The Death of Fixed Camera Angles

>Waaaah why are games so cinematic now
>wait wtf why do I have to control the camera, go back to fixed camera angles, they were more cine- I mean, SOULFUL

I love how in Eternal Darkness, the crazier you get, the more slanted and offset the camera becomes. And there's so many great subtle cues they use like the camera slightly panning in a direction if the devs want you to look that way along with your character turning their head to spot an item instead of a massive glow around every object.

I recently played through this
Why do they wait until the very last act to put monsters in the mansion with Alex?

Because they're awkward to control and devs who want to make "cinematic" gameplay now have the tools to make seamless cuts to high quality, yet inexpensive ingame cutscenes.

>system limitations
and yet they were used in horror games of the sixth gen which had no issue rendering full 3d environments

>it could require less effort, really
straight up wrong. static camera design requires careful map design to support the static camera system. furthermore every single shot has to tested to ensure that they pose no issue
>all you have to do is point the camera at whatever you want them to see
a weak argument since there are a multitude of other solutions ranging from retarded forced cutscenes to ingenious highlighting through lighting

>Because they're awkward to control
In what way? I'll take DMC1 or OP related's camera any day of the week over trying to deal with Sekiro or Dark Souls' cameras in any indoor area.

Play fatal frame 1&3

Fixed camera angles were a thing because of hardware limitations like rightly pointed out. It was a shortcut for having advanced lighting and higher resolution environments, which we naturally prefer because those things are more immersive. Now that tech is better, they're not needed for creating such stunning environments.

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>Why did they go the way of the dodo?
People kind of like it in retrospect but at the time everyone just bitched.

It definitely wasn't a hardware limitation in 6th gen and the OP has nothing to do with prerendered backgrounds.

Because moving in a direction just to be entirely lost once you pass an invisible bar is shit
just imagine with this picture, you go up to advance, then the next second the camera is on his side meaning the second you'll change direction, the guy will jerk for a split second

>not using superior tank controls

They weren't a hardware limitation back in the gamecube era, but keep in mind that by that point devs were finally getting a good feel for 3D and fixed camera angles quickly made their way out. I can't even remember any big name fixed angle games coming out past like the mid-00s. The notable ones like REmake, RE0, and Eternal Darkness came out fairly early in the gen.

Ninja Gaiden 2 and DMC4

>game has complete 3d capabilities and full TPS aiming mode
>uses fixed camera angles anyway
Based.

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The camera never jumps in Eternal Darkness unless you are going through a door or examining something.

fatal frame 1-3

Because fixed camera games inspire fear AND creativity. First Person and over-the-shoulder gear towards action making the development process easier to knock out games for publishers who demand no low moments of walking around.

I don't think fixed cameras are dead for good though. You could very well stream those type of games on a horror channel which would look far more natural and better than first person player footage. ANother ten years or so...

Never played NG2, but DMC4 is fair, although weren't there a bunch of areas in it that had free camera movement? Haven't played it in a long while.

All of those came out by 2005.

Zoomers used them as a scapegoat for their lack of balls. “Game too scary? Blame the camera angles!”

>All of those came out by 2005
aka late into the life of the ps2

They are needed though for delivering compelling story.

Fixed camera angles with well framed scenes is so kino

the thing with a wide open environment to freely explore and look around is that it's either oddly empty, or requires details that the player aren't really going to go out of their way to look into. it's stuff that's expect to be there, but looks odd when it's not, yet requires real effort to place. the genius of the fixed camera angle is that it's possible for no estate to be wasted, and not just important elements like key items are highlit, every art detail that requires effort to produce can be maximized with fixed camera angles.
thinking on it i do agree that static camera angles will probably always require more effort, but a lot of it comes down to it just being more niche and requiring the whole game to be designed around it, it's an odd framework that's a lot more rigid and less 'developed' than your classic fully 3D game, with less people being experienced with it, fewer guidelines on how it should be done, and certainly a lot easier to screw up.

Yes it was.

Games like Eternal Darkness still had fixed camera and people still played them because there were still lots of developers who were good at making those kinds of games and there were still lots of consumers who found them highly immersive. Over time, that changed for obvious reasons.

Eternal Darkness was a fluke, lmao, Silicon Knights went on to be the Too Human guys.

Eternal Darkness started development as an n64 game, even if the tech was there it was probably too late to change it.

>the same console that ran Metroid Prime couldn't handle Eternal Darkness without fixed camera angles
retard

>It would be kind of nice to see what can be achievable with a fixed camera game with static backgrounds now though. Considering how good REmake looked in 2002, we could probably get an actual photorealistic looking game with cutscene quality models being used throughout.
Prerendered backgrounds only work with extremely limited, closed-in environments that have tight camera clamps that stop the camera from looking at the background in the wrong direction. Basically no popular contemporary game genre can use those sorts of game environments or cameras without severely compromising the gameplay, other than maybe those mansion based walking sims that were mildly popular a few years ago.

DMC1 - 3's cameras only work because they take place in very, very small play environments where a fixed camera can sit in a corner and see all the action by panning a little bit. This was acceptable at the time, because the technology stopped you from making large environments and the vast majority of games were set in a series of hallways. However, it's extremely limiting for contemporary games that don't have meaningful limits on render distance or map dimensions.
Case in point, it would be completely impossible to make a game like Seriko with fixed cameras without removing the large enivonmental areas and significantly reducing the speed and functionality of the grappling hook, since these things will break a fixed camera.

Attached: not possible with a fixed camera.jpg (1920x1080, 230.63K)

They made Blood Omen as well. That's at least two flukes out of 4.

>aka late into the life of the ps2
That's not the point of this discussion. The whole thing is about why fixed camera died out. Originally in the 90s it was due to performance limitations and being able to squeeze out good looking visuals with pre-rendered backgrounds instead of crappy looking early 3D backgrounds. The fact that it continued even into the mid 00s was because it was a holdover from the previous era that worked and devs were finally finding their feet with regards to making immersive games without needing fixed angles due to improvements in both technology and skill. You can even see this with the number of fixed games released in the 90s vs the 00s. Sure you had some odd holdovers into the mid and later 00s like FF and DMC, but those are outliers considering in the 90s you had dozens of fixed angle games.

>furthermore every single shot has to tested to ensure that they pose no issue
Implying this is somehow more difficult than bug testing a camera which is freely movable in 3D space across the entire game world, providing immeasurable numbers of angles, combined with all the collision detection that goes with it

I bet you’re one of those “the original RE3 was an action game!!” retards.

>although weren't there a bunch of areas in it that had free camera movement
Even DMC1 had areas with free camera movement (the arena after you beat up a bird comes to mind).

REmake's and Onimusha's backgrounds look far better than anything else in the generation. Stop talking.

They might come back for VR, third person games work much more easily with a fixed camera there.

funny you post pic related when it lacks a quarter of the atmosphere kuon had

they fucking suck. ive been replaying ico and i wish it didnt have a gay ass fixed camera

Fixed camera angles are very shitty with a mouse and keyboard.

>funny you post pic related when it lacks a quarter of the atmosphere kuon had
>old good new bad
Delusional

Because originally they were using it due to the limitations of hardware.

Once they were no longer stuck with the limitations they went free camera.

And a lot of people these days dont understand camera angles well enough to do what they did back then when the brought in people that understood camera work to help them.

By then fixed-camera had become associated with horror games and that's mostly what used them through the 6th gen.

It was just a tradition at that point.
You could probably blame RE4 for destroying it.

It really was a fluke. You know the director for Blood Omens, Dennis Dyack, is currently developing a "spiritual successor" to it?
It's a free to play co-op only game.
They had no idea what they were doing.

Look ma, another retard!

>every art detail that requires effort to produce can be maximized with fixed camera angles
I repeat there's already a solution for free camera control systems via literal highlights like lighting: dim the environment and have a lightsource point at the piece the player needs to perceive
>requiring the whole game to be designed around it
precisely. unlike with a freeform camera, a static camera requires extra work for every single area added. furthermore these areas have to be made with a rigid camera system in mind meaning that you have a lot less freedom in level design

If he's wrong, why isn't it still used?

Sounds cool.

Onimusha's backgrounds don't even look as good as Ninja Gaiden's and that had nothing to do with all the other full 3D games that had fixed cameras.

Resident Evil has been an action series since Resident Evil 2. I'm sorry it took you so long to find out user. If you were that one retard who somehow ran out of ammo, it's OK, your secret is safe with us.

>sekiro
>lacks atmosphere
Nigga you just went full retard

Wonderful 101 uses them.

Because most people can’t handle horror movies/games so they need to make them as accessible as possible. Hence the reason modern horror movies are garbage as well.

You can't blame any one game for the change because it was bound to happen.

a free camera has its own logic, meaning that you only have to test it for itself to know that it will work in any situation
a static camera has logic per area/room meaning that you have to test it within each area separately

>Resident Evil has been an action series since Resident Evil. I'm sorry it took you so long to find out user. If you were that one retard who somehow ran out of ammo, it's OK, your secret is safe with us.
Absolute brainlet.

That's the first pic you can find under "sekiro view". Either way, like DMC and RE, kuon is a game set in a series of hallways and small rooms, which allows the fixed camera to work.

>atmosphere
Atmosphere is irrelevant if you have to make major sacrifices to gameplay and level design to achieve it, unless you're making a cinematic non-game anyway. Sekiro and the souls games sell based on gameplay not MUH SPOOK or GUD GRAFFIX, so fixed cameras aren't real viable.

RE4 pretty much killed horror games as a whole.

It will return one day. You can be assured.

>three retards that never played kuon
LOL

But your a zoomer?

what game 4th from bottom

because modern game industry is not about quality but making quick cash through safe, by the numbers games

It was already endangered, and the horror genre was all that was propping it up in the '00s.
RE4 wasn't the sole cause, but it was a significant factor.

CLAIRE A
Handgun: 345
Grenade: 48
Acid: 24
Flame: 42
Bow: 144
Green Herb: 25
Red Herb: 4
Fist Aid Spray: 7

CLAIRE B
Handgun: 345
Grenade: 42
Acid: 42
Flame: 54
Bow: 144
Green Herb: 29
Red Herb: 4
Fist Aid Spray: 6

LEON A
Handgun: 405
Shotgun: 121
Magnum: 32
Green Herb: 26
Red Herb: 4
Fist Aid Spray: 6

LEON B
Handgun: 345
Shotgun: 105
Magnum: 56
Green Herb: 25
Red Herb: 4
Fist Aid Spray: 6

RE2 gives you enough ammo and resources to kill everything in the game multiple times.

Resident Evil 7

>Not shit like Silent hill after 4 and the rise of first person "run and hide" horror games like Amnesia the skyrocketed in popularity

i'm not just referring to what you need to highlight, more important is what you don't. with a free camera, the player expects some certain level of detail and effort placed into every single model or area of the level they can potential access. every rock, switch, door, or random doodad requires a certain minimum level of effort, and the player also expects those items to be there, yet there's no way any player is ever going to waste their time going up close to every last item, but they'll definitely notice if it looks like shit. there's basically a lot of wasted art that players will never see, but they'll notice if the artists' slacked.
now with a fixed camera, the designer gets to choose everything the player will see, and to what extent. if the trees in the distance aren't meant to be seen up close, they'll never be seen up close. if the vending machine is going to be at a fair distance, the art team doesn't need to worry about texturing every last bag of chips inside it. and the player will never even notice this corner cutting, making the creation of art far more efficient.

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Those look pretty, but have zero atmosphere. It's purely the result of plebs whining about games not being easy enough for them. The environments in FFVII and Resident Evil 2 OG hold up because of the excellent artistic direction.

Here's another example; Fatal Frame. The Wii remake of 2, and 4 have shit atmosphere because of the over the shoulder cameras. The OG game for Xbox completely demolishes the Wii versions. I would MUCH rather play horror games with fixed cameras, or RPGs depending on the art direction. There was nothing wrong with the OG controls either.

>one retard that never played through sekiro
LOL

>RE1 gives you enough ammo and resources to kill everything in the game multiple times.

Throw me some numbers.

LOL

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and yet again, proper use of lighting fixes the very issue you mention.
games like thief3, doom3, dead space and so on show proper usage of lighting to highlight things the player needs to see and hide low quality assets.
fucks sake that's the very reason why Dark Souls 2 looks like garbage. they had to cut out the lighting engine because consoles nowadays are underpowered pieces of garbage

Hunt: Showdown and Kingdom Come: Deliverance definitely have atmosphere. You can also make Resident Evil 7 better by turning off the HUD.

This, that's why i relaly liked that Lors of Shadow had a fixed camera angle, combat in that game was way more enjoyable than any modern action game with the camera stuck inside a wall or that get glued to the character ass because of walls.

Modern game design has regressed. It's more about "can we" than "should we?"

>and yet again, proper use of lighting fixes the very issue you mention.
not him but you totally miss the good he is making

False, because the whole gameplay must be developed around fixed camera instead of free camera, and it require more effort to make a game with fixed angles

>now with a fixed camera, the designer gets to choose everything the player will see, and to what extent. if the trees in the distance aren't meant to be seen up close, they'll never be seen up close. if the vending machine is going to be at a fair distance, the art team doesn't need to worry about texturing every last bag of chips inside it. and the player will never even notice this corner cutting, making the creation of art far more efficient.
That only makes sense in the context of a game where models are only ever going to be placed in uniform positions in every room or used once only. From a workflow perspective it would significantly more efficient to just have a consistent level of detail on all foreground props so that you can use them at different angles and distances.

I shouldn't have been so dismissive, because yeah they do look good. It depends on the game. I just hate that horror games specifically don't have have fixed cameras anymore.

RE7 IS AMAZING when you uninstall it and pretend that disaster never existed.

im a huge pussy for horror but eternal darkness is so good.

>he Wii remake of 2, and 4 have shit atmosphere
nah, the real reason is that Fatal Frame 2 is garbage that isn't scary at all. FF1&3 shit all over that overrated trash

because they fucking suck and free camera movement is better

A first person perspective is still preferable to the over the should cancer the series has become.

Good riddance.

Jill Normal:
>195 handgun rounds (+15 loaded handgun from start)
>90 shotguns shells (+6 loaded shotgun / +10 loaded assault shogun)
>24 grenade shells
>12 incendiary shells
>12 acid shells
>18 magnum rounds (+6 loaded magnum revolver)
>6 .44 magnum rounds (Barry's 44 magnum)
>1 self-defense gun (loaded with only 1 round)

Ehhhh. Probably not, if you're counting the repopulated Mansion and not getting really lucky with headshots. Handgun is a root 5% chance, I suppose shotgun/magnum gets up to 75% chance with range/aiming.
But there's no way you're not going to have to run around some things.

And then fucking halve the resources on Hard because RE1 is a cunt like that.

>moving the goalpost