First Person Perspective – Overused or Underutilized?

I believe there’s a lot of truly amazing things that can be done utilizing the first person perspective in games but a lot of the old trappings need to be shed.  For every game that drives this type of experience forward there’s at least five other games that stick you in a corridor with a gun or a fist to indicate you’re actually a person and not some ghost roaming about an environment.

We need more games like Mirror’s Edge, Portal, and Bioshock.  The one key factor that all of these games have is that your exploration of the world around you is what will lead you to progressing and fleshing out the story.  This utilization of exploration = immersion has the gamer actually searching out the nooks and crannies of environments that are mere set pieces in other games.

• Mirrors Edge puts you in the shoes of a parkour messenger and you literally feel like you’re doing the jumps with her because of how it uses the first person viewpoint.  Your gut clenches slightly when making those long jumps from roof top to roof top as if it would be you plunging to the streets below if you missed.

• Portal uses the first person perspective to give you freedom to figure out the puzzles it provides you with.  No glowing bread crumbs here, just plain ole brain power pushing you forward.  The only things that drive you forward is an disembodied voice that mocks you throughout the game rather than guiding you along and your own drive to escape the walls of what looks to be a huge hamster cage with you at its center.  The lack of any type of combat allows you time to figure out how to escape the cake’s evil lie at your own pace(play the game and you’ll understand!).

• Bioshock puts you in a world that is a beauty to look at an enigma to ponder.  Your eyes are met with an almost Utopian city under the sea yet it’s gone terribly wrong yet the only way the game provides for a narrative is exploring the world for yourself and listening to eerily and disjointed audio files strewn about the world.

Each works because they actually utilize the uniqueness of the first person viewpoint.  Here’s my message to all game developers looking to use the First Perspective in their games…use it to tell story or convey a new experience not just a way to put out yet another FPS game in an already over saturated market.  Less games like Legendary and more games in the vein of the Half Life series…please.

Tagged as: BioShock, Edge, First-person shooter, fps, Games, Half Life, Mirror, mirrors edge, Video game