My Inner Warrior Has Found a New Home in the Third Person

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heavyfeul

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I love third-person shooters! I really, really, (ok one more time) really do. For the most part I have shied away from the third-person games because they have always seemed like platformers (not a big fan) and, actually, many of them are. However, now that I have had a chance to play round after round of Gears of War and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 on the 360, I am hooked to the third-person perspective in shooters.

The reason...the field of vision is superior to the first person perspective. You can see around corners without sticking your body out, have a better sense of the enemies and allies surrounding you, and you can see your character model in all its glory as it runs, dives, crouches and lays down fire. It may seem counter intuitive, but the third-person over-the-shoulder cam just feels more immersive, simply because of the extended field of vision better approximates the field available to the human eye. This is especially true when playing widescreen games.

I believe that the good old first-person shooter is simply dated. Lately, when I switch to games that use the first-person perspective, I feel like I have tunnel vision. When Doom ushered in this type of design for shooters it was relatively new and innovative. Today it just seems antiquated and restrictive. I want to see as much of those beautiful "next-generation" graphics as possible and get a real sense that I, my character, am moving through an expansive virtual world. The third-person perspective makes that possible for me. Personally, I would love to see all shooters use the third-person. In my recent experience, to have the camera just over my character's shoulder is a more satisfying experience. The only time I want to be in the first-person perspective in a shooter, is when I am zooming in through the scope of my high powered weapon.

What do other shooter fans think?
 

Arbre

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I'd hate seeing all shooters be played like that.
While you certainly gain the advantage of a certain "omniscient" visibility - which to me immediately cuts the idea that you're inside the character, though sometimes it's cool and offers "moves" - you loose in critical visibility, as your character is masking a portion of the screen, and I could have not accepted this while playing a game like Quake III.
The FPV is not dated in the slightest. It just offers a different experience, and the restriction makes the situation more immersive/real, in the sense that you both are the and are inside the avatar.
You've experienced something different. It does not mean it's de facto better.

That said, have you tried the Splinter Cells? It has an interesting mix of both. Resident Evil 4 also mixes both, but it's mainly about TPV.
 

Echolocating

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Jul 13, 2006
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I have a soft spot for Oni. Oni was a magnificent third-person shooter/brawler that didn't receive the polish it needed as a finished product. (Probably because Bungie was working on Halo and too busy being bought out by Microsoft at the time.) Anyway, Oni is a great game. I really wished that franchise could have seen sequels. Oni opened my eyes to how effective a third-person perspective can be in a shooter scenario.
 

Cordelia

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Jun 1, 2007
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Oni: a lovely game ruined by impossible controls (at least on the PS2, can't vouch for the PC version).

Both third person and first person perspectives have their benefits...it basically just comes down to how you want to tell a story. Take a game like Half-Life, for example, and make it third person. Not nearly the same experience at all. I do hear what you're saying, though, about the limited visibility issue, which is why having the option to do either/or is always appreciated, like in Oblivion.
 
May 22, 2007
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I prefer third-person titles but can go with any perspective for shooters. The idea that first-person is more immersive is bollocks anyway, because third-person gives players a much better sense of interaction and presence in the gameworld.
 

Goofonian

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Jul 14, 2006
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I liked the way RE4 did the over the shoulder perspective, but thats a slower game than most FPS's. I can't imagine any view other than the standard first person view working for a twitch shoot like unreal tournament.

I also think the restrictions in place with first person perspectives are fitting for some games. i.e. Metroid prime and Halo, where the main character is wearing a helmet and would have a limited field of view anyway.
 

heavyfeul

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Let's break down what the first-person perspective is supposed to achieve as a design element. It's main function is to try and approximate the human field of vision, so that the player feels more immersed in the game. They want to create the sense that you are actually moving through the game world.

The problem is that, it is not even close to how an actual human sees the world around them. Just because it is in the first-person perspective, does not mean that it is any better at creating a sense of "being" in a virtual setting, then the third-person perspective. Let's not forget, either, that you are viewing their perspective as a window so to speak. It is basically a 3-D picture (on you monitor/tv) in your field of vision. Thus, the illusion is broken down just by the nature of how that virtual world is displayed in your vision.

In my opinion, realistic physics, graphics, and sound provide the most bang for my buck, when it comes to the immersion factor, not the games camera perspective. I am not saying that a game in the first-person cannot be an immersive experience, but I do not consider it an integral factor in creating one. Half-Life 2 was a very immersive experience and so was Call of Duty 2, but I found that it was the graphics, sound, and physics that had a lot to do with it. Plus, they did not switch perspective during cut scenes, kept those scenes in-engine, and continued to let the player control the character as those scenes played out. I think both games could have been just as good when designed in the third-person. In fact they might have been better.

What it comes down to, is that you are always watching/playing a video game in the third person. When playing a game with a camera in the third-person you maintain a certain level of visual continuity between your actual and virtual perspective. In my mind this feel more natural then trying to approximate your actual, real-world perspective via the first-person perspective.

The first person shooter is such a popular and prolific genre that people have gotten used to it and accept it as gospel. Of course there are thrid-person shooters out there, but FPS is the most widely adopted design element in shooters (besides guns, I suppose). I think if we open up our intellectual perspective on designing immersive games back a bit to take into account the simple question of how we actually view the games we play (screen in my field of vision), it seems clear to me that the third person-perspective is the most natural and intuitive camera in videogames.

At the very least, I think it is clear that a game will not become more immersive if you switch it to the first person perspective. I do not think that particular element of game design is useful at this stage of videogame technology. It was amazing in Doom and it was superbly executed in Half-Life 2, but I think it has reached a limit and will only be revitalized when we finally get those damn VR goggles they have been promising us. The only problem then is how do you deal with movement? Multi-directional treadmill?
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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THIRD-PERSON BAD!

FIRST-PERSON GOOD!

With exceptions, of course.

I absolutely prefer the first-person perspective. It allows for a greater degree of immersion, and better interaction with (and within) the game. Third-person perspective also has a way of coming off as gimmicky too often, as designers come up with contrived situations so they can show off how realistic their character looks and all the cool moves he can make. A game that offers only a third-person perspective has huge hurdles to overcome if it's going to attract my attention; if it's not genuinely special in just about every other way, then I won't give it a second look.

Two exceptions that leap to mind: Max Payne (both) and Armed & Dangerous. Max Payne was just a great piece of storytelling, brilliant characters, dialog, voice acting, action, the whole enchilada. In fact, with its pioneering use of bullet time, even a die-hard FPS type like myself has to admit that third-person worked out better than first-person would have. A&D isn't an especially good game in any sense, but the top-to-bottom comic genius made it worth dealing with the game's numerous shortcomings, including the view. But unlike Max, it was entirely unnecessary.

Which leads me to think that if there isn't actually a good reason to use third-person, why bother?
 

Arbre

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Talking 'bout graphics, I don't think that back in the days of the Atari ST, that's what hampered me from feeling immersed in a FP game such as Cybercon III.
Being in the exosuit, and understanding your environment by seeing it from a FPV was very gratifying, much more than if I had been seeing the world outside of the suit.
 

Archon

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Nov 12, 2002
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Perhaps someone could explain to me why a first-person perspective can't mimic the appropriate field of view of a human being?

If I stare straight forward my field of view is effectively a very large circle. For perhaps 100-degrees left to right and up to down I have good clarity. On the edges it gets fuzzier and at the very periphery one can sense motion but not much else without focusing.

Why couldn't that be mimicked in a 1st person view? If one can show a wider viewing angle in 3rd person, obviously the viewing angle is achievable?
 

Cordelia

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Jun 1, 2007
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If you're staring straight ahead, sure, but what happens once you glance to the right or left? I suppose for it to work properly in a game, you'd either have to have a very large monitor that wrapped around, or perhaps a series of them hooked up together.

Or am I just completely overthinking this?
 

Geoffrey42

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Aug 22, 2006
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I agree with Cordelia that you'd need the extra monitor real estate. The problem is, who wants so many monitors in use, to give yourself true periphery, when 90% of the time, you're never actually looking at the screens? (Well, I would, if I could afford the monitors, and the videocards to get it all up and running) The thing about 3rd person, is that since you're further back from your avatar, you have a wider viewing angle compared to if you were in their head, which more closely mimics what you COULD see, if it really were you. You can glance left and right, without moving your avatar, and see things to the sides.

Part of it, I think, is the hard connection between the orientation of your character, and your field of vision. In most FPS's (if anyone can name one that's NOT like described, let me know), your field of vision is attached to the orientation of your gun. I can't look left while pointing right. Where I HAVE seen this done, is in most Mech games (whoooo Steel Battalion!). Your mech's orientation can be independent of where your guns are, and in turn, independent of where you're looking. I think you'd be insane to try that in an FPS, as its one of the major stumbling blocks for a lot of people when they first get into a mech (figuratively speaking). To bring it back to the 3rd person thing, in 3rd person, its possible to aim your gun one way, and look somewhere else, because YOUR field of vision (actual eyes) are not so narrowly tied to the direction your avatar is facing.
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Back in the days when I was playing Quake online, a fair number of players used a command (FOV something or other, as I recall) to broaden the field of view beyond the game's normal range. The screen would be distorted into a fishbowl view, which depended on the degree of angle you selected. Seems to me I found the sweet spot right around 110, which gave me a greatly-improved field of view (enough to cover an average-sized room with much greater ease) without throwing anything too far out of whack. Some people, with more tolerance for weird perspectives, would go even higher. I haven't played online for an awfully long time so maybe I'm just out of touch, but it's a feature I haven't seen for a number of years. I agree that the limitations of the fixed gun-view works against the first-person perspective, and given that a rudimentary workaround was available back in the days of the first Quake, it seems a bit odd to me that we haven't seen more progress made in that area.
 

Arbre

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/cg_fov 120 ftw :)

The problem is that no matter the perspective you choose, you're still looking at a screen.

What no FPS has achieved correctly is being able to swing your head independatly of your body.
However, would that be playable?

Tough. Certainly not with the controls that exist nowadays. I think you'd need something like two mice. Left one and right one. All coming with a full set of must be buttons.
Or some left controller that would be a half hemisphere of some sort, for displacement, while the right mouse would still deal with head and arms orientation.

A mouse really designed for an advanced FPS. Just now, you can bind a lot of stuff on them. Between the one or two side buttons, the wheel's three to five possibilities, and eventually more room if one smart designer would actually think about separating the classical two main buttons in four buttons, or have them become analogic, much like the Gamecube Z button, you'd have a marvel there.
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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I have the biggest problem with this with driving sims, and to a lesser degree, flight sims. The absence of peripheral site means that no driving sim, no matter how detailed or "realistic," will ever approach the real experience. (There are a lot of others reasons for that as well, but this is the topic at the moment.) Side and rear-view keys let you look in those directions, but aside from a bare-minimum three monitor setup (and the hardware and software to support them), there is just no system that will approach the real world.

I think it's less of an issue in FPSs because the impositions of the gun view are offset by other unrealistic FPS characteristics: damage modeling (or more accurately, the lack thereof), zero-weight weapon inventory, instant health, etc. It's all bullshit, but it's separated into two pile that nicely counterbalance one another.
 

Danjo Olivaw

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Jul 12, 2006
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heavyfeul said:
You can see around corners without sticking your body out,
That's the largest fault I find with third person perspectives. It's terribly non-intuitive, especially when facing an opponent with the same ability. In Gears, when you're about to round a corner, there's always the good possibility that an enemy is on the other side psychically aware of everything you do because of that dang camera.

Other than that I don't really have strong preference. Different perspectives for different occasions. Third person for a greater sense of where my character is in the world, and first for precision aiming and immersion.
 

wrshamilton

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Aug 30, 2007
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1st-person view has a lot in common, I think, with the camera techniques that slowly developed and became standard in Studio-era hollywood - quick cuts, eye-level shots, shot-reverse-shot, etc. Both systems have developed certain standards which become so commonplace that anything which breaks them jars the suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer, and so get the shorthand of being referred to as "realistic", sort of regardless of how closely they approximate the experience of a person who was "actually viewing" the scene.
 

Hengst2404

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Aug 29, 2007
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For most shooters, I prefer the FPS perspective, probably more because I am so used to it than any other reason. Still, games like Max Payne and the Splinter Cell games are perfect examples of 3rd person done right. There is room for both in this world and likely there will always be both. I even like how games like Jedi Knight Jedi Outcast was both.
 

thefreemarket

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Danjo Olivaw said:
Different perspectives for different occasions. Third person for a greater sense of where my character is in the world, and first for precision aiming and immersion.
I would agree that this is mainly a design issue. Certain games just lend themselves to certain styles. i imagine i would have soiled a lot less underwear if i were playing system shock 2 in 3rd person. and splinter cell just wouldn't feel right if it was in 1st person (although thief did fine as a 1st person stealth game).

heavyfeul said:
on the 360
and this is very telling. its all about the controller: 3rd person is much more comfortable with a game controller that 1st person is (still have never touched halo for this reason).