Archaic Weapon For An Advanced Age / Video Games

• In 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds Luke wields his grandfather's holy musket. He tries to get it blessed by every preacher they come across, regardless of faith.
• Brataccas, the first game from Psygnosis takes place on the asteroid colony of Brataccas. Firearms are outlawed because of the potential of puncturing the colony's wall and leaking air. So the only weapon allowed is the sword.
• The Final Fantasy series since the turn towards Urban Fantasy and Science Fiction style settings starting with VII, with guns often being weaker than melee weapons like swords and spears. In several games, melee weapons' damage is based on a calculation involving the characters' strength or attack stat — which raises with levels and other buffs like materia, while guns don't, instead being based entirely on the gun's stats. Some games, like Final Fantasy XII, make up for this by having guns ignore an enemy's defense stat.
• In Makai Kingdom, there are loads and loads of weapon types. There are modern weapons like rifles, bazookas, or flamethrowers available, but also classical weapons like swords and spears. Or silly weapons like UFOs, Pies, Syringes, or Paper Fans. Heck, there are even giant mechs available to ride. Being one of the creations of Nippon Ichi somewhat justifies it; they love their Quirky Work.
• Metal Gear:
  • Throughout the series, particularly Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, most of the elite cyborgs favour swords and other melee weapons over guns (in Rising, Mooks use guns, but the Elite Mooks use giant hammers and most of the UGs have some form of melee weapon or other). It's justified by explaining that bullets don't have the energy to get through cyborg armour, while HF Blades and other advanced weapons do.
  • Taken to the Logical Extreme in Rising, where the final boss is too technologically advanced and too strong to use any weapon but their fists.
    • This also comes into play with the difference between Raiden's and Sam's swords. Raiden's HF blade was specifically made for him after losing the one he had in the prologue chapter, and so is not the greatest weapon around. Sam's, however, was created from an original 16th-century katana, and so is among the greatest HF blades currently in existence.^note Yes, every single thing about Sam is justified with little more than "because he's a SAMURAI!"
  • Fridge Brilliance with Gray Fox: he's an assassin using a stealth suit and firearms, even silenced ones, would give away his position. Using a katana he can get close enough to use it for assassination without being detected.
• The Persona series frequently displays this trope, having gun-wielding characters fighting alongside those with swords, spears, boxing gloves, fans, and folding chairs.
  • Lampshaded in Persona 3, where Personae are summoned by shooting yourself in the head with a very realistic (but thankfully not real or loaded) pistol. Yukari asks Detective Kurosawa why he procures you more fantasy weapons like swords, bows, and knives when better weapons exist. Kurosawa explains that is would not be hard to confuse a pistol-like object with an actual pistol. Let's just say, it's a mistake you'd only make once. Incidentally, Aigis can use guns, and very effectively at that, but she is a gynoid/weapons platform and doesn't need an Evoker.
• Fable III: Despite firearms becoming common enough to be used by the military, being flintlock pistols and muskets they are slow to reload and as seen Mourning Wood monsters tend to charge with vast numbers which means infantrymen, with simple swords, still play a vital role in combat.
• The Star Ocean series really likes this trope:
  • In the first and second games, this is justified by the protagonists being on planets protected by an Alien Non-Interference Clause. The first game's end boss is further mentioned as being immune to modern weapons, so the melee weapons and Symbology of the 'primitive' planet are the only things that can hurt him.
  • The third game has the same justification, but halfway through the game you return to "civilized" space, and yet many of the protagonists continue to use anachronistic weapons.
  • The fourth game involves alien monsters that somehow have kinetic barriers. This doesn't hold very far, as one of your characters has specially-designed anti-barrier plasma cannons.
• In Team Fortress 2, one of the Sniper's primary weapons, alongside a host of various rifles, is a bow-and-arrow set called "The Huntsman". It can be just as effective as the rifles and is particularly effective in close(r) ranged combat. Also, most of the melee weapons are either this or an Improvised Weapon. Special mention goes to Demoman's wide variety of swords and shields that make him deadly at melee range, which is usually his weakness due to damaging himself with his own Splash Damage.
• In World of Warcraft, Hunters and Warriors can choose among rifles or bows. The competence and damage difference is negligible. That's of course, when they aren't using axes, swords, or hammers...
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 had the Beam Katanas, a special ability for the basic infantry for the Empire of the Rising Sun that changed their rifles into beam katanas. The Red Alert series ran almost entirely on Rule of Cool by that point, and in the scenario, the sword is an old idea but still scores one hit kills (assuming they get near enough for it and clear garrisoned buildings to boot).
• Fallout is an interesting case, mostly because of the nuclear war ending society. Energy weapons are highly accurate but are either weaker than conventional firearms (laser) or strong but slow-moving (plasma) and always a pain to find until mid-late game. Small guns are diverse but can break, jam or just plain miss a lot more and ammo is always scarce for big guns (which have the same issue as small guns, though pack a larger punch). Melee weapons are durable and can be strong (sometimes augmented with technology), always silent and with the correct armor you can close the distance with ease, and can be found on pretty much any raider, giving you a constant supply of spare parts, and while using unarmed is challenging at first it has some of the best perks for combat and several gloves with devastating effects. As such using any of them is viable and has its own strengths and weaknesses.
  • Caesar's Legion uses relatively few guns, partly because of their technophobic views on pre-war technology, but also because they lack the logistics and manufacturing to support their widespread use. They still manage to fight the New California Republic to a stalemate, despite the latter being able to equip almost every single one of their troops with firearms and armour.
  • In the same vein, the Brotherhood of Steel was beaten back by the NCR after their disagreements, though this was more because NCR troops outnumbered the Brotherhood over 25 to 1 in New Vegas, alone.
  • Fallout 4 brings the Laser Musket as its Iconic Item. It's single-shot just like an actual musket, and definitely looks the part, but with a little tinkering, it can be modified to blast apart a Deathclaw in two shots. Archaic but awesome, indeed.
• Mass Effect:
  • Lampshaded in Mass Effect 2 with the M-96 Mattock semiautomatic rifle, which has the highest base damage of any assault rifle in the game despite being relatively outdated in-universe. The "Firepower Pack" DLC that adds it to your inventory in 2 comes with an e-mail from the Illusive Man saying that EDI had told him "we may be overlooking older, proven technologies in an effort to provide you with the state of art."
    • A simple grenade launcher is the first heavy weapon you get and is vital against the Ymir on Freedom's Progress
  • A couple types of Cerberus mooks in Mass Effect 3 are armed with melee weapons, as is the Illusive Man's Dragon, katana-wielding Kai Leng. This is lampshaded in the "Citadel" DLC in an overheard conversation between a couple of Alliance soldiers:
    Veteran Engineer: It's 2186. Who uses a whip?
  • Happens on the protagonists' side, too. Several multiplayer classes have swords for their melee weaponry: the N7 Shadow and N7 Slayer use swords, and the Krogan Warlord carries an immense hammer. You can attach metal bayonets to the front of various shotguns, and omniblade bayonets to assault rifles. Omniblades are also becoming widespread at the time of the game as an emergency melee blade was well, simply because everyone is facing the prospect of close-quarters melee combat while fighting the Reapers' ground troops.
• Star Trek Online:
  • The game continues the Klingon trend of charging right in with a bat'leth instead of staying back and shooting, and adds a couple lesser-known types of edged weapons (Vulcan lirpa and Tsunkatse falchions). Given a justification this time: basically everyone has a personal deflector shield that works fine against ranged weapons, but 80% of melee damage, whether from a sword, Pistol-Whipping, or Kirk-fu, goes straight through to the target's HP. This is especially useful against the Borg, who will adapt over time to energy weapons and force you to re-frequence, but against certain types of drones also leaves you open to a One-Hit Kill by assimilation.
  • Despite having originally been built 130-odd years ago by the time of the game, the Excelsior-class is considered one of the top four DPS cruisers on the Starfleet side. (At the bottom of the top four, granted, but it still beats out the too-much-tank-not-enough-DPS Galaxy-class.)
  • In the shuttle PVP added in the Season 8.5 update, the Star Trek: The Original Series-era Type F shuttle is considered one of the top competitors, regularly beating players flying Peregrine-class attack fighters or runabouts from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This is roughly the equivalent of a World War I biplane shooting down an F-22.
  • Justified with the Xindi lockbox ships added in Season 9.5. Though they look physically identical to the ships from Star Trek: Enterprise 250 years earlier, Cryptic's blog says that the Xindi continually updated them to keep up with newer classes.
• Crysis 3 has the Predator bow, a bow-and-arrow in an era of railguns and strange alien weaponry. Its biggest advantage is that it is a completely silent weapon, but it also has other features. Its draw strength is something like 500 pounds, perfect for the nanosuit's Maximum Strength. The arrows all have beacons that only the nanosuit can see (and you can tag those arrows with your GPS binoculars if you so choose, implying recon possibilities beyond the scope of the actual missions), and the special explosive arrows can airburst in proximity to a binocular-tagged enemy.
• The crossbow in Rage (2011). It's quieter than the various firearms and robotic gadgets that make up the rest of your arsenal and is accurate enough to outperform your Sniper Rifle at all but the longest ranges. You also get a couple types of Trick Arrow for it that come in handy in various situations. It also helps that the crossbow you get is an Enhanced Archaic Weapon which bears little resemblance to a medieval or modern hunting crossbow.
• Far Cry 3 has you fight pirates and privateers with everything from pistols and rifles to flamethrowers and grenades but one of the best weapons in-game is a recurve hunting bow, despite the fact that it can be hard to aim it. Justified because it is completely silent, you can recover the ammo from enemies and it is designed to bring down tigers and other large predators. For similar reasons stealthily killing your enemies with your machete is often much better than picking them off with silenced firearms: you don't have to worry about people realizing they're being shot at, it doesn't use ammo, take downs are an insta-kill and there are a variety of upgrades allowing takedown to be used in a variety of situations (such as jumping on enemies, booby-trapping them, killing heavies, etc.)
• Evil Genome takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where spaceships, missiles and firearms exists, but your preferred weapon is still your trusty sword. More than one boss enemy uses swords as well, though some of their weapons are upgraded with Sword Beam abilities.
• Despite E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy taking place in the far future with extensive cybernetics readily available, psychic powers allowing users to bend reality, and handheld anti-tank revolvers being common, melee weapons such as warhammers and katanas remain popular for members of the Secreta. The Facere Mortis katana, for example, is a standard katana that has been imbued with psychic energy and possibly its own personality. However, the other old tech has been augmented with modern technology; the Damocles BFS releases burst of energy to set things on fire via a series of distortion capacitors, and the Arrancadora De Tripas warp hammer creates a localized warp in reality upon contact with flesh.
• Space pirates in Metroid Prime have an arm cannon on one arm and a large hand scythe on the other one. Shadow pirates, who have the ability to turn invisible, only use the hand scythe.
• The first four Mega Man X games all have Sigma use an energy saber, Wolverine-like claws, a shield, and a scythe respectively for the first segment of his battles. He finally ditched them in favor of more modern projectile-based attacks for the fifth installment on. Zero on the other hand initially used a buster but received an energy saber after being remodeled by the X-Hunters which he's relied on as a primary weapon ever since.
• Tin Star (Choice of Games) is set in The Wild West, but you can choose to specialize in melee weapons such as swords, maces, or an Indian battle axe, instead of pistol and rifle.
• The Tenno weaponry in Warframe is deliberately low-tech, because their original enemies, the Sentients, were able to easily subvert high-tech weaponry. The Tenno continue to use a huge range of low-tech melee and projectile weapons to the present day, partially because of tradition and partially because the weapons are still deadly-effective in the hands of creatures as badass as Tenno. The Grineer Empire also relies on low-tech weaponry, but only because they lack the technology and know-how to create more advanced weapons; while Tenno designs are sleek and elegant, Grineer equipment looks like it's been cobbled together out of scraps (which likely isn't all that far off from the truth).
• In XCOM 2, it's the year 2035, you're fighting to free Earth from alien occupation using stolen and reverse-engineered alien weapons, and yet there are several examples of this.
  • Your Ranger-class soldiers go into battle with a machete. Rangers are stealth and close-combat specialists (their other weapon being a Short-Range Shotgun), so they are bound to be at close range in any case and blades are relatively silent. Slash, the Squaddie-rank ability, also deals
  • In the War of the Chosen DLC, the Assassin, a genetically-engineered alien soldier, uses a "katana" that ignores armour and never misses. The head of your science department can't even identify what it's made of.
  • The Alien Hunters DLC goes even further. In the first mission, you get an axe, a crossbow, and a flintlock pistol. They're all better than the equivalent regular weapons of the same tech level, and can be upgraded to magnetic and plasma beam technology.
• In the Infinity Blade franchise, most Titans don't bother with ranged weaponry, even the ones with Giant Mecha and Mach 10 space-jets. Partly justified by the advanced armor technology in all Titans that makes what should be fatal shots a mere trifle while swords and magic put the hurt on them. Doesn't stop Isa from cheap-shooting them with her crossbow, though.
• Valhalla in Nexus Clash is always a modern city, but the Clash is fought just as much with swords and bows as guns and grenades. The archaic weapons are just as effective, though due to the Schizo Tech of the series it's not entirely clear that they're truly less advanced.
• Starbound takes place in a future where there's faster than light space travel and high technology. However, during one mission (The Baron's Keep), you're tasked with protecting a Glitch (race of robots in Medieval Stasis) from the Occasus Mooks. Said mooks, while previously shown to use high tech swords and guns, inexplicably attack the player and the keep with low-tech swords, crossbows, and ballistae, and it gets ridiculous when their Airborne Mook is a guy riding an aerial screw◊ that probably wouldn't even be able to fly.
• Destiny takes place several hundred years in the future. While most of the guns look appropriately slick and futuristic, there are a handful of out-of-date looking weapons that are, unsurprisingly, among the most damaging in the game:
  • The first weapon the player picks up is a Khvostov 7G-02, a battered assault rifle with cracked holographic sights. Much, much later, it can be scrapped and upgraded to the Khvostov 7G-0X, which cleans up the damaged components (but still keeps the cracked sight). Both versions look like modern, real-world assault rifles.
  • Revolvers known as "hand cannons" serve as one of the primary weapon types, competing right alongside full-sized assault rifles. While most hand cannons do look appropriately futuristic, the Last Word, a special "exotic"-rarity weapon, is apparently single-action, and fan-fired from the hip. In terms of pure bullet damage, it's one of the hardest-hitting weapons in the game.
  • The exotic sniper rifle No Land Beyond is old and bolt-action, with a wooden stock. It fires extremely slowly but hits hard.
  • Destiny 2 has "the Old Fashioned", a legendary-rarity hand cannon that looks like a single-action museum piece.
  • The Drifter in Destiny 2 offers a wide variety of guns as rewards for playing Gambit, all of which are made from black metal and dark wood like World War II-era weapons. The Gambit guns are just as strong as modern firearms, with a few examples being considered top tier in their weapon type.
• Diluvian Ultra sees you constantly kicking ass with your first pickup, the Blood Sword, despite being set several millenia in the future and all sorts of firearms exists.
• In Halo, many high-ranking Sangheili/Elites favor energy swords, while the standard armament of a Jiralhanae/Brute Chieftain is a gravity hammer, despite both species having plenty of access to advanced energy firearms. The justification is that both species also wear heavy armor that can resist small arms fire long enough to get into range with their one-hit-kill melee weapons (as both the sword and hammer have enough power lore-wise to smash through spaceship-quality plating).
• The flavor text for Imperial Swordsmen in Baten Kaitos implies that imperial soldiers are free to choose a gun or sword as their weapon of choice, and makes it clear that while the gun is more powerful and effective, the sword is a status symbol and considered an Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age among imperials:
  A soldier specialized in close-range sword combat. Some prefer the ephemerality of swordplay to the ease and power of a bayonet and rifle. As such, the sword is a status symbol within the military, though any who choose it rashly will regret it.
• In Rimworld, you can find advanced sci-fi technology like Killer Robots and Energy Weapons but simple longswords and spears can remain competitive in the right circumstances. In the same manner as Dune, your colonists can wear (and face opponents wearing) personal energy shields which render gunfire harmless but offer no protection against these primitive melee weapons. Even without a shield belt, a colonist can cover the gap with judicious use of cover and movement and then lock a gun-wielding enemy into melee where they are forced to defend themselves and at a grave disadvantage. A competent melee fighter colonist equipped with a shield belt or power armour and a plasteel longsword can be pretty deadly.
• In SYNTHETIK, you are an android that fights their way to prevent the rogue AIs from wiping out humanity. You can find many advanced guns or high-tech items in this game. But you can also find low-tech items like tomahawk, or kunai. They are effective as other items.
• Alongside blasters, grenades and the iconic Star Wars weapon, lightsabers, Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel feature swords. No, not vibroblades, though the games have these too. Just ordinary metal swords. Which can parry lightsabers somehow. Then again, the games use d20 mechanics heavily based on Dungeons & Dragons.
  • That happens because swords are made with help of cortosis, metal that can short out lightsaber.
• In Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1899-1907, the Pirate Sword, Volcanic Pistol, various Hatchets, and even the Bow are surprisingly effective weapons, even against other armed enemies. With self-crated arrows, the Bow becomes the most versatile and efficient weapon for hunting.
• Ninja Gaiden: Ryu Hayabusa can defeat enemies who use rocket launchers, machine guns, tanks, and helicopters with weaponry like swords, kunai, spears, and arrows.
• Ratchet & Clank has several of these, thanks to each game throwing everything and the kitchen sink into your inventory in a world not too dissimilar from Star Wars. Examples include the Walloper^*A huge metal boxing glove that propels the user with each punch, the Plasma Whip^*A whip of super-heated plasma, the Leviathan Flail^*An enormous morning star, the Razor Claws^*Wrist-mounted cutting blades, and of course Ratchet's Omniwrench^*A wrench tool big enough to use as a weapon. How effective these are can vary, but all of them are viable options despite nearly every enemy in the game using a gun of some sort.
• Despite being set in a futuristic Cyberpunk, the protagonist of ANNO: Mutationem, Ann Flores, primarily relies on three different types of swords to fight, her firearms being useful only as supplemental damage, a way to hit flying enemies, or hit enemies that are far out of range of melee attacks. Granted, they're explicitly mentioned to be Laser Blades with glowing, blue plasma fields on their cutting edges, but they're still swords, nonetheless.
• In the futuristic 2040s' world from Strider, Hiryu's favorite weapon to fight against enemies with all sorts of firearms and other mechanical wonders is the Cypher, a sword + tonfa combo with a Laser Blade that cuts through anything. In the manga, this stands in contrast with other Striders like Kain and Sheena, who fight using firearms, grenades and other explosives.
• theHunter: Call of the Wild: Alongside contemporary hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols and compound bows (that use a cable and pulley system to maintain greater degrees of limb efficiency and accuracy), updates and DLC also added two traditional bows: the Alexander, a hickory longbow built in the English style; and the Houyi, an Chinese-style recurve bow. The "Smoking Barrels" DLC weapon pack also includes the Hudzik .50 Caplock, a muzzleloading Civil War era rifle that you need to reload after every shot. This is Truth in Television, some contemporary hunters do favour old-school guns and bows like this; some hunting firearm manufacturers even build in-line muzzleloaders with modern gunsmithing techniques to accommodate for this audience.
• UFO: Aftershock has the Commando class which specializes in this. While anybody can use a combat knife, the Commando will also use katanas, shurikens and throwing knives. Which mostly suck... the lack of range means the Commando will be eating bullets, lasers and plasma long before they can get close enough to throw something or stab someone. That said the Commando's unique weapons do a lot of damage...but only if the enemy has weak or no armor.
• World War VII from Oriflamme Inc. The forces in your army will most likely carry guns, rocket launchers and artillery pieces. But there will also be halberdiers, swordsmen and whatnot among your troops. That's because this post-apocalyptic future war has its nobility and knighthood, additionally these weapons are wielded by guys in power armor or mecha so they hit much harder than a normal human would and can withstand enemy attacks to close for melee.