The Modern Bum Camera Problem | Semi-Ramblomatic

I absolutely lost my mind when I first played Nier Automata and the camera sometimes switched to fixed angle "pretend it's 2d" style, or zoomed out to show everything and a big fuckoff boss. Wouldn't be hard to do, you thankfully still get 2Bum camera, but it also makes some scenes way more interesting!

While trying to think about what might constitute a second person game camera that would be functional and potentially interesting, I think I came to the conclusion that the real problem is that the third person camera is misnamed. First person in the literary sense is "I only know what happens to the viewpoint character." Second person is very difficult to pull off and is therefore rarer but in certain cases can be effective, as in Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" ("You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are,") or in NK Jemisin's more recent fantasy trilogy "The Broken Earth" where the choice of a second person narrative is eventually justified at the end of the trilogy because [SPOILER!], and is structured as if you, the reader, are the subject of the story which is being told to you by a second person. I think that the "camera hanging out just behind the main character's shoulder like some weird angel/demon hybrid spirit" is more similar to the second person written viewpoint as you are literally telling the viewpoint character where to go and what to do. ("Leon, you need to roundhouse kick that Ganado in the head or you're dead!") Meanwhile the third person camera would, to be consistent, be more like the older God of War camera or the Baldur's Gate camera or indeed any camera where you can see your whole party (no matter how many people are in it) and nearly all of the environment they are in and nearly all of the obstacles and objects they need to cope with or utilize. This would be analogous to the third person literary viewpoint where the reader is not restricted to limited information but can see as much of the world as the author cares to reveal at any given moment, including things that none of the characters within the story have any awareness of. I realize there is no chance whatsoever of getting the industry to change their nomenclature after this long but at least it is a potential explanation for why the second person camera does not seem to exist in games. I think it actually does exist, it's just not called that and the distinction between the shoulder camera and the "I can see the entire area with multiple characters and creatures and items on it all at the same time" is not one that the industry has made.

I do think fixed camera angles are a bit of a lost art. The shots and angles certainly create a more memorable image in your head, and can be used for some cool micro story telling. One of my favourite examples is Digimon World. It has some cool 'story telling' shots that create atmosphere and direct the players the way a 3D game does with land-marks in the distance. But most of the time it starts as an over-head view, and can transition into a longer view the further north you go, meaning it ties visibility to movement, and by association, exploration to discovery and risk. It gives the whole game a bit of a patchwork diorama feeling too.

Shout-out to Tunic, whose camera is positioned in a way that intentionally obscures secret passages.