Third person perspective

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Screenshot of the third-person adventure game ERD - Estrada Real Digital (persecutor's perspective)

The third-person perspective (view from the third person because you are looking at the player) is a camera perspective in 3D video games in which the point at which the player looks into the scenery is outside the controlled game figure and the game figure can even be seen in the image section. In 2D games, the term is usually not used because it is a matter of course. This perspective is often Adventures and RPGs used and in many action games . Different display modes have been established for the third-person perspective. The pursuer's perspective is mainly used today. The bird's eye view is still used in real-time strategy games , dungeon crawlers, simulations and the like. The fixed camera angle is only in today cutscenes and quick time events use.

Third-person perspective in 3D video games

Persecutor's perspective

In the pursuer's perspective, the camera is in a fixed position behind the game figure and is freely steered synchronously with it (with the help of the mouse or a gamepad ). It is standard for third-person shooters and is also widely used in role-playing games , action-adventure games and 3D jump-and-runs . It is very similar to the first- person view in terms of handling and can also be optionally set in some games. In contrast to the first person perspective, the pursuer perspective allows better handling of edged weapons and martial arts attacks, as more of the body can be seen. On the other hand, compared to the first-person perspective, it is considered less captivating, as it does not directly reproduce the “worldview” of the game character and thus the degree of immersion is lower. This is why the first-person perspective is used almost exclusively in VR games.

Because of the popularity of the game Tomb Raider (1996), the persecutor's perspective was called the “Tomb Raider” perspective in the press for a long time. The ability to switch between the pursuer's perspective and first- person perspective is gaining popularity. It has already been used in Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005), Skyrim (2011) and GTA 5 (2013) and will also be used in Cyberpunk 2077 (2020).

Examples:

Bird's eye view

The bird's eye view shows the game figure at an angle from above, while the camera is at a significantly further distance from the figure than in the pursuer's perspective. The camera is controlled either synchronously with the control of the game character (as with the pursuer's perspective) or by a separate control scheme. It offers a good overview of the game character's immediate surroundings. Often it is even possible to see adjacent rooms by showing them without a ceiling. Because of the clarity, the bird's eye view is often used in games with a pronounced tactical component. The bird's eye view is standard in strategy games and is also often used in role-playing games in which you control a group of characters; However, these do not usually fall under the term third-person perspective (because there is no fixed reference to a game figure). But there are also some games in which a single character is controlled from a bird's eye view.

Examples:

Fixed camera settings

Here the character moves through scenarios, each of which is shown with fixed camera settings. This means that the character can be moved freely in space, but the camera cannot. The aim is to achieve a film-like, dramatic or tension-creating effect. The game character can be seen one after the other from a wide variety of angles, which makes the controls comparatively complicated (therefore the camera setting can often be changed to a limited extent using additional buttons). The control scheme can be designed either relative to the orientation of the game character or relative to the current camera setting. The third-person perspective with fixed camera settings is very common in the survival horror subgenre and is generally used in many action adventures .

Examples:

Third-person perspective in 2D video games

In video games with 2D graphics, there is a view of the character from the side view (common in jump 'n' runs and shoot 'em ups ), the top view or from the isometric perspective .

Individual evidence

  1. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness in the test - Tomb Raider 6 disappoints across the board. September 1, 2003, accessed June 12, 2020 .
  2. Blessing of genetic research. March 7, 2001, accessed June 12, 2020 .
  3. first-person perspective vs. Third-Person in Cyberpunk 2077 & Co. - Video. Retrieved June 12, 2020 .