First person view

Spartan Pride

After the success of Marathon, Bungie took some time off to explore other genres. But when they came back to the first-person shooter at the bequest of Microsoft, they would change the game forever. Halo: Combat Evolved was first revealed in 1999 and shipped as a launch title for the Xbox. Set in the 26th century, Master Chief battled a variety of aliens with tight controls and fun vehicles.

Halo added a number of innovations that made FPS play more doable on consoles. The most notable was probably the regenerating shield, which let players take damage and then heal up by just staying out of the action for a little bit. That made up for the decreased accuracy that playing with a controller gave. Local split-screen and LAN multiplayer was joined by Xbox Live play for the sequels.

Bungie developed two more Halo sequels before stepping away as well as a prequel and an expansion for Halo 3, and Microsoft gave the franchise to 343 Industries.

Weird Stuff

The golden age of first-person shooters saw some pretty unusual takes on the genre, as everybody and their mother wanted to cash in. Forbes Corporate Warrior is, on the package, a guide to modern business. In practice, it’s one of the worst FPS games of all time, letting gamers wield “Ad Blasters” and “Marketing Missiles” to take down rival corporations

In 1996, the General Mills corporation hired developers Digital Café to create a free game to promote their cereal Chex. The result was Chex Quest, a beloved blaster built in the Doom engine that lets you blast enemies with milk and cereal. Amazingly, the game received a pair of sequels in 1997 and 2008.

Terror In Christmas Town, made with the Pie in the Sky engine, is a creepy, primitive holiday-themed game that tasks you with defeating an evil polar bear who has abducted Santa Claus.

The doomed 3DO system saw the release of Cyberdillo in 1996, an ostensibly humorous shooter casting the protagonist as a roadkill armadillo enhanced with mechanical parts and set on a mission of vengeance. The game’s jokes included a “bone flute” weapon that made you go blind if you played it.

2000’s unusual Catchumen was developed by N’Lightning Software and stands as one of the most expensive Christian video games ever made, with a development cost of nearly a million dollars. The FPS put you in the shoes of a Roman student who has to venture into a series of catacombs to rescue friends and smite Satan. When you “kill” human enemies in the game, they fall to their knees in prayer.

HD Universe

In Grand Theft Auto IV, the player’s camera phone can be used to look around in a first-person view. Like previous iterations in the series, sniper rifles require the player to aim down the scope in first-person, however they can be blind-fired from cover. It also returns as an available view for vehicles.

First-person view is available in Grand Theft Auto Online for PS3 and Xbox 360. However, this feature requires being a passenger of a vehicle. Vehicles such as the Police Riot and the Mule allow first person view when pressing B on Xbox 360 or O on PS3.

Idling in Grand Theft Auto V can cause game to switch to first-person view. The player will be able to randomly look around and also focus view on pedestrians, cars and sometimes random actions, like police chases, reminiscent of GTA San Andreas’ idle camera.

Enhanced Version

Aiming Down Sights in GTA V.

First-person view has been expanded upon in the enhanced version of Grand Theft Auto V. The game can now be played entirely from first-person, with the addition of depth of field, motion blur, and an Aim Down Sights (ADS) system when firing weapons. Vehicles can be driven from a cockpit perspective with dynamic gauges and enhanced interior textures. Sunglasses and helmets with visors provide a polarizing filtered view. In first-person view, the lens flare effect seen in the game is removed. It can be best noticed when looking at the sun in both first and third-person views.

First, Second, and Third Person in Writing

In writing, the writer may choose to write from different points of view. The point of view he or she chooses is evident through his or her use of pronouns.

Writing in first person: Literature in the first person point of view is written from the speaker’s perspective. This point of view uses first person pronouns to identify the speaker/narrator. First person point of view is generally limited in that the audience only experiences what the speaker/narrator himself experiences.

Writing in third person: Literature in third person point of view is written from an “outside” perspective. This point of view uses third person pronouns to identify characters. In third person writing, the narrator is not a character in the text. Because of this, he can usually “see” what happens to all of the characters.

Writing in second person: In non-fiction writing, a speaker will often switch between pronouns. Writers do this only for effect. For example, if a speaker wants to be clear and “get through” to the audience, he might say “you” (second person) throughout the text even if the text is mostly in third person. Again, this is strictly for rhetorical effect. Experienced writers use this as a literary tool.

Console Party

First-person shooters became one of the leading reasons to game on a PC. Sure, the Super Nintendo saw a decent port of Doom, but without networking features the experience was pretty lacking. That didn’t stop some people from trying it, and a very unlikely developer managed to make a console FPS that cemented itself in the pantheon.

Early takes on the concept included 1994’s Battle Frenzy for the Genesis, Metal Head for the Sega 32X and Super 3D Noah’s Ark for the Super Nintendo – that one a Wolfenstein reskin with a Biblical theme that managed to be the only unlicensed SNES game ever released.

Rare was a British company primarily known for their Nintendo titles, including the criminally difficult Battletoads. Over three console generations, they’d proven their value to the big N and were selected with handling a game based on the James Bond license for the Nintendo 64. That game would be Goldeneye, and it would prove that a console-exclusive FPS could play with the big boys.

Goldeneye got over the limitations of the N64 (no online play, for one) with clever technical hacks. Although the game wasn’t terribly impressive graphically, even by the standards of the day, it was smooth as butter and offered a wide selection of maps and weapons.

They followed it up with Perfect Dark, which was an improvement in many ways with better graphics, tighter enemy AI and more multiplayer options. Unfortunately, the N64 simply wasn’t able to handle everything the game wanted to do and framerates suffered – a common problem on the underpowered consoles of the day.

Publisher Acclaim, notable for their investment in licensed titles, dipped a toe in the genre with Turok for the Nintendo 64. It became one of the most successful third-party games on the system, with developer Iguana Software pushing the machine to its limits, as well as challenging Nintendo’s reputation for family-friendly games.

Other first-person shooters on early home systems included the odd Jumping Flash, a Japanese game starring a robot rabbit who could perform massive vertical hops, Kileak: The DNA Initiative and an absolutely dismal South Park game for the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64.

See Through Your Eyes

Computer graphics was unexplored country in the 1970s. Once systems moved from punchcards to pixels on a screen, programmers started figuring out ways to make those pixels do interesting things.

Historians agree that the first real attempt at a first-person shooter came in 1973 with Maze War for the Imlac PDS-1 computers installed at the NASA Ames Research Center. Steve Colley was the first credited developer, and in the game multiple users could walk through a 3-D maze one “tile” at a time, shooting other players (represented as eyeballs) on sight. It was clunky, but nothing like it had ever been tried.

1974 saw Spasim, short for “Space Simulator,” on networked PLATO computers. This put you in control of a spaceship, not a human, but it rendered a 3D world in wireframe. Lest you think people were having fun with these early games, it’s important to note that the hardware of the time was so primitive that the screens would refresh once a second—a truly abysmal framerate. Later iterations of the game would become Panther, a tank simulation that would make the jump to the arcades a few years later.

Man On Man

Competitive multiplayer was a big part of first-person gaming from the very beginning, but the rise of the national Internet infrastructure made finding people to play with incredibly easy in the late 1990s, especially on college campuses wired with lightning-fast T1 lines.

Epic dropped Unreal Tournament in 1999, one of the first purely multiplayer-focused FPS titles. The skimpy singleplayer was an excuse to train players against bots, but the meat was the online and LAN play. The game was massively successful and inspired others to work on similar projects.

iD’s take was Quake III Arena, released later the same year. Eschewing tight corridors for open arenas optimized for multiplayer, it was a beautifully tuned game with a high skill ceiling and featured an emphasis on fast movement.

In a similar vein was Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes, which billed itself as the “world’s fastest shooter.” The game put players in control of armed mechs in huge outdoor environments, and players discovered a movement glitch called “skiing” that enabled them to not lose momentum by timing jumps while descending a hill. Doing that let you jet across the map insanely fast.

The Waiting Game

In the early days, companies pumped out games fast and furious. The pause between Wolfenstein 3D and Doom wasn’t even a year. But as designers got more ambitious and technology got more complex, FPS titles took longer and longer to make. The industry entered a period of long delays and release dates being postponed over and over.

John Romero tried to hop on the narrative wagon with 2000’s much-hyped, much-delayed Daikatana. Originally intended to be completed from start to finish in seven months and released for Christmas 1997, the project already looked dated and had to switch to the Quake II engine midway through development, a task that took over a year in itself. Throw in an E3 demo that ran at 12 frames per second and you got a game that wasn’t worth the wait.

3D Realms intended Prey to be at the cutting edge of technology when they started development in 1995, serving as the linchpin for the company’s own proprietary engine. Unfortunately, they couldn’t finish the job and the game was shelved in 2000, only to be brought out of hibernation and eventually released to solid sales. The 2017 franchise reboot is pretty much unrelated but still very solid.

The king of first-person vaporware for many years was Duke Nukem Forever, which was announced in April of 1997 and finally released in 2011 – a development period of 14 years. During that time, the game shifted engines multiple times and when it came out was pretty harshly savaged by critics, putting the final nail in the franchise.

The only title that FPS gamers have been waiting longer for is Valve’s Half-Life 3, which may never happen in our lifetimes. Valve is notoriously closed-mouthed about internal development projects, and the series hasn’t seen a new game since Episode 2 in 2007.

3D Universe

With the advent of improved 3D graphics and detailing, first-person view was introduced in GTA III.

First-person view as seen through the crosshairs of a Sniper Rifle in GTA III.

in two forms, the ability to look around in first person view, and the ability to aim a weapon. This was carried over to Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and later Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (the latter with the exception of free look). The free look ability is triggered on consoles by moving the right analog stick of the controller while unarmed. In the PC versions, the feature is available if the control scheme is set to ‘Classic’, and by default using the Numpad 5, 6, 7, and 8 keys. First-person view is also standard as an available viewpoint when the player is inside a vehicle.

First-person aiming with a gun is crucial, particularly for sniper rifles, allowing the player to accurately aim and shoot at targets from afar, while avoiding the use of an auto-aim. Similarly, certain assault rifles (i.e. the M16/M4 and Ruger) and rocket launchers allow the player to aim in first person view as they hold the aiming button or key. Similarly, the camera introduced in GTA Vice City allows the player to take pictures from a first-person viewpoint. First-person view for assault rifles was eliminated in GTA San Andreas in favor of an over-the-shoulder aiming system.

There are multiple mods available for the 3D Universe games that allow the player to play in a fully functional First-Person view.

Children Of Doom

Apogee’s Blake Stone: Aliens of GOld had the misfortune of being released one week before Doom, and it was already outdated by the time it hit shelves. It still saw a sequel, Blake Stone: Planet Strike. Both were competent but unexciting takes on a formula that was already growing stale.

The first big wave of shooters followed Doom‘s release, with iD helpfully licensing their engine to other companies. They weren’t worried about being beaten at their own game – a sequel was already underway, and it didn’t do anything to mess with success. Doom 2 made levels bigger and added new monster types, as well as streamlining the game’s multiplayer functionality over dial-up modems. 1996’s Final Doom was

Raven Software’s Heretic modified the Doom engine to let the player look up and down, as well as adding inventory management but didn’t stand out from its progenitor too much. They would release both a sequel, Shadow Of The Serpent Riders, as well as a spin-off series in Hexen. Hexen let players choose from three character classes and access side routes and hub areas that required more exploration and backtracking.

Apogee continued to spend its Wolfenstein money on more FPS games, including 1994’s Rise of the Triad, which let players choose from five different characters with different attributes. It also helped popularize the concept of “gibs,” chunks of meat blasted loose in gory fashion from dying enemies. The game also boasted destructible objects in the environment and some rudimentary physics.

Rogue’s Strife, from 1996, added some light RPG elements to the formula, allowing players to talk to NPCs in the game world and level up. It wasn’t well-received at the time, but helped influence some notable games soon to come.

The Macintosh platform had fewer developers working on it, but at least one legendary FPS landed there in the early years. Bungie’s Pathways Into Darkness, released in 1993, combined Wolfenstein-esque shooting and maze running with an inventory system and a text log of your actions.

The company’s next game, Marathon introduced the ability to wield two weapons, as well as voice chat over local area networks – a big upgrade for multiplayer gaming. This is the first FPS that I can remember playing – the newspaper in Seattle that I worked for right out of high school would have massive all-night Marathon sessions.

1994’s System Shock was an important step forward, pushing for increased immersion and a more interesting narrative. Players were trapped on a derelict space station with a malevolent artificial intelligence hindering their progress. It would inspire multiple sequels, both directly and in the Bioshock franchise, which took significant inspiration from it.

The Duke Nukem series started out as side-scrolling platformers, but with 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D it took the leap into the third dimension. This was the first FPS that really pushed its main character as a star, with the voice of Jon St. John providing wisecracks for Duke to spout as he annihilated piglike aliens.

Creators 3D Realms also launched the Shadow Warrior series, which iterated on the formula with sexual content, improved level geometry and transparent water. Sequels and reboots followed sporadically through the years.

We could fill an entire article with the B-rate rip-offs and Doom-alikes that quickly flooded the market like Gore Galore, H.U.R.L. and William Shatner’s TekWar. None of them added anything of import to the genre – it would be up to iD to do that.

Team Up

One of the most enduring multiplayer Quake mods is Team Fortress, which was originally released in 1996. The game let players pick one of nine different classes, each of which used their own weaponry and had varying movement speeds, health pools and the like. The focus on cooperation instead of “every man for himself” deathmatch play was immediately popular, and Valve bought the team who made the mod and put them to work on both a conversion for the Half-Life engine, as well as 2007’s Team Fortress 2. That sequel polished every element of the first game and added a cartoony art style that brought it all together into one of the most consistently popular FPS titles of the last decade.

Valve also put together Left 4 Dead, which popularized asymmetric survival-based multiplayer – gamers could either control armed humans fending off the undead or powerful zombies. The game was tuned for cooperative play, with an artificial intelligence “director” that would adjust the pacing to keep things fresh. A sequel followed, and the team went on to create the similar Evolve, which replaced zombies with monsters that gained new abilities over time.

Overwatch is probably the apotheosis of the team-based shooter for the time being, a candy-colored explosion of richly detailed characters with exciting abilities that intersect in all kinds of strategically interesting ways. Developer Blizzard hadn’t done much in the FPS space before this game, but they’ve shown they have what it takes to create a polished, clever take.

Summary: What is the First, Second, and Third Person Perspective?

Define first person: The definition of first person is the grammatical category of forms that designate a speaker referring to himself or herself. First person pronouns are I, we, me, us, etc.

Define second person: The definition of second person is the grammatical category of forms that designates the person being addressed. Second person pronouns are you, your, and yours.

Define third person: The definition of third person is the grammatical category of forms designating someone other than the speaker. The pronouns used are he, she, it, they, them, etc.

If this article helped you understand the differences between the three main English points of view, you might find our other article on English grammar terms helpful.

You can see our full list of English grammar terms on our grammar dictionary.

Contents

Second-Person Point of View

The second-person point of view belongs to the person (or people) being addressed. This is the “you” perspective. Once again, the biggest indicator of the second person is the use of second-person pronouns: you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves.

You can wait in here and make yourself at home.

You should be proud of yourselves for finishing this enormous project!

Stories and novels written in the second person exist, but they are much rarer than narratives written from a first- or third-person perspective.

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.

Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

Другие виды искусства[править]

Литератураправить

Основная статья: POV-персонаж

Популярный приём вести повествование от лица главного/второстепенного героя. Часто использовался для создания псевдодокументальных произведений, пока искушённый читатель в массе своей не утратил доверия к этому стилю изложения.

• Классические произведения о Шерлоке Холмсе — записи, которые ведутся от лица его помощника, доктора Ватсона

  Романы Рекса Стаута, наследующие традицию Конан Дойла, написаны от лица Арчи Гудвина, помощника детектива Ниро Вульфа.

  . Кстати, несмотря на просвещённый век, приём сработал: множество читателей восприняло мистера Холмса как реального человека.

• Все романы Дика Фрэнсиса.

Кино и телесериалыправить

• «Хардкор» — боевик весь от первого лица! До этого фильма в боевиках были «от первого лица» лишь отдельные сцены.
  • Впрочем, ещё до него вышел малобюджетный фильм «Отель Инферно». Хотя этот фильм является любительским трэшем, который совмещает в себе два жанра — фильм ужасов и боевик — в нём всё действие происходит исключительно от первого лица.
  • «Bunker of the Dead» — боевик и фильм ужасов от первого лица.
• «Леди в озере» (1947) — классика нуара

  Первая треть фильма-нуара «Темная полоса» (Dark Passage) снята от первого лица. Затем вид меняется, но герой Хамфри Богарта будет ходить в бинтах после пластической операции. Полностью его лицо будет видно только на 62 минуте фильма.

  по Раймонду Чандлеру. Целиком снят от первого лица, ГГ видно, только когда он смотрит в зеркало. Очень оригинальный фильм.

• «Карты, деньги, два ствола» — сцена ухода Эдди после проигрыша.
• «Матрица» — выбор пилюли, красная или синяя.
• «Монстро» — весь фильм снят камерой героя по имени Хад.
• «Брат 2» — сцена отстрела охраны бара. Ну, тут-то просто откровенно пародируются компьютерные стрелялки с «видом из глаз».
• «Doom»: ГГ получает чудо-укол и убивает 95 % нечисти на базе.
• «Маньяк» — фильм 2012 года с Элайджей Вудом. ~95 % экранного времени мы видим глазами главного героя.
• «Хэллоуин» (1978) — убийство девушки в начале, взгляд через прорези в маске.
• Первая серия первого сезона «Глухаря» начинается с того, что зритель впервые в жизни видит ОВД «Пятницкий», причем глазами какого-то персонажа (вскоре выясняется, что Коли Тарасова).
• Нередко что-то показывают глазами робота (киборга) с соответствующим восприятием мира:
  • «Терминаторы» (и многочисленные отсылки к ним и пародии на них).
  • Робот-стрелок из «Западный мир»/«Мир Дикого Запада» (англ. Westworld, 1973). Для съемок даже специальную программу для ЭВМ создавали.
  • Робот Читти в некоторых сценах индийского х/ф «Робот».
  • Запись «чёрного ящика» андроида Кальдера из «Дознания пилота Пиркса».
• Фильмы жанра «мокьюментари

  «Ведьма из Блэр» — съёмка от первого лица с камерой, удерживаемой в руках оператором.

  » можно также считать «от первого лица»

• Часто используется вид от лица персонажа, который просыпается или приходит в сознание после обморока.
• Одна из фишек фильмов и сериала про «Зловещих мертвецов» — летающая камера «в роли» Зла. Как именно выглядит само Зло, нам не показывают, но это явно что-то невообразимо ужасное.

Мультфильмыправить

• Анимационная короткометражка Осаму Тэдзуки «Jumping»/«Прыжок» (1984) — полностью от первого лица.
• «Пластилиновая ворона», новелла-песня «Игра» — почти все показано глазами деда и внука. Сами же дед и внук появляются в кадре на несколько секунд — практически в конце новеллы.

Телевидениеправить

«Городок» «фильм-ужасов» — «Тварь» (скетч 1997 г.). Почти все действо идет от первого лица кого-то. Как бы не монстра, в свете закадрового голоса-предисловия. Кто это — большой спойлер.

Музыкаправить

• Клип The Weeknd — «False Alarm».
• Клип MiyaGi & Эндшпиль — «Кайф».
• Клип MiyaGi & Эндшпиль — «Без обид».
• Скандально известный клип группы «Prodigy» на композицию «Smack My Bitch Up». Такой способ повествования позволяет провернуть неожиданную развязку в конце:

Trivia

• In GTA V, the speedometers contradict vehicle speeds stated in-game. For example, the Adder is stated to go 250 mph in game, but the speedometer only reads up to 200 mph, and the car can only reach around 140 mph. This is most likely a developer oversight.
  • These speeds can only be exceeded by the use of cheats, or Franklin’s special ability; however, once the cheat/ability finishes, the speed will dramatically drop.
  • Even digital speedometers (ones that are prominently used on industrial vehicles and vans such as the Burrito) only read up to 200 mph. Since these vehicles cannot normally reach these speeds even with Franklin’s ability, this can be seen with the use of modding the handling line or with other vehicle mods.
• While playing GTA V in First Person, rotate the camera to the point you can fully see your shadow. Walk a little, then stop. The player’s body will stand in a 60 degree rotation, with the protagonist’s head looking forwards. While stopping the player will move his arms lazy. The «stop walk» animation looks very similar to GTA IV «stop walking» animation, as they both did rotate their body 60 degrees on right and their arms moving freely. Possibly the anims are reused, with some changes.
• In first person mode and standing still, the player model turns slightly to the right while still looking forward, and holds weapons like pistols in one hand while the left arm is frozen down to the character’s side. This is best seen in sunlight and observing the character’s shadow.
• While driving in First Person mode, if another character is in the car with you, when you move the camera so that you look at them, they will actually look back at you, even while they are talking.
• While on foot in First Person, the playable character automatically runs (in a similar fashion to the 3D era games), but while running the player can press shift and the character will start walking normally.
• In GTA V and Online, the character’s legs would seemingly clip through the steering wheel when driving certain vehicles.

What Are Second Person Pronouns?

Second person pronouns always refer to the addressees of the speaker himself.

When you are writing, a good way to think about the second person’s point of view is that it addresses the reader (as I just did in that sentence).

Second person pronouns are only used when the speaker is making a statement to the addressee, i.e., to someone.

Second Person Pronoun List:

Here is a list with examples of the second person words we use in writing and speech.

• you (subject, singular/plural)
• you (object, singular/plural)
• yours (possessive, singular/plural)
• your (possessive, modifying a noun, singular/plural)

Note: In each of these examples, “you” can be an individual (singular) or multiple people (plural).