Wondering how much effort went into this and if it's well-optimized. Sometimes third (or first for that matter) are just thrown in as an option but the game isn't quite designed for it from the ground up. I'd love to get back into Fallout, but only if third is a full and realistic option for the entire game. I recall people saying about 3 and Vegas that "you could" but it wasn't made for it and was a pain in the butt. Thanks!

Yeah, third-person in the last two games was pretty terrible. But in Skyrim I actually thought it was good enough that I'd jump to third-person for a lot of the combat; hopefully they've improved on that, and looked at other third-person shooters like Mass Effect to get a feel for how well it can control. Clunky animations are one thing (and Bethesda's getting better each time with those), but it's the camera control and aiming that really makes or breaks it for me.

Skyrim's third person was alright for melee but ranged and mounted combat was downright atrocious. God forbid you wanted to use a bow on horseback; you'll spend more time watching your arrows fly to the right or left of your reticule because of how [censored] the camera is.

weird

i kill pretty much everything from horseback with a crossbow with very few misses

as long as they dont get super close (close enough to hit you) then the aim is pretty good and easy to use

never had any tough times with it

i played every Bgs title in 3rd person only thing i use first person for is looting things

i guess im doing it wroug

Looting and finding small details is the only drawback to how these games do Third Person.

I personally PREFER first person, but in NV would switch to third for melee because, well...swinging a big Bumper Sword around does no justice in first person.

Third person is also useful in sneaking, since it gives you a broader range of view.

I guess we're both doing it wrong. I've played in 3rd person since Morrowind (except when Oblivion forced me out of it).

I've enjoyed playing in 3rd person in all these games and do not consider it to be "terrible."

who said your doing it wrong?

Oblivion definitely had the worst third person, by far. I swear, it makes me motion sick.

Nobody knows.

I would like to play in 3rd person, but it's just not done well enough for the game, especially combat, so I do 1st person.

I really only use the third person view to look at my character or to simulate peeking around corners, but it would be nice if they improved upon the third person viewpoint. I agree with Motsie about mounted archery in Skyrim, it was less than stellar. It had a steep learning curve and you could tell it was an after thought. Here's hoping in TES 6 they will improve it and keep it in from the start.

I've always played a mix of first and third person, spending most of my time in third. Skyrim was the first game I didn't feel a need to download a camera MOD. I imagine their improvements to combat include a better camera. At least I hope they do.

Why anyone would want to try and experience this type of open-world game in any interface other than the first-person is a travesty IMO.

In 'third-person', you're merely playing a game. In the 'first-person', you're more experiencing an alternate reality firsthand... which is the whole point.

Some people do like to play in third person and some people like to play in first person and some people like to play in both modes from time to time. This option has been a part of Bethesda games for quite some time now.

I prefer first person but maybe I should give 3rd person more of a shot in the older Bethesda games.

I mostly agree with this, which is why I play 90 percent first person and sometimes third to remind myself outside of VATS what I look like etc.

I thought Todd Howard said they made it so you can play with or without vats and third or first person and it will still play smoothly. I may have to find that part of the E3 con and link it

Sniping was extremely difficult. Anything past 50 yards and you had to aim lower than the target to make sure the arrow hit them spot on. I think it has something to do with elevating the PC but the crosshair not accounting for the increased height.

Until Skyrim I considered third person a non-factor gameplay wise, which only use was for vanity cam purposes. I think FO4's third person will be on par with first person this time around, just wishful thinking though...

For me the third person camera is purely to look at my character or run along long stretches of roads I've already walked. For any actual gameplay it's got to be in first person. That said, we could have our cake and eat it. I know GTAV is a huge budget game, and it took a next-gen remake to do it, but it offers stellar first and third person gameplay. If that could be done for Fallout 4 I'd be all for it, as long as it improves the animation issues seen in Skyrim when modding; so many mods only altered third person animations.

I'm not sure it will affect animation modding at all. The problem with animations between perspectives is that first and third use completely different animations; and if you look at any mods that put third-person animations into a first-person perspective, it becomes obvious why Bethesda has to make separate animations for each perspective.

I do hope animations become a bit more flexible, mod-wise. The middleware Bethesda uses for animations is a little esoteric, and good animators are few and far between in the community. Animation replacers and idles are simple enough, but incorporating completely new animations for certain weapon types or in movement is really complicated. As far as I know, anyway.

I haven't done any animation modding myself so I can't comment on the complexities, but I knew there was a reason nobody supported first-person animation. Seriously, the amount of idle and weapon draw animations there are, and yet to have a first person sword on back draw we're still using a replica of the two-handed version?!

With FNIS a lot is possible, but there's still issues. I think you hit the nail on the head with the middleware. More powerful animation tools would be amazing; separate left and right hands for a start, easier to implement, tying first and third person animations together (package them together and the game calls them the same way depending on perspective). Anything to make the animation more fluid and dynamic. Bethesda is criticised (unfairly most of the time) for many things, but the one thing I've always said lets their world building down is poor animations. no matter how pretty that mountain is the NPC's still look like robots.

I roleplay. Therefore, I am not my characters. I have no wish to see the world through the eyes of my characters. When I roleplay, my characters and I are an adventuring party of two, traveling the game world together on different sides of the screen.

Roleplaying has largely been a third-person endeavor until relatively recently. Back in the pen-and-paper days we viewed paper and figurines from a third-person viewpoint, looking down on the table from above. When roleplaying came to computers it was mostly in the form of third person isometric games.

Some of the best computer roleplaying games ever made, in the opinion of many people - Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 and 2, Planesacpe: Eternity, to name just a few - were third person games. Fallout 1 and 2 were third person games. And two of the best recent roleplaying games, Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin, are third person games.

There is a rich tradition of third person roleplaying. It stretches all the way back to Gary Gygax in the late sixties and it continues to this day.

If you watch the e3 montage sequence at the end.. you'll see that aiming while in 3rd person really zooms in the perspective. It's during the scene where he's throwing grenades and then starts shooting. Basically it puts your player almost out of frame and focuses on the reticle. It would seem that they've done some major improvements for 3rd person aiming.

The thing that's always bothered me about 1st person perspective is where the weapon is being held. In first person it's always up near your head, in your sight line, when running about. When you switch to 3rd you're holding the weapon normally. Having that switch perspective always makes me feel like I'm looking out of my chest in 1st person games. In TES/Fallout games I do a major amount of switching between 1st and 3rd person. It would be interesting if there was a stat that showed how much time you spent in both modes.

Never really used third person that much saving the occasional panorama shot. I've always felt first person was a superior experience regardless of genre. Even the GTA's, Red Deads, and Last of Us caliber games have always been brought down a few notches in my book solely for being almost exclusively third person. Both options are preferable to match a certain persons gaming preference but sadly making it triple AAA for both is both resource and cost intensive.

I would expect F4 to be on par with Skyrim. Maybe slightly better. Bethesda's bounds in this field are gradual over time. Rightly so due to the expansiveness of their games.

Another wrongdoer here. I actually prefer BGS third person to Witcher's myself. I truly love the ability to switch back and forth whenever I want also.

Considering they have made a point in interview after interview that one of the major changes was the improvement of FPS combat, I wouldn't hold my breath that 3rd person got a lot of attention in FO4. It's quite obvious they want to capture a larger segment of the shooter crowd with this game. Now that does not mean the 3rd person might not have gotten improvements, but they certainly haven't been talking about it if it has gotten better.