It is entirely possible that I am just missing something really obvious, but 3rd person games such as Lucky's Tale and The Edge of Nowhere seem to have problems with trying to move backwards through the levels. When trying to backtrack I can turn my head around and see what is there (ensuring I won't fall off a ledge), but the camera angles and the controls feel really awkward when trying to move the character. Is this a limitation of the game designs on these two games due to a focus on forward momentum, or, am I being incompetent, or, is it just a reasonable factor of such games for us to get used to?
I experienced similar issues. Fortunately those games don't require going backwards often.
I think it's a side effect of having very limited camera movement. Users tend to get sick when their view is not grounded or experience unnatural movement. In third person games the grounding is supposed to be your character and moving the camera to the other side of your character would be unnatural and jarring to the user.
I think the camera movement choices in those games were made to prioritize comfort.
Trying to maximise comfort seems wise, frustrating though when it actually breaks the immersion when trying to back track even for a moment and struggling to do so. It would be great to have a way to do a 180 flip of the camera whilst retaining the current restrictions - a reverse recenter camera if you will. The fact that the right stick seems to sit redundant at the moment means that there are input controls available for such a task
The problem is, the environments in those games (especially Lucky's Tale) were designed to leave a lot of room for the player's head on one side of the character and not on the other. Lots of tiered platforms. The level design would be limited significantly if they needed to leave open space on both sides.
Agreed. I guess the issue in Lucky's tale was only at one point where I had to turn around and jump off a ledge to reach a prize Limited times on Edge of Nowhere. Just a minor annoyance at the moment but hoping in the future it is resolved for newer games
Trying to maximise comfort seems wise, frustrating though when it actually breaks the immersion when trying to back track even for a moment and struggling to do so.
It would be great to have a way to do a 180 flip of the camera whilst retaining the current restrictions - a reverse recenter camera if you will. The fact that the right stick seems to sit redundant at the moment means that there are input controls available for such a task
I think rotating the camera with the second stick or having a button to flip the camera could cause camera issues. That kind of movement is unnatural and I think has the potential to cause issues. I think the best solution is to design levels in such a way that going backwards isn't really a thing.
You can already see a good example of this in Lucky's Tale. Whenever you go off the main path of a level there's always a teleporter pad to bring you back to the main path. It never has you backtrack.
