What I gleaned from watching the video on normal mode is that there’s actually a subtle pattern/rhythm to this sequence. I could never seem to trigger that as Talbot would always end up just pushing or rolling me away, but that seems to be the key to progressing through the fight. Where I would keep running into trouble was the grapple sequence where Talbot has you held from behind and you’re eventually supposed to bite him. So I was also really frustrated with this for a long time and finally decided to look at a video of someone completing it on normal (with on-screen directives) to see if there was some sequence or combination I kept missing. Here's a video of someone beating him on Crushing in about 2 and a half minutes, although there's no commentary or other prompts so it's tough to glean much information from it: It might just be a function of how much damage you do to him, as most of the videos I've seen where he goes down quickly, Nathan's always on the offensive, punching constantly when not involved in a QTE. There's a particular pattern to when he goes for the final kill (and Sully shows up to take a shot) and I don't see much of a pattern about when this happens. Screwing up more than one of these in a row on Crushing seems to be a recipe for game over. He knocks you down, and you kick him in the head to break his hold.You and he cross arms, but he drops the knife into his other hand for a quick slash (this appears to be the trickiest one - you have to go from mashing the circle button to hitting triangle and you have a very short window in which to do so).
Talbot pins your arm behind your back, where you bite his arm to get out.He takes a swing at you, which you dodge and counter.Talbot's got a limited move set, and most of them involve quick-time events, for example: