Pretty much a demo of a game that will never be taken any further.
The idea is to create a demo of an RPG game, in that Piranha Bytes or Witcher kind of third-person style. That forces me to create the logic of an RPG in the context of the Unreal engine, and, by taking it to a small but complete finished product, I'm also forced to confront all the little things that are easy to put off until "later".
The satisfying thing about it is that once you've implemented the logic of an RPG in a given engine, it's then relatively easy to adapt to different styles. There's a lot of core things that are generally applicable - an inventory and equipment system, skills and attributes, gaining XP, the benefits of equipped items, how all that is taken into account in combat, the animation and collision, enemy AI, and so on. Once you have that structure in place in a way you understand, it becomes much easier to experiment.
I have that core stuff in place, and at the moment I'm working on the inventory GUI. That's been more time consuming than I'd imagined, which I should have guessed, really. In many ways, the GUI stuff is a bit like making a desktop application.
Why is it an RPG, though?
You speak of "an inventory and equipment system, skills and attributes, gaining XP, the benefits of equipped items, how all that is taken into account in combat, the animation and collision, enemy AI, and so on."
Yet, despite my sound reasoning, Sekiro and Monster Hunter World were both rejected from the RPGwatch game-of-the-year voting despite having these features and more.
Some might argue that the core logic behind an RPG is simply die rolls like you'd see in any tabletop RPG. However, in a 3D 3rd person combat system, where little is left to the imagination, there's no room for die rolls to be deciding if you hit or miss when the blade clearly collided with the enemy.
Once you remove the die rolls, you're actually making a 3rd person action combat system. You can completely ignore gear/ability scores until the very end when you scale everything.
Now, if you want to make the BEST combat system you should completely ignore Pirahna Bytes because they've been very average combat. Witcher 1 with its "sweet spots" was a cool idea but really not fun combat system which is why they dropped it going forward. 2 I barely played. 3 got a decent amount of playtime and was their best attempt, but it was still no Dark Souls!
If you really want to make the best combat you should look to From Software and Capcom.
I'm going to assume, because your examples didn't include Sekiro or MHW (or even something like very fun Devil May Cry 5!), that you've probably not played them.
And, yes, I understand that working in UE you probably cannot do the animations required. But if you want to know who is doing 3rd person combat the best in the industry for your own entertainment you really need to give these games a whirl!
Start with Sekiro because its so beautifully simple but unlike anything else. It's pretty much just two buttons. LB while held will block, but timed correctly will parry and RB is attack. But rather than directly damaging the hitpoints, the swords will clash and spark and attack their "balance", which is pretty much just a quickly regenerating (while not blocking) stamina bar. Once the balance is broken it opens them up to a finishing blow with a fancy animation. It's an incredibly satisfying combat system that ties in remarkably well with stealth gameplay and its backstabs because the whole fight is about landing a "frontstab", if you will. Harder enemies will require more than one "stab" so you can open the fight with a backstab using stealth then clash blades for a frontstab.
I dunno. You might get a kick out of it.
I'd like to hear how you're dealing with 3rd person combat. I remember you mentioned sliding the player up to the enemy like they do in Batman?
