Olympic Archer Breaks Down Video Game Archery

Hi, I'm Mackenzie Brown.

Today, I'll be breaking down how archery is portrayed

in video games.

[upbeat music]

The video games we'll be looking at are Assassin's Creed,

The Last of Us, Crysis, The Forest,

Stranded Deep, Thief, Horizon Zero Dawn,

The Witcher, Far Cry, and Tomb Raider.

Let's take a look at how archery skills are portrayed

in video games.

Technique, Crysis 3.

[upbeat music]

The angle of the bow is over to the side.

What we would call that is cant.

The arrow would potentially go more to the right.

Doesn't really give you much,

it just kinda looks cool.

Same thing in crime movies and things like that,

where someone will point a gun, and they'll aim it sideways.

I don't think that this is very helpful to aiming.

Our eyes are naturally want to line circle up with circle,

line with line, and notice the differences there.

I think it's something to kind of look cool,

but it doesn't actually help you shoot any better.

Injured shoulder, The Last of Us, part two.

[arrow strikes] [woman grunts]

This video was extremely painful to watch.

If she was shot in her shoulder,

and there was only a small amount

penetrating through the backside of her shoulder,

I would actually say to push the arrow through.

[dramatic music]

[woman grunts]

Whenever you pull back out, the shape of the broadhead

is gonna be more like a shark tooth,

so as you're coming out,

you're pulling all of that muscle and tendon

that you've already damaged.

If I were in that scenario,

I'd probably try to find a tree

and push myself against the tree

to push the arrow out that way.

[woman grunts]

I probably wouldn't shoot a bow

just because of the range of motion that you have to have

to be able to draw a bow,

I think it would be extremely painful

to lift your arm much less pull a bow back.

Who knows, I might do some crazy stuff

if I was shot in the shoulder, so.

Running and shooting, The Last of Us.

[dramatic music]

We have a character who is loading the bow very quickly,

and making a shot extremely quickly.

[dramatic music]

The arrows probably aren't being

actually nocked onto the bow.

On our equipment, we have these plastic nocks

that are at the end of the arrow,

that attached the actual arrow to the string,

so that when draw back, the arrow doesn't fall off.

As an Olympic archer, there's not really a need

to load super quick.

It only takes me about 15 seconds

after I've put an arrow on to fully shoot my shot.

[dramatic music]

Running and shooting at the same time

is not necessarily recommended.

It would make it very difficult to range your target

and then aim accurately.

It would have to be something

that you practice all the time.

Shooting through water, Stranded Deep.

In this scenario, this guy is stranded,

so we have to give him a little bit of leeway there.

But, one thing that would be very challenging to me

would be getting the shark out of the water.

And whenever bow fishing happens,

there's a reel that you attach to your bow,

and there's an attachment for it to go to the arrow,

so when you shoot,

you have the string that trails after the arrow,

and then you can reel that in

for the fish that you've shot

Water displacement is another thing to think about.

The fish may be here when you see it,

but it's actually here under the water,

so you have to aim off of the fish to be able to shoot it.

Reaction time, Assassin's Creed Origins.

I can honestly say that I have never jumped off a building

and tried to shoot an arrow at the same time.

One thing that this person has to do

is to look at, number one,

how they're falling towards the ground,

number two, how the wind is blowing,

number three, if the person

that you're shooting at is moving,

all of those factors factor into his shot.

This is realistic,

not necessarily that it's realistic to jump off a bridge

and shoot somebody,

but in a way that you have to be aware

of many different factors that affect your shot.

Next, let's take a look at arrows.

Multiple arrows at once, Horizon Zero Dawn.

I actually have tried this,

I have shot multiple arrows off of my bow.

It feels extremely strange.

That string felt like it was going through molasses,

it was just so slow, because it had to push more

out of the way to get back to its stop position.

Where the guy's shooting three or four arrows,

your arrows would not clump together like that on the bow,

your arrows would go in multiple different directions.

If you think about the stored to energy in a bow,

the more points that you add into it

divides how much energy is going into those arrows,

so whenever you add multiple arrows onto the string,

all that energy is going into three different places,

versus it's intended one place.

I don't think that it would be very helpful.

How arrows fly, Thief.

We can see how the arrow is actually spinning

towards the target,

and this is something that's very accurate.

That's a very small detail that a lot of people

wouldn't necessarily pick up on.

I have one of my arrows here,

and I'm actually gonna show you how it spins.

Fletching and feather are interchangeable,

so it's whatever stabilization you have

on the back end of your arrow.

Mine are made of a plastic material.

So, you have a lot of energy on this part of the arrow,

because this is the point, it's got some weight on it,

so it's taking the arrow towards the target,

but then the back end needs to be stabilized,

otherwise there's gonna be more oscillation

left and right, versus when you add that vane on there,

it's gonna be able to spin,

which stabilizes the arrow as it's in flight.

[bowstring snaps]

Very accurate depiction here,

very accurate to what an arrow actually does in flight.

Explosive arrows, Far Cry 4.

[bowstring snaps]

[car explodes]

This is something that is exciting to think about

as a scenario, but just is not practical.

[bowstring snaps]

[car explodes]

You're going to create a weaker shaft, a weaker arrow,

because there's a heavier fixed point on the end.

The energy is going into the back end of the arrow,

but not into the front end of the arrow.

A lot of people would say,

Oh, well, if the arrow's too heavy,

just pull it back further.

Because the further you pull the bow back,

the heavier the bow gets.

You would potentially be putting your ear, your face,

your nose in the way of being hit by that string,

and I can tell you firsthand,

by hitting my arm several times over my career,

it is not a pleasant feeling.

Unlimited ammo, Crysis 3.

[bow fires]

[arrows explode]

Their bow reloads arrows seemingly coming from nowhere.

These arrows are just appearing and going into the bow

and ready to shoot.

I wish that this was possible.

[arrows]

That would make my life a little bit easier.

We get our arrows in packages of dozens,

and they're separate components.

If one of the fletchings is bent or cut

because it's been shot into the target,

or somebody else hits it,

if a nock breaks,

I wanna be able to swap that out

and have a good, fresh arrow to be able to shoot.

I would imagine that there's a limit

on how many arrows he can actually load into his bow

to be able to shoot multiple times.

I have never seen a bow that reloads automatically,

but props to this guy for having one.

[arrow explodes]

Arrow strength, Rise of the Tomb Raider,

I would say that an arrow probably would not withstand

that much of a bend.

Our arrows do take on a lot of a beating

whenever we shoot them.

Our arrows are shooting anywhere from 200

to 300 feet per second.

She would have to have more of the surface

that she's shooting into in the middle of the arrow

to even maybe make this work.

Just because I think the arrow would flex so far down

that it would snap,

especially depending on what kind of material

her arrows are made out of.

Ours are made out of a aluminum core

with a carbon fiber on the outside,

so they're pretty strong,

but I would not trust this with my life,

which is what Laura is doing in this video clip.

Deflecting arrows, The Witcher 3.

On average, at least for my bow,

we shoot about 50 pounds of draw weight,

and our arrows are moving about 200 feet per second,

or 136 miles per hour.

So if you're thinking about a very small projectile

moving at you at 136 miles per hour,

you have to have ninja skills to be able to deflect an arrow

or move out of the way.

That was some pretty bad acting.

Really oughtta explore other career options.

Let's see how bows are represented in video games.

Sound, The Last of Us.

[man grunts]

The most that you're gonna hear

whenever an arrow is flying

is like a thhhhp kind of sound.

It's just the fletchings are moving.

You're not gonna hear that sssssss,

like it's not very loud at all.

There's not actually a lot of sound

that our equipment makes.

It's not gonna have many metal pieces on it,

it's not gonna have a lot of moving parts

or anything like that.

The type of bow this guy is shooting

is actually probably gonna be one of the quieter bows

that's out there in real life.

Carrying the bow, Tomb Raider.

[crow caws]

[Man] Got it.

We have a fire look for the smoke.

[Man] We're on our way.

In this video, you see Laura Croft

carrying her bow across her back.

This my competition bow.

I shoot an Olympic Recurve.

It's kind of a small space,

like between the string and my bow,

it's not a lot of space to get in there.

One thing a lot of people don't realize

is the makeup of our strings,

and the way they actually work.

Think of it as, like, strands of hair altogether.

So when they're pulled really tight, it's all one piece,

but when they're shot, it kind of flares out.

Whoa! What are you doing in here?

Because of the wear and tear

that you would see on that string,

it would be broken down pretty quickly.

[Woman] Did you get that?

Compound bow, Far Cry 5.

[Man] Goodbye guys, I'm going out.

[Man] Moving.

In this clip, some of the parts of this bow

are pretty realistic, especially the part of the draw.

There is a stability that you see in the bow

once you draw back, and that's something that's unique

to a compound bow.

This is my hunting compound.

What you'll notice that's different

from some of the other bows we've seen today

are these wheels on it, and we call these cams,

and they have basically like a pulley system in them.

So whenever you draw the bow back,

there will be a break-over moment,

versus a longbow or a traditional bow,

where you can keep drawing, keep drawing, keep drawing

until pretty much the bow breaks.

The one thing that I would critique

is the fact that there's not really a rest,

or a place for that arrow to be sitting on.

Usually you would have a separate rest

that you would attach to the bow

for it to hold the arrow up,

versus it just sitting on the shelf of the bow.

The aiming device only has two pins.

They usually come with one pin, three pins or five.

[Man] I know how this is gonna end.

Bow modifications, The Last of Us, Part II.

Them calling it a range finder is incorrect,

I would just call this a sight.

A range finder has a system of lasers

that determines a distance

between you and a particular target,

whereas a sight would be just a fixed item on the bow

that actually helps you aim at different distances.

I also have a problem with the way she strung the bow.

It was almost like she just pulled the string

off of one end of the bow, and just took it off.

You have to actually put pressure onto the bow

to get the limb to move and flex,

to get that string off, because it's under tension.

And then whenever she strung the bow again,

she kind of just pulled the limb down

and then put the string on,

which, depending on the weight of the bow

is pretty impractical,

you have to have like a 15, 20 pound bow

to be able to do something like that maneuver

for it to actually work.

The last piece of equipment

that they put on this bow is a grip,

and they claim that this would help with

decreasing weapon sway.

To my knowledge, the only way

to kind of change the way your bow moves or doesn't move

would be to add stabilizers.

A grip is just to fit your hand,

cause everybody's hands are different.

When you look at my bow that I compete with,

I have these bars on my bow that hang off,

that help balance the bow.

Yeah, this'll do.

Let's talk about targets.

Moving target, Far Cry 3.

[dramatic music]

[man yells]

The first thing that jumps out at me

is just the delayed reaction of the shot.

You hear the shot hit [arrow strikes],

and then the guy goes [man yells],

and it's just like so delayed, it cracks me up.

Something that you would look at in this scenario

would be the movement of the truck,

the movement of the people in the truck.

You also have to take into account the sunshine,

versus wind and direction and all of that stuff.

Leading the target a little bit is very helpful.

We kind of are just mitigating variables

whenever we're shooting at any type of target.

Cabela's Big Game Hunter Pro Hunts.

[arrow fires]

[arrow strikes]

[Man] That's sloppy shooting, friend.

I actually would kinda disagree,

because the person is shooting center mass,

and then they're shooting lower than the sternum.

So the sternum's gonna be a pretty solid bone

to shoot against.

You see on the end of the arrow, it has a broadhead.

These blades don't move, they're razor-sharp,

and pretty much stay that way,

but whenever you shoot, it stays open like that.

I think that's pretty accurate to what happens in real life.

[Man] That was close, but still off the mark.

Making an arrow, The Forest.

[Man] In this video, I'm gonna quickly show you

how to craft the bow and arrow in the forest,

add the cloth, add the rope, and then add your stick.

Craft it together, and you now have your bow.

Some of the bare bones of this is true.

You do need a stick,

you do need rope, or some sort of string.

Granted, this is a video game,

but the stick he had had a lot of knots and burrs on it,

and it also had quite a few V's off

for like twigs and stuff like that.

[Man] And you now have your bow.

I would try to find all one contiguous piece.

[Man] We're building a bow, you need some cloth.

And just crack open pretty much any suitcase.

I don't think that you need cloth

to be able to make a bow.

[Man] To make your arrows,

you're gonna need some feathers,

which are right up there in your backpack,

so you add them to your craft thing, and get the stick,

and you can now craft your arrows.

As far as the execution or the making of the arrows,

I would say trying to find straighter sticks,

and then kind of whittling those down

into straight cylinders,

versus something that's a little bit more crooked,

and all of that's just for accuracy.

Hidden target, Wii Sports Resort.

[crowd cheers]

I've actually shot some fruit before,

it makes your arrows very sticky,

and it's not fun to clean up.

It's not going to stick out like this one,

it's gonna go straight through that watermelon.

I would recommend not shooting anything

that you can't comfortably aim on or see.

Plus, why would you wanna shoot a watermelon

when you can shoot a target?

I've had several people ask me

to shoot an apple off of their head,

even strangers like, in the airport.

Even though I'm very confident in the way I shoot,

I still would, I just wouldn't take that risk.

There wouldn't be enough fun involved,

there would just be a whole lot of fear.

[Game Announcer] Unbelievable!

I think it's very interesting to see all parts of archery

and how it's shown in different mediums.

A couple of the videos had really good aero flight in them,

attention to detail was really there.

I really enjoyed my experience today,

and hopefully helped you learn a little bit about my sport.