First person worked really well in dying light, even though it’s parkour/melee. Something about seeing your limbs keeps you more “grounded”.
I think looking at something like Dues Ex is useful for this kind of discussion - that game works incredibly well, feels very immersive, and still has some third person elements when you grab cover, for example, so you can still have that nice “spacial awareness” third person provides.
I also agree that melee based combat, like Dark Souls or Witcher 3, is best in 3rd person. Any time I’m playing with a shooter (or spell caster in Skyrim, for example) I’ll go 1st Person every time. In fact, I suspect first person melee is what ultimately killed Kingdom Come for me.
Dying Light (more specifically its predecessor) is what introduced me to motion sickness. I’d never experienced it before I played Dead Island. There is a lot of needless crap they do that triggers it, but in large part it was do to the melee/parkour in FPS for me.
These are growing pains, they would be quickly resolved if every game was first-person because the standards would evolve much quicker. I don’t want to be too flippant here because I do not suffer it myself, but I imagine that motion sickness similarly is a very solvable problem. Look to VR and the technology they are building to counteract it there. I will concede a few situations where it may be appropriate to have a third-person camera some or all of the time:
- Traditional fighting games
- Any game where you control a party of characters or squad of units
- When you want to play Fashion Souls
and that’s it! Now let’s all fondly remember that one scene in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, where you ran around Hong Kong as a balding middle-aged psychopath in his birthday suit, badly wounded, glistening with sweat and blood. Thank you, third-person cameras!
I’ve come to the point where I think I have a slight preference for 3rd person views. I mean, I usually go with whatever the default is (except RGO, where I switch to 3rd person), but while I can’t imagine playing, say, Fallout with 3rd person view, I can’t imagine playing the AC series with anything but 3rd person.
Seems like supporting both is the gold standard. It’s 2019, not 1819 man.
When has that ever been done well? I tried to play GTAV primarily in first-person mode (which was great!) but the game is clearly not built for it. I do quite like photo modes, Wipeout HD had an excellent one.
Games that are really designed for third person can add first person. Games that are designed for first person, are much more harder to add a third person camera.
Think Doom, Condemned, Deus Ex, Prey, Amnesia. The level design, the experience, was designed for first person.
Well that’s the point. You need to design with both in mind. You’re not on holiday, game developers!
They did a pretty good job of translating GTA5 to 1st person. Or maybe it was the plan the whole time.
Course, if you have half the budget of star citizen, you can make some cool shit.
Hashtag lazydevs!!
This should solve the 1st vs. 3rd person perspective debate.
Soccer players viewing their position through VR goggles via a drone:
So how many seconds of latency did they introduce there?
On the other hand, I can’t imagine my FIFA/ProEvo days would be much fun if the games where in first person. Either way, even learning to walk takes a while, you just don’t remember.
Haven’t we had this discussion at the time of E3? My issue with 1st person is that even less people like dice rolling in 1st person and expect silly FPS movement and precision regardless of the best tone for the setting. But its still the best choice for sales of this particular game, so that’s that.
I actually don’t have a strong preference as I enjoy both, with maybe a slight lean into FPS.
Just wanted to post that gif as the goalie was working his ass off.
Cool gif, except that it really doesn’t map well to third person. It gives the view, but for true third person it would require the camera to be. Essentially, permanently attached about 5 feet behind their head.
This is more isometric with first person controls.
Way back in the 16-bit era there was an FPS football game. I-Soccer, or something like that.
I had missed these screenshots from past week
I hope I can drive a bulldozer and plow all the shanty town shit into a ditch and bury it. Clean up that city and give us a future worth looking forward to.