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Old 03-22-2011, 09:55 PM   #21
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I like 3rd person games because I like comedic adventure games the best and as far as I know there's none of those in 1st person, apart from possibly Starship Titanic which was a lot of fun, writting your own lines. But just like most other 1st person games, it felt more difficult than 3rd person games. I tried Red Jack which I liked too and Gabriel Knight 3 was 1st person too I think and that game made me car sick, which is another reason why I prefer 3rd person. When you see the character you don't have to get sea sick!
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Old 03-23-2011, 12:04 AM   #22
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I prefer seeing my character in all my games really. I usually like the protagonists in adventures and if I spend a good amount of time creating my character in RPGs for instance I want to be able to admire it too.

For point and click adventures the fixed bird view works well but I think I actually enjoy "follow-the-character" mode the most, like in Dreamfall or the normal setting in WoW, even if it means following the characters back most of the time (being able to turn the camera yourself fixes staring-at-butt-syndrome). I like some 1st person control schemes though, but as most people said, they are best at horror games and I don't play horror games really. I like exciting, not scary.

I don't really think "this is just a vase" or not showing paintings or notice boards is really a fault of a 3rd person view. It's just bad design or laziness. 1st person games can have unnecessary interactions (or even actual hotspots) too and all those paintings and notice boards could have closeups in 3rd person games.
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Old 03-23-2011, 01:17 AM   #23
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Definitely I prefer more third person view games. As a matter of fact I've never played first person view games. I can't stand them. First person view is good I guess for shooting and horror games bit not for adventure.

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Old 03-23-2011, 05:46 AM   #24
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Many people automatically assume that a 1st-person adventure = Myst-like. But there were already 1st-person adventures before Myst, like Maupiti Island, Fascination, Heart of China, AD 2044. I could make a long list of 1st-person games with dialogues, inventory puzzles, strong stories, protagonists with a name, a face, a voice and a character. Some became real classics, like the last 3 Tex Murphy games and the Journeyman series. And what about the Nancy Drew games, Black Dahlia, The Last Express, the X Files, Dark Side of the Moon, Return to Mysterious Island, Dark Eye, and all the wonderful adventures by Legend Entertainment...

No humor? HA! Off the top of my head: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, the Quivering, the Space Bar, GAG, Return to Zork and my beloved Zork Grand Inquisitor.

I count myself lucky because I love both perspectives.
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Old 03-23-2011, 07:43 AM   #25
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Surely, it's third person games that are static? For any given location there is just a single screen that the character walks across, whereas in first person there is much more of a sense of movement and progression across a landscape as the player move across in in stages.
I must disagree. In a well-programed and designed game, the NPCs (to borrow an RPG term) can add a lot to the environment. I'll give an example. Grim Fandango, a title many in this forum will agree is a rather good game, has many populated scenes. In the casino, for example, there are a lot of gamblers conversing with others or playing games at the tables or whatnot. You can get a feel for how they are enjoying the room while yopu walk around, do your sleuthing, talking, whatever you need to do in the scene. Then, Manuel does something (spoiler withheld) to cause some of the people to leave and the environment change. You can feel from the screen the different attitude, the response to what you have done.

In many 1st person games, you learn the results of your actions from watching short cutscenes, and then the world goes back to the same, boring static world. In Faust, for example, each time you find one of the items that are significant to the character at hand, you get a 5-20 second flashback scene... and then it's like nothing changed. I've played other 1st person games where the only animations or scenes you see are 1 second shots when you open a door or turn on a machine. To me, these games aren't vibrant, it's more like I'm exploring a museum than doing anything else.

Also, the viewpoint has its limitations. Could you imagine anyone's top 10 favorite games in 1st person? Leisure Suit Larry without the action? (pun intended). Or Monkey Island without being able to follow the shopkeeper or see all the pirates milling around the island or even seeing Guybrush make funny faces as he talks?

That was one of my biggest complaints about 3rd person Syberia -- you felt like you were walking around a ghost town -- yet I still felt more like I was part of the environment, because I could see Kate Walker and I could occasionally see the environment react to her.

Part of the fun for me is in fact the "urgent story" you also mention. I feel compelled to finish the game. I feel compelled to want to know what happens next. Is Sonny Bonds going to get shot in a second unless I do something else? Is April Ryan going to sneak around that police station without any cops finding her? There's movement going on around her, and I have to take that into consideration every step I take.
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Old 03-23-2011, 08:03 AM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fien View Post
...the last 3 Tex Murphy games...
Good point well made!

However, I think that these are the exceptions rather that the rule with 1st person games. I too enjoy 1st and 3rd, but I still feel that 1st tends towards the Myst/exploration style for the most part, at least in those games with which I am familiar. This is not something to their detriment though.
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Old 03-23-2011, 08:51 AM   #27
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Not so sure that's true, IntenseDegree. I already gave you 22 individual names of non-Mystians in my post + all the Nancy Drews (not my favorites) + all the Legend games. And then we have the FMV detective games, like In the First Degree, Blue Heat, SFPD, etcetera.

There used to be a list of all the Mystian 1st-person adventures at JustAdventure. Don't know if it's still around. Some 50 games, if my memory serves me well. Colpet might know, she's into Mystian adventures. Not many new ones coming out these days. Bracken Tor this year, that's about it.
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Old 03-23-2011, 01:35 PM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fien View Post
Not so sure that's true, IntenseDegree. I already gave you 22 individual names of non-Mystians in my post + all the Nancy Drews (not my favorites) + all the Legend games. And then we have the FMV detective games, like In the First Degree, Blue Heat, SFPD, etcetera.

There used to be a list of all the Mystian 1st-person adventures at JustAdventure. Don't know if it's still around. Some 50 games, if my memory serves me well. Colpet might know, she's into Mystian adventures. Not many new ones coming out these days. Bracken Tor this year, that's about it.
Here's the thread:
http://justadventure.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1121474960/0
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Old 03-23-2011, 02:53 PM   #29
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3rd person for sure, I have to admit, mostly because of "nostalgia", and just because it's been so ingrained in our minds that AG are 3rd person, but there are real reasons too

When you have anything first person, the only way it really works is if there's a real time rendering engine, as node based first person, one could argue, takes you more out of the game then a 3rd person would.

So then we're talking about real time; Only in the past couple of years real time rendering engines became powerfull enough to match what a beautifully drawn static background, in the case of 3rd person, has been doing for a very long time, and let's face it a company developing an AG probably not going to have the budget to license the latest 3D engine, so more often then not, when you see a first person adventure, it's either node based (puke), or it's using some ancient, and.or, just not very good real time rendering engine. The result are enviroments which don;t come even close to the beautiful backgrounds we're used to see

And this is just as graphics go, there are reasons as far as interface, character interaction, and just how a character moves through the world, why I like 3rd person better

@ jon_whatcher

Was GK3 first person? There had to have been an option for 3rd, no? I don't remember it being a first person game!!?
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Old 03-23-2011, 09:43 PM   #30
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I'd love to ask from the more experienced members and lovers of the first person style,to explain to me how they feel it is superior to the other games,what makes it so nice and which are, according to their opinion the biggest and best differences to other styles.
I wouldn't say one was superior to the other. I think it depends on the game. I don't think I'd want Gabriel Knight or Guybrush Threepwood in 1st person. Nor would Shivers or RHEM work very well in 3rd person. For puzzle-type games I think 1st person is better. For a game with emphasis on story or characters I usually like to see the character, but it isn't always necessary. Tex Murphy and Black Dahlia worked fine in 1st person.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cbman View Post
Surely, it's third person games that are static? For any given location there is just a single screen that the character walks across, whereas in first person there is much more of a sense of movement and progression across a landscape as the player move across in in stages.
It's not all that different from first person games with a static screen -- the difference being that with the 3rd person game you have to sit around waiting for the guy to walk/jog across the screen to the thing you want to click on while with the first person game you just click on it.
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Old 03-24-2011, 01:16 AM   #31
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Gabriel Knight 3 was a unique kind of third person
you controlled the camera as you would a first person perspective, but could then click on an area for Gabe to walk to. I actually found it to be a very good interface and it's a shame nobody's ever used it since
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Old 03-24-2011, 01:37 AM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crabapple View Post
For a game with emphasis on story or characters I usually like to see the character, but it isn't always necessary.
Even if you like to see your 3rd-person character on screen, you get to know your tiny avatar pretty well in no time. And no facial expressions during conversations.

Quote:
Tex Murphy and Black Dahlia worked fine in 1st person.
The overwhelming majority of 1st-person adventures use cutscenes, so of course you can see Tex and Jim. One irritating exception is Dark Side of the Moon. Your protagonist has a name, a character, a voice but you never ever get to see him in any of the cutscenes. Other people talk to the camera = you. Same is true for Temujin, but at least there's a reason for all the mystery, storywise.
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Old 03-24-2011, 01:45 AM   #33
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As an old Chinese proverb says (or was it the immortal Mao Tse Tung?): "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white: as long as it can catch mice, it's a good cat."

If I enjoy an adventure game it makes no difference to me whether it's 1st, 2nd, 3rd or any other person.
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Old 03-24-2011, 07:31 AM   #34
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@fien - I can't deny you have played more games than I have so I shall bow to your superior knowledge!

However, from the games I have played, the one thing you don't tend to get so much in 1st person is the interaction with other characters (other than in cutscenes as you have said - which is a 3rd person element to a 1st person game anyway).

This isn't necessarily better or worse, just different, but in say GK I feel you get to know Gabe better by his interactions with Grace, Mostly et al. which would be missing from most 1st person games.

In the same way you don't get the same feeling of exploration and "being there" from 3rd person games.
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Old 03-24-2011, 09:01 AM   #35
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This isn't necessarily better or worse, just different, but in say GK I feel you get to know Gabe better by his interactions with Grace, Mostly et al. which would be missing from most 1st person games.
My point was not that 1st-person games are better, but that many people equate 1st-person with lonely exploration, no inventory puzzles, no dialogues, etcetera. Yes, you get to know Gabe really well in GK1 thanks to the rich interactions, the well-written dialogues, the voiceacting, the story. First-person games can do the exact same thing because Gabe's avatar isn't essential, although it can add something in its own crude nonverbal way, like Gabe admiring his hair in the mirror or gesturing to Grace that he doesn't want to talk to a Lolita. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is a good example. It has everything a traditional 3rd-person adventure with inventory-based puzzles has, including a rich environment with comments by the protagonist, including extensive, embedded dialogues with portraits(!), just like GK1. The only difference is that you don't control an avatar.
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Old 03-24-2011, 09:18 AM   #36
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I prefer third person.
First person always makes me feel kind of sea sick...
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Old 03-24-2011, 11:06 AM   #37
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For adventre games, 3rd person wins out every time. I strongly dislike first person games - partly because they remind me too much of first person shooters or action games, partly because you somehow don't feel properly absorbed in the atmosphere of the game, partly because you can't see enough of your surroundings or the main character.

Third person is, for me, the ONLY way to play adventure games.
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Old 03-24-2011, 12:29 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rayvio View Post
Gabriel Knight 3 was a unique kind of third person
you controlled the camera as you would a first person perspective, but could then click on an area for Gabe to walk to. I actually found it to be a very good interface and it's a shame nobody's ever used it since
I already quoted you about this same thing in some other thread but once again I have to point out the truth in this. I actually remember showing the game to my bf at the time and commenting about the 3D: "it looks a bit rough but these controls are actually very good" and showing how it moves and I could look under tables and such.

Pretty much unrelated to this one more thing why I usually prefer 3rd person is because I'm a female and most protagonists are male. If I don't see the male avatar I tend to "forget" I'm playing a male and this can create some weird situations. Mostly it's just funny of course but it can break out some of that immersion and "in there"-feeling this 1st person view is supposed to create in the first place.
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Old 03-24-2011, 03:26 PM   #39
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Definitely third person. First person makes me nauseous--literally. Not meant to be criticism of the perspective. I could barely tolerate Portal, but I did it because of its gameplay and its villain.
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Old 03-24-2011, 04:12 PM   #40
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I wonder which style requires more clicks....first person or third person?Aren't you tired of just clicking here and there all the time in first person?And aren't you tired of pixel-hunting when you play a third person view adventure game?
Well the answer could be "it depends".Yes.It depends on the game,it depends on the kind of the adventure...it depends on your tastes.

But I still wonder...
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