For immersion purposes, that's exactly why people carry shields. Because it's much easier to block with a big piece of wood than a sword. It's more immersive to have to manual block.Irrelevant. It isn't necessary to NOT have. This is not a dueling simulator. Singleplayer is not a tutorial for multiplayer.
The key here is immersion, not realism, and having someone who trained for decades at swordsmanship suddenly completely forget how to block an attack just because the player's "behind the wheel" is a M A S S I V E immersion breaker.