What are 1st person and 3rd person games?

You know how when you play some video games, it’s like you’re looking through the character’s eyes? That’s called a first-person perspective. You only see the character’s hands and whatever is in front of them. Lots of shooters use this view, like Call of Duty or Halo. When you’re playing, it feels almost like you’re right there holding the gun.

Then there are games where the camera is pulled back and you can see your whole character from behind or above. That’s the third-person perspective. Super popular games like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, and Gears of War all use this view. It lets you see more of the world around your character.

The perspective totally changes how a game looks and feels when you play it. It’s one of the first big choices developers make when they’re designing a new game.

1st person: Pros and cons

1st person games are super immersive. When you can’t see your character, it’s easier to imagine that you ARE the character. Everything feels more immediate and personal.

It’s also a natural fit for shooter games. Aiming a gun feels intuitive in 1st person. That’s why so many FPS (first-person shooter) games have you looking down the barrel of a gun or crossbow.

But 1st person has downsides too:

• It’s easy to get motion sickness, especially if the FOV (field of view) is narrow
• You have no peripheral vision like you would in real life
• You can’t see your character, so it’s harder to connect with them emotionally
• Not great for melee combat since you can’t judge distances well

So 1st person is immersive but can feel claustrophobic and clumsy at times.

3rd person: Pros and cons

The big sell for 3rd person is you get to see your character. That makes them feel more like a real person you can connect with. Customizing your appearance is a big deal in 3rd person games for that reason.

3rd person also gives you way better situational awareness. You’ve got a wider field of view to spot enemies and obstacles. Melee combat and platforming work great in this view since depth perception isn’t an issue.

But 3rd person sacrifices some immersion to achieve this. You’re always aware that you’re controlling an avatar, not inhabiting a world yourself. In horror games, for instance, 1st person is scarier because 3rd person gives you some psychological distance.

Some games like The Elder Scrolls let you switch between 1st and 3rd person so you get the best of both worlds. But most force you to pick one or the other.

Camera and controls

How the camera behaves is a huge part of any 3D game. In 1st person, your view is locked to your character’s head. Usually you can look up, down, and side to side. Sometimes you can lean to peek around corners. But the camera never leaves your character’s eyes.

3rd person cameras are way more complicated. Are they close or far away from the character? Can you rotate them all the way around or are they locked to certain angles? Do they automatically avoid walls or zoom through the environment? The camera might float, or maybe it pretends to be a real camera on a boom that gets jostled around.

Gears of War keeps the camera tight and low to the ground. This makes the characters seem big and the world feel oppressive. Grand Theft Auto pulls the camera way back so you get an expansive view. Every 3rd person game feels different based on how it handles the camera.

Then there are the controls. Moving a 1st person character feels simple and direct. You’re basically a camera on legs. But moving in 3rd person is trickier because there’s a separation between your thumb stick and the character on screen. Different games have come up with different solutions:

“Tank controls” like in early Resident Evil games always move your character relative to the camera. Pushing up walks you forward, down walks backwards, left and right rotate. This is clunky but it’s easy to understand.

“Direct control” like in Super Mario 64 moves you relative to your character. You run in whatever direction you push, no matter where the camera is pointing. It feels more intuitive but requires more coordination.

The camera might snap to important angles as you move through the world, like in older Zelda and Tomb Raider games. Or it might be fully controllable with the right thumb stick like in modern 3rd person shooters.

Some games like Assassin’s Creed give you “parkour vision” to make traversal easier. Your character will automatically mantle ledges and avoid obstacles even if your input is imprecise. It looks cool but can feel like you’re not in full control.

Level design

Perspective impacts level design a ton too. 1st person environments tend to be dense and detailed with lots of narrow, zigging corridors. That’s because you’re seeing the world from ground level. Interesting stuff needs to be clustered close to you or you’ll miss it. Climbing, mantling, and jumping usually have to be simplified because judging gaps is hard in 1st person. You’re more likely to see ramps, ladders, and lifts than twitchy precision jumps.

Half-Life 2 is a good example. It has tons of interior environments crammed with physics objects to play with. When you do go outside, buildings tend to be close together so there’s always a wall or a cliff face in your peripheral vision. Wide open spaces are rare and mark big battles or key story moments.

Compare that to Horizon Zero Dawn, a 3rd person game all about exploring sweeping natural environments. The terrain sprawls out for miles in every direction. There are lots of sheer cliffs to climb and deep ravines to explore. Aloy is an agile character who can clamber up anything. The game is all about getting you to high vantage points so you can take in the scenery. That same vista would be tough to navigate (and a lot less impressive) in 1st person.

Uncharted 4 splits the difference with a mix of linear, cinematic corridors and big, wide open arenas. You’ll shimmy along cliff faces and crawl under tree trunks, then pop out into a sunny village square with multiple routes to explore. Having the 3rd person camera go wide on those big reveals makes them pop in a way a 1st person game never could.

Combat

1st and 3rd person games tend to have radically different combat systems. Shooting is the dominant interaction in 1st person games. Moving and aiming is fast and twitchy, rewarding reflexes and precision. Halo is so much about gunplay that it has a dedicated button just for lobbing grenades. That wouldn’t work in the fiddly 3rd person camera.

Cover shooters come into the picture with 3rd person, the most famous being Gears of War. Clicking to snap from pillar to pillar or hugging a waist-high wall to pop out and take shots would be awkward in 1st person. You need that wider perspective to interact strategically with the environment and enemies.

Even if a 3rd person game has robust shooting mechanics like in GTA V or The Division, it’s usually balanced out with melee and up-close interactions. Swords, axes, clubs, or just fists – the 3rd person camera lets characters get big and personal. Everything from the Batman games to Bayonetta use the perspective to make fights look like elaborate choreographed dances.

Stealth comes into play too. 3rd person lets you peek around corners and over low objects to plan your approach. You hide behind stuff to avoid vision cones, like in Assassin’s Creed or Metal Gear Solid. Being able to look at your own character ratchets up tension – am I concealed enough? Did that guard just glimpse me?

All of this is hypothetically possible in 1st person, but it’s a harder sell. Outlast uses 1st person to make stealth feel claustrophobic and clumsy on purpose. Your focus is on running and hiding, not sneaky takedowns. 1st person stealth tends to be about avoiding conflict, while 3rd person stealth is often about choreographing the perfect heist.

Immersion and storytelling

Which perspective is more immersive? That’s hugely subjective. 1st person fans say there’s nothing like inhabiting a character’s body directly. Seeing through their eyes makes for intimate, visceral, emotional storytelling. That’s why so many “walking simulators” like Gone Home and Firewatch use 1st person. They want to make you really feel like you’re in a place having an experience.

When 3rd person games do try for focused storytelling, the camera just does weirder and weirder stuff. Those tight close-ups of Nathan Drake’s shoulder or Alyx’s distended arms in Half-Life Alyx feel clumsy the same way a film camera stuffed inside an actor’s mouth would. It’s like trying to cram a square peg in a round hole.

3rd person games often punt tough emotional moments to non-interactive cutscenes. It’s jarring in a different way to suddenly surrender all control of the camera. Having a character bark exposition into your ear or seeing your silent protagonist stare blankly in a mirror definitely breaks immersion. 1st person rarely has to switch “modes” like this to tell a story. The camera might frame things intentionally, but it never stops being your viewpoint.

But that same emotional distance in 3rd person can be a good thing. A game like Katana Zero that deals with dark themes of trauma and violence would be too oppressive in 1st person. Having that viewpoint separate from the action makes the difference between insightful vs. gratuitous, entertaining vs. horrifying.

Plus, some stories demand spectacle and flash that would just be annoying in 1st person. Bayonetta’s wild, over-the-top violence and sexuality works because it’s so clearly “performed” for an appreciative 3rd person camera. Nathan Drake’s charm comes through in his tiny fidgets and quips that are easy to miss in 1st person. 3rd person character work is often broad like stage acting which isn’t to everyone’s taste.