I don't think you are aware of how FPS games are traditionally played on PC. That is you sit CLOSE to a relatively large screen (20 inches diagonal) so it actually fills most of your vision, PC games normally have a "Field Of View angle" set to something like 90-degrees, whereas console games (even in widescreen mode) may have as low as 50-degrees wide field of view. I find this setup, 1.5 feet from a 24-inch widescreen and 90-degrees wide view to be very VERY close approximation of natural vision, and the immersion of some good high quality headphones... probably better than virtual reality.SomethingGiant said:
So what I'm saying is PC's method of FPS does not have really significant sacrifice in Field Of View. Before you say "Ah, but increasing Field OF View is like zooming out, you lose viewing distance" well PC has that sorted with VERY HIGH native resolution of +1080p and from how on PC you sit close enough to the screen to actually see all that detail, it is no real sacrifice at all. I can understand how on consoles they settle for lower field of view, as they typically sit so much further from the screen the actual screen fills a smaller Field of THEIR view. My problem is I try to play console games on my PC monitor, they all have such low Field OF View, I feel like I'm walking around with a scoped sniper rifle.
Platforming is fairly easy on PC just due to how fast AND accurate a mouse can be, you can easily just "twitch look" down for the ledge.
I have a LOT of experience with 3D platforming from Tomb Raider 1996 to Tomb Raider 2006, 3D as it is today (unlike side view 2D) is in fact really hard, as with the camera following behind you it is almost as hard to tell where the actual ledge IS!
Tomb Raider (1996-2000) solved this by having a special jump mechanism as in you run towards a ledge while HOLDING the jump button, then your character AUTOMATICALLY jump at the ledge. You could do just as well with a First person perspective. So 3D platforming ain't all that great. The Tomb Raider Reboot (2006) had another trick up it's sleeve it le you jump even if your foot had in fact stepped OVER the edge! You can see it if you record gameplay and go frame by frame.
Short of these "cheats" to only way to truly platform effectively in 3rd person is as you move to a jump the camera moves to a top-down perspective, to put the ledge in profile, bit that's no better than on PC FPS, quickly looking down. Check out the speed-run of Half Life on PC, the crazy jumps people are able to pull off with that. PC FPS controls have ALWAYS had jump bound the the space, the thumb ALWAYS ready to press it (unlike on console where normally placed on a face button) because PC FPS, jumping precisely remains important.
As to melee, well Boxers and other combat sportsmen don't need VR goggles and a camera behind them to fight. I have been melee-ing my way through many first person games such as:
-CoD series' tactical-knife
-Team Fortress 2's ever important melee weapons
-Left 4 Dead 2 would be impossible without mastering the "shunt" manoeuvre, also the entire melee weapons class.
Really melee in third person is so good because it lets you CHEAT! You can run TOTALLY PAST an enemy, misjudge it and you will still be able to see their position right over your shoulder. It lets you see what you shouldn't be able to see.
Now my major problem with third-Person is the issue of Parallax Trajectory. Consider an on screen targeting reticule, what does that actually MEAN? It supposedly says where a bullet will go, but hang on, your perspective is 1 meter up and 2 meters back away from where the actual gun is firing the bullets from.
The way FPS games actually calculate bullet trajectory is the bullet is fired FROM THE RIGHT EYE (which is also calculated as the point of focus for your perspective) so you are looking directly down the sight path of your gun. Now the bullet may raise or fall due to the arcing trajectory, or blown side to side by unstable gun, but all the points of aim are in line. This is great for when you expect your bullet to pass through multiple enemies or through cover into them.
On third person aiming what has to be done is the third person line-of-sight must be lined up with the gun trajectory as your aiming reticule. This is a complexity I personally would rather no have to deal with, in a shooter especially.
The big appeal to me of third-person-perspective is in the storytelling aspect, it can give a very unique personality and mannerism to your playable character, rather than an "immersive" one. This is a different approach to gameplay storytelling, it has pros and cons. Consider something like Uncharted, how much they are able to infuse onto Nathan Drake by pulling the camera back and seeing how he acts when fighting, hiding from gunfire and traversing deathly chasms. It makes him seem more human, more like a real being, though less immersive, Immersion is not the be-all-and-end-all of game storytelling.
Third person can never be that good for intense and immersive combat, third person is best for a very DISTINCT type of video game narrative.
