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Van Buren. Yes it looked very promising, but I know this will upset some old school types, but I am glad they Bethesda-ified it. Isometric gameplay cannot hold a candle to first person real-time. It's a far stronger & deeper core concept. And it doesn't have to mean it suddenly cannot have deep C&C, hardcore gameplay, survival elements and so on either.
Yes, let's take a turn-based rpg that lets you have multiple members in your party, with a good story and make it an FPS with rpg elements and awful combat system. Hey, let's also ignore the lore of the world and do our own cool shit. Let us also have C&C that is so insignificant that no one really gives a damn. Or, let's take fallout and turn it into an Elders Scrolls game.
Yes, let's take a turn-based rpg that lets you have multiple members in your party, with a good story and make it an FPS with rpg elements and awful combat system. Hey, let's also ignore the lore of the world and do our own cool shit. Let us also have C&C that is so insignificant that no one really gives a damn. Or, let's take fallout and turn it into an Elders Scrolls game.
It's kind of funny, but first person games, on average, are probably the least interactive, because of the presentation requirements. An isometric game, for instance, can easily have environmental destruction, because nobody's going to zoom in on a destroyed wall and wonder whether it looks good. This is why so few FPS have destructible environments beyond what is explicitly scripted.
The reason we don't get much (non-cosmetic) environmental interactivity in 3D FPP is the same reason we don't get levitation in newer TES - game devs, including level designers, are generally derpy movie director wannabes and player being given any freedom throws massive wrench into the cogs of their "creative" process.
Iso is nowadays used pretty much exclusively by indies more interested in gameplay than epic scripting (and lacking resources to do much epic scripting) and often for genres not relying on single protagonist following scripted narrative like strategies and tactical games that don't have much room for armchair scriptwriters getting aneurysm because player has knocked over a wall and ruined they beyootifool setpiece with his damned agency (not to mention breaking several rigidly scripted questlines in the process just because some asstard designer/scriptmonkey couldn't have kept his hands off them unless absolutely necessary).
Really, you could have inferred as much from playing through original Red Faction once and comparing this experience with MP and that glasshouse playpen level.
Actually, sane people don't talk about immersion in regards to video games because it's nothing more than a marketing buzzword. The one (Oxford English) dictionary definition of "immersion", other than to immerse an object into liquid, is simply "Deep mental involvement in something".
Actually, any sane parson realizes that when it comes to fiction, immersion basically equates with suspension of disbelief.
Of course, any remotely sane person also realizes that perspective is secondary to about everything else when it comes to immersion - for example, there is no way you could possibly consider Oblivion more immersive than, say PS:T, if about every minute of it you endure you're forced to plant your face in your hands thinking "god, what a horribly retarded *game* it is".
In first person you can see it up close, detailed. In first person you can see the fucking ceiling, or search under a bed with detail. You can see the smallest of objects such as a hidden switch behind a vase that opens up a secret area. It's a far deeper form of interaction than isometric or third person.
Yes, OTOH in first person you're unable to coordinate three way pincer attack while party's sneak takes out enemy support dudes from behind and long range dudes pelt critical targets from afar with arrows/spell/sniper rounds/rocket propelled grenades (depending on setting).
Different perspectives for different purposes and different kinds of gameplay.
I know you're talking about those genres & their style of gameplay, but when I'm flying around with jetpacks blowing shit up and taking on the bad guy in epic superhero battles, you'll just be clicking on shit, mang
But not hands-on coordination of strategy and tactics.
I know you're talking about those genres & their style of gameplay, but when I'm flying around with jetpacks blowing shit up and taking on the bad guy in epic superhero battles, you'll just be clicking on shit, mang
When I'll be sitting on my skull throne commanding minions to get shit done, you'll still be doing gruntwork as someone else's henchman.
The most amusing part of this exchange is that I actually prefer FPP with heavy emphasis on exploration, It's just that I do know what it can't do terribly well.
You can have Isometric, real-time strategy or whatever within the FPP game world, it can be a mini-game within a massive game world or whatever. Likewise you can have isometric RPG that cuts to FP, but FP has the greatest potential.
You can also have an overhead game cut to FPP when needed, like DK.
The bottom line is that the moment you've admitted the possibility of needing some sort of overhead interface (even emulated inside a first person game), you've essentially admitted defeat by admitting that FPP isn't unconditionally superior.
Then there is the question of resources - sometimes implementing full FPP movement, detailed environments and so on may be superfluous to what you're trying to do and eat time and effort you could have used to make the parts that do matter in your design much better.
And then there is the part where commanding the forces realistically may actually be less fun because, let's face it, moving those little flags and figures on the map table isn't nearly as cool as watching actual exploshuns and shit from above.
As for your VTOL example - what if the game is set in pre-industrial historical setting?
You don the Oculus Rift and look through the eyes of a CO in a command centre watching the battle unfold on a 2d screen where his units are represented by abstract symbols.