It's bound to happen that two players attacking eachother will launch attacks at roughly the same time, and their weapons might collide before they reach the opponent's body. In many games these types of high speed impacts between weapons simply pass through, and that's fair enough. But wouldn't it be cool if there was more to it?
In Mordhau, when two weapons are in the state of so-called attack release (in other words, they mean business and are not just idling) and are touching, they clash. At that point they stop, and both players can queue up followup attacks. Since both players are therefore likely to queue up attacks at the same time, the followups are very likely to clash as well. This leads to longer strings of exchanges where the blows glance off the opponent's weapon. See it in action for yourself:
Of course, one of the players might opt not to engage in the followup exchanges and instead wait for the opponent's attack and parry it, possibly confusing the opponent in the process. Or, if they're fairly close, one of the two might realize that they can squeeze in a kick instead, as happens to be the case in the scenario above. A kick is just one of the types of attacks in Mordhau, and when it lands it leads to a stun, and a free followup strike from there.
Weapon clashing does not happen all that often, but we think it's pretty cool when it does!
Kanonkul!
I've never seen this level of depth in a melee combat system.
Just beautiful