First Screenshot from WIP level.

The Project: Third Person Shooter for PC Platform.

The Core of Third Person Shooters Part One:

Why use the Third Person perspective?

Player: The person who plays the game, who controls the character.

Character: The entity that interacts with the game environment, controlled by a human player.

The Third Person perspective allows for players to see the character they’re controlling at all times. The camera always follows from an outside point of view, enabling the player to see the environment and immediate colliders around the character they’re controlling, therefore creating a more grounded feeling of movement and interaction.

Having the character in view provides a more intriguing way of storytelling; as opposed to having the camera in First Person view. The character has been physically defined and presented in front of the player, triggering a heightened sense of role playing. The player becomes the character, instead of the character becoming the player; the less the player sees, the more he will have to create with his own imagination, something we want to avoid when trying to tell a realistic story in video games. There has to be boundaries set; how much do we want the player to make his own, and how much do we want to define as facts. In order to have a pre-defined and believable character, it is better suited to use the Third Person perspective.  

Case in Point:

                     Max Payne ( 2001), Remedy Entertainment, GoD Games

Max Payne uses the Third Person perspective to tell a more mature and relatively realistic story. You always see Max when you’re controlling him. When you get used to the controls, you become Max. You know how tall you are, how you look and what kind of clothes you wear. He has a voice, he speaks, he reacts and is overall more grounded in reality. There are no “ifs” and “buts”. The character has been pre-defined. 

                                  Half-Life (1998), Valve Software, Sierra Entertainment

Half-Life’s story is every bit intriguing as it is unknown. We know nothing about the main character we’re controlling, only his name and what he possibly looks like(He’s never shown in gameplay, but we see what he looks like in the game’s menu). He never speaks, never shows any emotions, never reacts to anything. He’s a blank slate for the player to fill. So Gordon becomes the player. 

Mechanics wise, Project Scarlet Rain fuses old-school skill based gaming with contemporary features. Features like leaning, navigating and path finding combined with relatively newer ones such as the ability to free-look and manipulate objects manually within the game environment combine to produce a hybrid that rarely exists in independent game projects. The camera can be maneuvered in 360 degrees to look around and investigate the surrounding area, and game objects that the Character can interact with are all responsive to the Player commands.

In Conclusion:

The Third Person perspective offers a more cinematic, engaging and character-based storytelling method that Project Scarlet Rain aims to deliver. 

Third Person Perspective:

                                          Resident Evil 4(2005), Capcom

                                          Metal Gear Solid 3(2005), Konami

                                          Tomb Raider 2(1996), Core Design, Eidos

First Person Perspective:

                                         Duke Nukem 3D (1996), 3DRealms

                                          F.E.A.R. (2005), Monolith, Sierra Entertainment

                                         Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare(2007), IW, Activision