First-person shooter :(

[Kristy]

I always say if you want a third person game, find a third person game or one that is advertised as both, don't go and complain because some other game isn't EXACTLY how YOU specifically want it to be.

 

Obsidian is working hard and with a set budget. They have to prioritize so they can afford to add what they consider to be the most vital features to their game.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Kristy

[Chairchucker]

Yeah more options are good. If cost weren't an issue I don't think anyone would seek to deny anyone an optional 3rd person camera.

 

However, as mentioned in the other thread, Mikey Dowling has implied that it might not be in the budget.

 

https://imgur.com/a/0Ty2I24

[Kristy]

Yeah more options are good. If cost weren't an issue I don't think anyone would seek to deny anyone an optional 3rd person camera.

 

However, as mentioned in the other thread, Mikey Dowling has implied that it might not be in the budget.

 

https://imgur.com/a/0Ty2I24

It wasn't just implied, he straight up said that stuff like Third Person and Mod Tools weren't in the budget. But, realistically, this is Unreal Engine 4 so there WILL be mods :-D

Edited December 16, 2018 by Kristy

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

 

I recall one lesson from ages ago. I held out on buying a game. It was based on ip that i loved, and it was from an rpg studio with some pedigree.

 

I was crazy disappointed it were first person. I put off buying the game for ages, convinced it was going to be a shallow, depressing experience. One day i finally caved.

 

The game, ofc, was Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

 

I soon resolved to be more open-minded.

Bloodlines can be played in first or third person so we have options.

 

 

point is i wouldnt have known that from looking at the box. it were 2004. the over the shoulder perspective in rpgs - as we know it today - was only just shambling to life after years of botched attempts (*ahem* ultima IX)  for the most part it looked like nwn1 or kotor1.

 

also u had the odd first-person game like morrowind where u could pull the camera back for a laugh - but even in morrowind, the over-the-shoulder perspective werent entirely integrated with how the game played.

 

u could prob say that about oblivion, skyrim and fallout post FO3 tbf. but whatevs.

 

bloodlines didnt look like any of those things. it looked a shooter with rpg stuff bolted on like deus ex invisible war, to name one of its contemporaries. and i dismissed it as one. then i played it and felt very stupid for dismissing it - and it had nothing to do with the unexpected fact i could pull the camera back and pretend i was playing oni.

 

my take away was: i try not to factor perspective into whether i play stuff anymore. if everything else in game looks promising, ill roll with it. i think ill always be 'party-based uber alles' but im willing to have my mind blown from unexpected angles.

[Chairchucker]

It wasn't just implied, he straight up said that stuff like Third Person and Mod Tools weren't in the budget. But, realistically, this is Unreal Engine 4 so there WILL be mods :-D

It's possible to read it slightly differently, IMO. I see it as a definite no on mods and just a probable no on third person camera, as he didn't explicitly say 'no third person camera', just juxtaposed the comments about 'we'd love to have things like this in the game' and 'we may not be able to get everything out of the gate on the first game'.

[crowtheartist]

I agree. I think all FPSs should have 3rd person option.

[Pidesco]

I agree. I think all FPSs should have 3rd person option.

 

That makes as much sense as saying all RTSs should have a turn based option, or all 2D fighting games should have a 3D option.

 

Developers have to figure out what game they want to make and work within those constraints. If they try to please everyone, they'll just have a badly designed game on their hands.

[Kristy]

I agree. I think all FPSs should have 3rd person option.

That's like saying all games should have an alternate option to appeal to every player which would just ruin the game. Sometimes a first person game is a first person game, and a third person game is a third person game. They devs can NOT cater to every single person's wants, they have a tight budget.

[Ethics Gradient]

It's possible to read it slightly differently, IMO. I see it as a definite no on mods and just a probable no on third person camera, as he didn't explicitly say 'no third person camera', just juxtaposed the comments about 'we'd love to have things like this in the game' and 'we may not be able to get everything out of the gate on the first game'.

I just updated the above Imgur album with a later post. It’s a clearer indication that we should not expect a third person view or extended mod support until a sequel.

[woufff]

It would be nice to be able to switch between 1st and 3rd person view, but having only 1st person is no dealbreaker for me

[jonathansanity]

Fps makes me dizzy and sick. A quick google search will show multiple threads about far cry 5 on this with similar symptoms. I played New Vegas and Deadfire so much so I am a fan. Hope you consider. Thanks.

[Tylaris]

This is a post from Resetera where one of game designers explains why it's much more complex than "changing the camera". ( On cyberpunk 2077, but same applies). It's interesting to read as most gamers see only a fraction of what it affects. Also keep in mind, New Vegas was done on someone's else's engine where Obsidian didn't have to design everything from scratch.

 

 

It's going to depend drastically on how a number of systems are implemented. The gist is that the difference between the game knowing that the player is going to ALWAYS be "a camera" vs. the game having to deal with the player SOMETIMES being "a camera" and SOMETIMES being "a model that the camera is pointed at" is enormous. That kind of ambiguity suddenly opens up a huge, huge space for bugs and edge testing and bizarre ugly considerations. Some things that may be particularly problematic in a game like this:

• As tuxfool mentioned, you basically have to roll a new character controller from scratch. That is not trivial. That doesn't just mean moving around the world—it can also mean handling things like hit detection, interaction prompting, AI behavior, any of which can queue state changes or poll for proximity based on character position.
• You need to design a brand-new system for handling animation transitions. This is a very different thing than having the rigging/animations themselves. Animation transitions can be tied to a number of things—architectures like state machines, discrete components, centralized event systems that used entity pooling. If your game is first-person, that means that every single thing in the entire game with an animation is an entity or an object—meaning that changes to e.g. the state machine that runs its transitions are going to happen in response to changes in the game state. Now you add third-person. Suddenly, your game has thousands and thousands of pieces that change in response to changes in the game state, and one thing that changes in response to a combination of player input and the game state. Hoo boy.
• You need to design levels allowing for the possibility of players looking down on them from above.This is, again, a non-trivial design concern. It is hard to design levels for one perspective—now you're doing it for two. Want a key to be tantalizingly barely-visible through a window? Well, maybe the player's going to be in third-person, so they couldn't see through the window. Want to have the bad guy spawn behind a group of boxes and walk out? You can't, the player might be looking there. Did you lay this room out so that players' eyes are drawn upward when they first walk in, which brings their attention to the ventilation system leading from the office to the security room? Well, unfortunately, they're not going to see any of that.
• You need to make sure all the colliders in your level play nicely with third-person. If you're designing a game for first-person, you get to design physics for the player object and the player camera at the same time, because they're one and the same. That's really great when you're making a game set in a dense, urban environment. Oh, you're switching to third-person? Okay, now you need to make sure that the underside of every single ceiling in your entire game not only has the right bounding box, but that walls don't let the camera pass through them...unless the camera gets stuck on the other side of one of the futuristic sliding doors that's all over your game, then the camera needs to pass through gracefully.

Anyone who has developed games knows that the difference between one option and two options is enormous. If you take something like "is the player a camera", something that touches probably every single other piece of the codebase, and change the answer from "yes" to "maybe", you are making a very, very big change to the questions that the game has to ask to get anything done. Anyone who has developed games also knows that it is deeply, totally impossible to guess how much work something is going to take if you haven't worked on the game in question yourself. The above are some things that might come to mind for a normal 3D project—I guarantee you that there are so, so many things particular to this game (and any game) that we would never guess, owing to decisions that developers made years ago about how the engine works or what kinds of functionality need to be available.

And all of this is to say nothing of the amount of QA necessitated by this change—suddenly, the number of places the player's camera can be has increased by an incomprehensible factor. In first-person, the player's camera can be at any position between (normal height + jump height) and (crouch height), and only in places where the player's body can possibly be. Now, you need to test for the possibility of the camera being at any point within (possible first-person camera positions) + (every possible vector from the player object to the camera). That is...so, so much testing.

This is a teeny tiny glimpse into the amount of work that this change could require, and even this is assuming that you make the decision to have both from the outset. If you make that decision later on? And you have to refactor this functionality in? Whew. Nope.

Animations are a lot of work. They are...a fraction of the work this change would require. It is absolutely incredible that any game gets made at all.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Tylaris

[uuuhhii]

go through stair in first person are a nightmare

third person perspective are necessary

[Mirandel]

This is a post from Resetera where one of game designers explains why it's much more complex than "changing the camera". ( On cyberpunk 2077, but same applies). It's interesting to read as most gamers see only a fraction of what it affects. Also keep in mind, New Vegas was done on someone's else's engine where Obsidian didn't have to design everything from scratch.

 

 

It's going to depend drastically on how a number of systems are implemented. The gist is that the difference between the game knowing that the player is going to ALWAYS be "a camera" vs. the game having to deal with the player SOMETIMES being "a camera" and SOMETIMES being "a model that the camera is pointed at" is enormous. That kind of ambiguity suddenly opens up a huge, huge space for bugs and edge testing and bizarre ugly considerations. Some things that may be particularly problematic in a game like this:

• As tuxfool mentioned, you basically have to roll a new character controller from scratch. That is not trivial. That doesn't just mean moving around the world—it can also mean handling things like hit detection, interaction prompting, AI behavior, any of which can queue state changes or poll for proximity based on character position.
• You need to design a brand-new system for handling animation transitions. This is a very different thing than having the rigging/animations themselves. Animation transitions can be tied to a number of things—architectures like state machines, discrete components, centralized event systems that used entity pooling. If your game is first-person, that means that every single thing in the entire game with an animation is an entity or an object—meaning that changes to e.g. the state machine that runs its transitions are going to happen in response to changes in the game state. Now you add third-person. Suddenly, your game has thousands and thousands of pieces that change in response to changes in the game state, and one thing that changes in response to a combination of player input and the game state. Hoo boy.
• You need to design levels allowing for the possibility of players looking down on them from above.This is, again, a non-trivial design concern. It is hard to design levels for one perspective—now you're doing it for two. Want a key to be tantalizingly barely-visible through a window? Well, maybe the player's going to be in third-person, so they couldn't see through the window. Want to have the bad guy spawn behind a group of boxes and walk out? You can't, the player might be looking there. Did you lay this room out so that players' eyes are drawn upward when they first walk in, which brings their attention to the ventilation system leading from the office to the security room? Well, unfortunately, they're not going to see any of that.
• You need to make sure all the colliders in your level play nicely with third-person. If you're designing a game for first-person, you get to design physics for the player object and the player camera at the same time, because they're one and the same. That's really great when you're making a game set in a dense, urban environment. Oh, you're switching to third-person? Okay, now you need to make sure that the underside of every single ceiling in your entire game not only has the right bounding box, but that walls don't let the camera pass through them...unless the camera gets stuck on the other side of one of the futuristic sliding doors that's all over your game, then the camera needs to pass through gracefully.

Anyone who has developed games knows that the difference between one option and two options is enormous. If you take something like "is the player a camera", something that touches probably every single other piece of the codebase, and change the answer from "yes" to "maybe", you are making a very, very big change to the questions that the game has to ask to get anything done. Anyone who has developed games also knows that it is deeply, totally impossible to guess how much work something is going to take if you haven't worked on the game in question yourself. The above are some things that might come to mind for a normal 3D project—I guarantee you that there are so, so many things particular to this game (and any game) that we would never guess, owing to decisions that developers made years ago about how the engine works or what kinds of functionality need to be available.

 

And all of this is to say nothing of the amount of QA necessitated by this change—suddenly, the number of places the player's camera can be has increased by an incomprehensible factor. In first-person, the player's camera can be at any position between (normal height + jump height) and (crouch height), and only in places where the player's body can possibly be. Now, you need to test for the possibility of the camera being at any point within (possible first-person camera positions) + (every possible vector from the player object to the camera). That is...so, so much testing.

 

This is a teeny tiny glimpse into the amount of work that this change could require, and even this is assuming that you make the decision to have both from the outset. If you make that decision later on? And you have to refactor this functionality in? Whew. Nope.

 

Animations are a lot of work. They are...a fraction of the work this change would require. It is absolutely incredible that any game gets made at all.

 

Very informative and understandable. I do not ask for changes to existing game. My plea is for the future, to remind that there are people who love Obsidian games but physically unable to play FPS. TP view is not a caprice of spoiled customers but a necessity, and now, when MS is here, may be that enormous amount of work can be done in the future games?

[VaultBoi2077]

Perhaps it will be possible to adjust the FOV and relax the zoom/focus from your PC's POV. Like in a text file etc. in the game directory. Will have to wait and see what they release in more detail on the game specs.

[Sanjid099]

Sadly we live in a world where First-Person shooters dominate the industry. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo, all of them sell like hotcakes. For some games, having first-person is a necessity. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 require first-person due to all the augmentations and gunplay effects. Also, RPG developers tend to create their games for the sake of immersion. First-person tends to give us the idea that we're actually in the game as opposed to third-person. As a result, I think Obsidian has a preference for first-person over any other camera views. However, Obsidian does tend to listen to their fans' requests, so there IS a high chance for a camera-changing option to appear in their future games due to the funding provided by Microsoft's endless wealth.