These arguments deserve a facepalm.
Beyond the fact of how one could take this as insulting due to it being such an offhanded and unnecessary remark, I find that it holds some comedic value purely because it serves as a benchmark for your critical lack of understanding of the arguments at hand, this little amount of commentary speaks for itself when complimented with the rest of what you call a rebuttal, which I'll get into:
First of all, I wasn't saying they were obese, because someone 480 pounds is always going to be quite slow and easy to dodge, especially considering they're so damn big and muscular, muscles are good, but to get to 480 pounds off of pure muscle means you are neither really flexible or agile.
Instead of properly dissecting my analogy for the situation, you go into a long-winded debunk that seems hyper-focused on the exact weight of those in mention, and how such individuals would actually be super slow.
The speed factor matters none here and even better suits my analogy due to the fact we
know that Armstrong is slower than Sam and Raiden. Yet you focus on this when it only serves to dodge the crux of the problem. Almost poetic how you insist it being easy to dodge is actually dodging the key issue:
Second of all, Any martial artist worth even a tiny little fraction of a damn is gonna be going for pressure points against someone who is even a bit bigger then them, thats just common sense.
The argument of pressure points tells to me that you yourself probably don't understand how those things actually work due to lack of actual experience with martial arts in general, as
pressure points do not exist like how we assume they do, we as people have weak points in our bodies but in these scenarios you need the adequate strength to abuse them effectively, it is not as simple as Kenshiro or the Vulcan Nerve Pinch makes it out to be. Even ignoring this aspect, outside of the analogy it holds no water even more so due to how
Armstrong has nanomachines protecting him.
It is a very real thing that
weight (and further, strength) disparity creates a gap between people in a playing field like
Boxing,
Wrestling or
MMA. Weight Classes establish a level playing field for the people fighting. Now watch
these clips and ask yourself: would this be even remotely fair if the strongman/actor had the slightest idea how to fight in the case of an actual serious scenario?
The answer is (and always should be) a
resounding no.
To now understand the main point of this argument: Skill can only get you so far in a battle against someone bigger and stronger than you, even skill has its limits and isn't an end all be all in any given scenario, you need other aspects to back it up.
These arguments deserve a facepalm.
Poetic retribution.
Third of all, Armstrong actually beat someone who could do genuine damage to him in Sam, you know, a guy who kept up with Raiden with practically nothing but his skill?
You mean the same fight where Armstrong can effectively block any strike on his body because of the nanomachines coursing through it? Are you seriously trying to tell me that having a nigh-impervious body had nothing to do with why he won that fight?
Enlighten me on what skill is required in blocking a sword strike with your head, Reaper. I'm genuinely curious, because performing this kind of maneuver in any situation where you are not safe from harm is not skillful but instead completely idiotic. Armstrong is abusing his body here and frankly won the interaction because Sam was caught completely off-guard by the fact Armstrong could
weaponize his own wound.
I can only think that people using this as an argument have a complete fundamental difference to I when it comes to interpreting feats almost as if completely looking over crucial context cues, and I can only assume it looks like this:
Them: "Armstrong
is blocking Sam's sword strikes, this indicates
he is skilled."
Me: "Armstrong
is blocking Sam's sword strikes with
his whole body, this is logically stupid."
It affords the characters the most charitable possible interpretation either by blissful ignorance or omission of key details that paint the scenario in a different light. Not that is inherently wrong of somebody to have this kind of thought process as nobody's interpretation is necessarily more important than someone else's, but when in the effort of truth seeking we commonly look to what is the most sensible when presented with statements or feats, it is why people throw out arguments like PIS or outlier so much, so I cannot in good faith accept the former take because it doesn't display the whole story, it is charitable, but not logical or sensible, and it only takes looking at the scenario while removing a key detail; the nanomachines.
"Armstrong is blocking Sam's sword strikes with his whole body, this is logically stupid."
Should we discard the detail of nanomachines, his whole body becomes a flaw, justifying the interpretation that this manner of defense which was initially pivotal towards his strategy (one that he relied on) has become completely illogical and no sane person would do it. It is his reliance on his nanomachines that grants him his openings and his ability to fight back; it is reckless and without self-preservation, not skilled -
"Armstrong
is blocking Sam's sword strikes, this indicates
he is skilled."
For this interpretation to work in the current scenario, you'd have to add another element outside of his body, which we have little to go off of.
These arguments deserve a facepalm.
And last of all, nobody ever said Armstrong was equal to Raiden in skill
(And kinda straightforward, not sure why it's even being contested here, dude could land a hit on cognizant Raiden while being slower, that's automatic high skill)
Also he matched masters of martial arts my dude,
Ya ever heard of skill scaling? No "bruiser" is gonna be laying his hands so consistently on ******' Raiden despite being arguably slower
Before you say "They didn't directly compare the two" because they didn't state it word for word (people are really sticklers for that), the arguments are implying relativity, which is still much higher than Armstrong deserves credit for.
Even Armstrong no-selling all of raidens attacks in first phase is completely trashed by him keeping up with Raiden in second phase, you know, when Raiden had literally every advantage except for LS?
Except Raiden didn't, Raiden got Murasama and the player got the actual freedom to kill Armstrong, not much changed.
And also, no? Have you watched the fight? Armstrong employs standard wrestling and football techniques and gets his ass beat for a majority of the interaction, his only leverage is his vast durability and being stronger than Raiden.
What a skilled move, opening himself up for that.
Armstrong doing anything in the previous scene put him in a ‘vulnerable position’. He trapped raiden in a grab like four times and sat on him in the very scene that blew up the mech.
Using the previous video for benchmarks:
14:12 - Grapples an unprepared Raiden on the head, Raiden visibly struggles due to Armstrong's superior strength. Not much skill needed for that.
14:34 - They lock one arm, Armstrong attempts to punch a defensive Raiden with haymakers, misses a few times, then grabs his neck and lifts him while Raiden fails to break the hold because of superior strength. This is a rather inefficient method of incapacitating someone and is just a clear abuse of strength.
He then proceeds to throw Raiden like a ball, what a flex.
In the meantime, we get the first fight phase where Armstrong just bullies you with his durability to just be a show off, Armstrong breaks the HF Blade and off-guard punches Raiden and the face but then Raiden blocks another because Armstrong's punches are slower and easily telegraphed. Armstrong's solution to this block is to, of course, push harder with his fist, because that's the most skilled thing he could do. Totally.
18:00 - Armstrong grabs Raiden's neck again, Raiden struggling as Armstrong physically pushing him forward with the advantage he has, and then physically appeals Raiden's hand off his neck while still holding him.
These occur before he sits on him, which he only got to do because he knocked Raiden into the air
after Raiden turned his back on him but tell me, which of these interactions was Raiden super vulnerable, in a way that was achieved through skill and not brute force?
Abstraction's, you're being ridiculous. "armstrong is so buff and that magically lets him fight Raiden", it doesn't, not how it works
No, you're wrong here, the fact you're arguing that being buff let's you toss hands with a dude that's faster than you and has a skill chain that's bigger than my dick is asinine.
It isn't, at all, nobody is talking about it because nobody sat down and thought "yeah, being buff let's you toss hands against a dude with like 10 skill stomps worth of scaling" against someone's that faster.
Oh god, Chariot! What's that, over yonder?
It's like saying some average buff dude could outskill Bruce Lee, it don't matter how buff he is, Bruce Lee is gonna be running circles around his ass and humiliating him even if that buff dude could tank his hits like a champ and floor him in one punch.
Instead of spreading misinformation, review above and educate yourself on the matter.
Him moving isn't a real indication, he's a cyborg, could've been him seizing up, who knows, or maybe he was injured to the point of crippling, none of that was the case, he was just reeling, Armstrong didn't know any of that, but he knew Raiden wasn't dead.
This is not really a rebuttal to what I said and is just theory-crafting, the fact of the matter is Armstrong knew he wasn't dead because it was readily visible to him, suggesting his intention was to not kill Raiden when also blowing up the giant mech they stood on with a punch he wound up while proclaiming that he wanted Raiden to die is simply conjecture, there's no way to prove those weren't his intentions.
And what do you mean "regardless of how you view the sam fight", you mean viewing it as it's intended to be viewed? Like this isn't exactly Shakespeare, was made blatantly obvious.
Because the his interaction with Sam does not immediately correlate to his interaction with Raiden? Who visibly and audibly pissed Armstrong off with his use of trickery in their conversation to throw him on his ass?
This stuff isn't 1-to-1, stop pretending that it is.
Or like, understanding a character's traits and how they act and their true goal and motive and comparing it to actions they took before, after, and in instances where we know for a fact they did the thing.
You can understand their characters traits and how they act and still come to the conclusion that his intent was to kill Raiden in this moment, instead of relying on a piece of in-game dialogue to supplant every true attempt Armstrong makes on someone's life. It's either he wanted to kill Raiden here or you refuse to take him seriously or at his word.
Again, want to remind you, especially because you argued for it if memory serves.
My argument was that since you've been given full control of the character and have been actually given the freedom to kill Armstrong beyond the cutscenes clearly catered to demonstrate his durability, that you actually do damage. Ripper Mode being at play is a whatever factor, but frankly this point is completely irrelevant to the subject and is a talking point from a different thread, so leave it there.
Or hell, if you ABSOLUTELY must think he intended to kill Raiden there, that doesn't mean he was going all out either, one could try and kill a dude and just undershoot and not use enough power to do so, doesn't mean he used all his power given he turns around and starts throwing hands with Raiden in phase 2.
You'd really have to go out of your way to suggest Armstrong was simultaneously holding back with also the desire to kill Raiden just to support that it's all 100% casual feat, it's not. You can argue that he held back in there somewhere but you have to admit it to yourself somewhere down the line that it's conjecture.
This thread has been effectively derailed beyond it's original purpose and I'm done contributing to that, so do yourselves a favor and focus on that from here on out, as my work has been done.
Thank you and goodbye.
These arguments deserve a facepalm.
For good measure.
