By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - First-Person or Third-Person?

 

Do you prefer first-person gameplay or third-person gameplay?

First-person 15 27.27%
 
Third-person 40 72.73%
 
Total:55
captain carot on 20 June 2019

Depends on the game and possibly genre. I like both, though i think first person often works better with a less developed character, more simple avatar.

What i really dislike though is the over the shoulder third person far to many games have copied over the last 14 years. To me this is lacking the immersion of first person as well as the 'overview' of the classic third person view.



Around the Network
d21lewis on 20 June 2019

Third. In fact, I didn't even buy Skyrim or Fallout at the time because I thought they were first person, only.

There are quite a few first person games that I do like but it really is a bit of a turnoff for me. It's something I just accept rather than enjoy.



CuCabeludo on 20 June 2019
captain carot said:
Depends on the game and possibly genre. I like both, though i think first person often works better with a less developed character, more simple avatar.

What i really dislike though is the over the shoulder third person far to many games have copied over the last 14 years. To me this is lacking the immersion of first person as well as the 'overview' of the classic third person view.

Before RE4, third person shooters were a mess, none of them worked properly. RE4 showed how to make a 3rd person shooter work and Gears of War refined it.



d21lewis on 20 June 2019

I see a few people saying that first person makes them feel more immersed. It's often the opposite for me. I often feel like a head strapped to a gun. In the early days of 3D gaming when we had games like Doom, Quake, Powerslave, etc. I'd often pretend I was a robot on wheels.



CuCabeludo on 20 June 2019
CaptainExplosion said:
CuCabeludo said:

Before RE4, third person shooters were a mess, none of them worked properly. RE4 showed how to make a 3rd person shooter work and Gears of War refined it.

I still don't think the over-the-shoulder view looks good. When you say your game is a third-person-shooter, shouldn't that mean the camera is right behind the player like in Splatoon?

Splatoon has a camera always bedind the player because it makes the shooting feature seamless with the movement. 3rd person shooters that have a free rotating camera require that you hold a button to enter in shooting mode and the camera instantly turns behind the player, but holding a button while shooting limits the player movement habilities. So those shooters rely on cover feature more than moving around while shooting.



Around the Network
d21lewis on 20 June 2019

CaptainExplosion said:
CuCabeludo said:

Before RE4, third person shooters were a mess, none of them worked properly. RE4 showed how to make a 3rd person shooter work and Gears of War refined it.

I still don't think the over-the-shoulder view looks good. When you say your game is a third-person-shooter, shouldn't that mean the camera is right behind the player like in Splatoon?

That's not what third person means at all!

  • -First person is the I/we perspective.
  • -Second person is the you perspective.
  • -Third person is the he/she/it/they perspective.
  • Basically, first person just means you're seeing everything from the main character's perspective. Third person means you're an observer of the main character.


CuCabeludo on 20 June 2019
CaptainExplosion said:
CuCabeludo said:

Splatoon has a camera always bedind the player because it makes the shooting feature seamless with the movement. 3rd person shooters that have a free rotating camera require that you hold a button to enter in shooting mode and the camera instantly turns behind the player, but holding a button while shooting limits the player movement habilities. So those shooters rely on cover feature more than moving around while shooting.

So Splatoon doesn't do the Gears of War perspective because Gears relies more on finding cover?

Splatoon relies a lot on fast movement while shooting.



SvennoJ on 20 June 2019

1st person. I don't like somebody walking in front of me for the entire game. Get out of the way.



d21lewis on 20 June 2019

CaptainExplosion said:
Shadow1980 said:
It depends on what fits the game best. For shooters I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. I personally tend to prefer first-person because it's what I'm accustomed to, though depending on the style of gameplay and/or the aesthetic third-person might be better in some cases. For adventure games and platformers, I think third-person is generally better. And for racing games that let you toggle between "inside the car" and third-person cameras, I pick third-person because it helps me drive better as I have a better sense of where my vehicle is and it gives me a better view of the environment in general (while driving IRL is of course necessarily a first-person exercise, it doesn't feel right in racing games to me because it's not actually me sitting in a car).

Now, if you asked me this 20 years ago, I would have said "first-person" all the way, at least when it comes to shooters and other action games. Back in Gen 5, too many developers simply were unable to get the camera right in third-person games, something that's hard to do in a first-person setup, and the controls were often ungainly. That's why I never cared for games like old-school Tomb Raider or MDK. Things didn't really seem to improve much the following generation, though to be fair I didn't get to play as many games that generation for various reasons. I think the first third-person shooter I ever played and enjoyed and didn't feel like I was fighting the camera or poor controls was Gears of War. That fixed over-the-shoulder camera set in a good position (something pioneered by RE4 two years prior) and more standardized FPS-style controls probably helped a lot.

What's MDK?

A legendary video game from back in the day. Unfortunately, lost to the sands of time.



CladInShadows on 20 June 2019

It really depends on the game, but for the most part it doesn't matter to me.