.
Ah, we haven't seen that evidence. CDPR has mentioned it, as I recall in reference to shooting and animations, but we haven't seen the results yet.
Those were striking and blocking animations. Maybe they were those of an unskilled user, maybe not. For one thing, an unskilled user just defeated 2 people. Having tried this myself, har har. Perhaps that is a balance issue, though, and not a reflection of a skilled combatant. Another factor however is that while the sword techniques in Witcher 3 changed and improved, hand to hand stayed the same.
I'd say there's a fairly good chance you saw a fairly representative example of the combat animations in that fight. You might get more moves later, but there's no evidence the overall feel of the melee will get better yet.
Even a complete unknown to full contact has more, hrm, "life" to their moves than I saw.
Just rewatched it for the umpteenth time. It's far from terrible, but it sure does look awkward. I like that the hands are open, nice touch, keeps the head protected..unlike his opponents, who like hearty haymakers and hooking...air?
There's a particularly bad front kick about 2/3 of the way through the fight, from green shirt. Looks...just not great. Kind of amusing though. Is he trying to front snap your jaw?
I mean, these two -are- terrible. They don't double-team. They don't split to sides. They don't control the ground. They drop their guard a depressing amount of times. They don't cover up. They don't follow up. They don't seem to know how to beat a guard or even try body shots. One guy starts with what looks like an actual Superman-punch!
On the other hand, BOY can everyone take a beating! Like 80s TV series beatings! That's a lot of full-power blows to the head!
The fight is just...plastic is all. The animations, the feel, the moves. First person melee on a 2d surface is tough to do, sure, but I hope CDPR tightens up the hand to hand. I don't think this is a character skill level thing, I think it's unpolished gameplay.