I’m curious about this for those playing Deadly Shadows. For myself, the only time I find 3rd person even remotely useful is when I hug the wall. Other than that, the perspective and its ‘body awareness’ are actually a hindrance IMO to the feel of the game because of Garrett’s model animation’s time delay when moving in a new direction affecting even 1st person gameplay. Rather than feeling like a nimble, light-footed master thief, these delays give a somewhat sluggish visceral feedback that’s incongruent with the protagonist’s occupation.
Edit: X-box players who vote, please specifiy that you’re playing the console version rather than the PC one. Thanks!
Gotta be first person… I haven’t even touched 3rd person at all. (well actually once… but it felt too much like Ye Olde SpliterCell) … it just feels… like the right way to do it.
I play exclusively in first person but I really love the body awarness thing. I don’t mind the movement sluggishness as a result because it feels much more realistic.
Xbox player here, though I’ve spent time with the PC demo as well.
I switch back and forth for a variety of reasons, I do find myself often using first person far moreso than 3rd anyway. Collecting loot, scanning through door enclaves, etc… It’s very easy to spend most of the game in this perspective.
However wall climbing with the gloves handles a bit friendlier in 3rd person, getting a more detailed view of your surroundings in some situations helps to click out to 3rd briefly, plus I find town exploration a bit more enjoyable in 3rd with all of the NPC’s to keep track of. Analog movment sensitivity DOES make this perspective much easier to handle on Xbox than on PC I imagine. Is there even a sneak/walk toggle on PC?
Not to sound like a deushebag around all of you FPS zealots, but the whole argument is completely hollow if you ask me. The incorporation of the new perspective doesn’t hinder the game beyond the purists portending to bunk it really. A fine inclusion it is.
Sure it does. Any developer has a finite amount of manpower that can be spent to make the game. Any effort they spend on implelmenting 3rd person, tuning the motion and Garrett’s animations, QAing the game from the 3rd person perspective, etc etc, is all effort that could have gone to improving other aspects of the game instead.
I tried the third person out for a bit, its the V key btw. But, it wasnt the same. Its makes sneaking around easier because you can effectively see around corners with zero exposure. But, the animation is clunky, like the rest of the player models and I think seeing that constantly in addition to the perspective shift take away from the game.
Well, I’m not going to argue with that directly, but the programmers hacked it in on their own time (what, if anything, this means in an industry with 16 hour work days is beyond me though). So technically no official effort was wasted on it.
As far as I understand it the initial “hack” was done in the programmers’ own time, and it probably didn’t take long to implement. Getting third person to work properly probably took a lot longer than that though, and if third person is the default for the Xbox (that’s what I heard) I wouldn’t be surprised if third person had to be tested more than first person. Microsoft would hardly accept the game if the primary view mode didn’t work well for the Xbox.
Well I’m a vote for the 3rd person view. I liked it implemented in the Splinter Cell games and I do here. I just like actually seeing my character creep around and pulling the moves off. I only use 1st in certain situations.
Don’t see were it has hurt the game at all. Anybody show actual examples besides “well they spent time on it so it had to of hurt it somehow”? Thats just grasping at straws to find something to complain about.
Regardless I need someone to point to something specific that thay can say hey this is hurt by them also using 3rd person. The game plays just like the first 2 Thiefs if you use just 1st person. So I still don’t see the problem. Saying that in general manpower can affect a game doesn’t mean that it happened in this case.
I contracted for Ion Storm for several months, so I got a first-hand look at the situation. I’m not saying that the opportunity cost of 3rd person is a gigantic factor (in fact I wasn’t there any more when that decision was made) – there were much bigger problems. But I am saying that it was contributory, as it couldn’t help but be. Features do not come for free (all mature software engineers and project managers know this).
I strongly suspect that the existence of third person is why we don’t have rope arrows any more. Rope arrows in 3rd person imply a buttloadof non-trivial animations.
Which sucks because of how useful they would be. Every time I enter a tall room with potential foes I’m looking for wooden beams among the rafters. Habits from the previous two games. Hehe.
There was a preview at TTLG that stated they could not get Rope Arrows to work right (as well as the seeing Orbs) so they were cut from the game. Your guess as to why they couldn’t get them to work is probably correct.
