Back to Avowed, one thing I find all sorts of baffling is the choice to go with such a narrow field of view in a 1st person POV, like for anything perporting to be a Role Playing Game in the classic style carried over into the new. Don't get me wrong, cause I'm quite comfortable with shooters. In my era I played them all and generally completely owned within my friendgroup. Like legit, come at me in a FPS and you'll probably get rocked; cause I have zero issues strafing and dive rolling, running backwards while blasting, and aiming upside down the whole time with double-tap logic. I'm Y-invert - all my guns are golden in this case, but that is the literal last thing I want from a cRPG frame! Lol
I just don't think it's even possible to make an engaging form of Sword and Sorcerery combat that's going to ring my bells, when that's the defining look/style. What results is always either "too slow" and meh for action, or "too fast" and meh for playing the role. I always have the same feeling with the run and gun hybrid in the fantasy context.
Also I think they've clearly underestimated motion sickness as a barrier to entry. Like if we have the option and all modern displays are 16:9/16:10 why not push the FOV as wide as possible so it doesn't trigger the parallax peripheral vision so hard? Seems strange. That gameplay treaser showed no UI at all, so who knows I guess, but they could literally crop the frame into ultrawide and shore that up some. Not sure why everyone always thinks its a good idea fill a frame right to the edges in that sort of view, the result is generally pretty claustrophobic like goggles, if you can't stretch wide on along the horizon line. It's like being the passanger in a car on a winding road for half the population I bet.
Just as an example, there are probably quite a few people who might otherwise be playing Cyberpunk right now were it not for the POV, and they all seem to be sticking with BG3 instead. Even though BG3's been out for months, the party movement controls are ultra jank, and it's barely even Iso half the time. Just seems like a weird transition to 1st person POV for this one, given what Pillars was and who it was targeting when it first dropped, which was clearly BG (now Pathfinder) players hehe.
Same mistake Bioware made with NWN in my view, because they were chasing the MMO/MP vibe, instead of the SP godmode full-party-control vibe, which was the actual BG inheritance. Just a very different sort of presentation and mood there. A different sensibility in designing what combat might look like, because it's so hard to do anything to make that feel new, and sufficiently distinct from Black Ops with wands lol. I mean right? I don't know, maybe I'm way off base there, but just the impression it left.
ps. these issues only really come up for me when the FOV is trying to mimic the aesthetic experience "looking" with our eyes, instead of trying to capture a sense of that, but at a one step remove, the way cinema works. Or when they push the symbol recognition area all the way to 65/90 degrees, but then don't give me anything in the transition afterwards. I may be a little bit weird though. Watching films at anything other than 24 fps is the most obnoxious experience I can possibly imagine, and every new TV I buy I spend the first 10 minutes figuring out how to reset judder and motion blur, so it will match my expectations of what a film is supposed to look like. Watching the Hobbit in 48 fps was the stuff of nightmares for me. Netflix soap operas looking like the big Sunday game, same deal. Maybe if I'm listening to David Attenborough or watching Cosmos, but otherwise I want the established conventions there, the same one's we've been using since the 1930s. Of course games are different, and frames work differently there, but still, I live in dread fear of the day when all movies are shot in 3d to mirror the experience of watching a stage play or playing a game, which is not what I want from the cinema or TV. Like really ever hehe. I'd rather go to the carnival and ride the Gryo-tron till I throw up than give away my motion blur heheh. Sorry, ramble ramble, I also can't stand the Avatar films, so take that for what it's worth hehe. They could let that 60 fps camera sink to the bottom of the Atlantic for all I care, it's just not ever going to be what I want from a movie going experience. Games are different granted, but I feel like it's envelope pushing to no purpose sometimes, in the same sort of way, or maybe I'm just a dinosaur on that one lol.
I extend a similar analogy when it comes to my expectations for how games should look, or rather, how certain sorts of games should look, based on what they're trying to achieve. I feel like it's not really a technical limitation thing, there's only so much one can do there as we run up against physical limits for how vision actually works and what can be done on a screen, but a choice to break with conventions or mash stuff up can be galling, when that's not the showing I bought a ticket for. Getting handed 3d glasses for those seats that shake and rumble like a rollercoaster with the headbob, just feels gimmicky and trying to push something other than what it is, or what I'd prefer it to be.
Couple from the wiki, just for flare hehe
pps. judging 'the book' by it's cover. The poster
Made a couple searches, couldn't find who did it. I've seen a few different crops
pps. I rewatched the gameplay demo like a dozen times, and then suddenly got visions of Kotor II again hehe. Like they just latticed in right in for me, and then I remembered oh yeah, that's why! hehe Doing triple guardian flips to "wand" some rando at point blank range. I suspect they're probably trying to give us something like that again, just set in the pillars world with a sprinkling of desert sand that way. Again not that I don't like those other games, but it's similar to how I want my movies to be movies and my rides to be rides, and for that stuff to align properly all in their right lanes. I just feel like I've seen the game where character jumps into frame, or the barbarian lizard does his overthehead diving smash will it all lights up like blinking Xmas tree chaos. I guess another analogy might be Warcraft compared to WoW for me. Like Ok I get the move, you want to switch the perspective and getting a different camera angle on it, do something new-ish, got that, but then for a Pillars game? And I liked Deadfire quite a lot! Thought it was a great game. The first one too! Surely I'm the target right, but their aim is kinda off and I think they need to reset the scope hehe.
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