I really loved this!
silkmist
Recent community posts
Yes... not having control of the camera wouldn't be too bad if it would just stay behind my character. Instead, it just vaguely trails along and does what it wants. I turn and the camera doesn't move. I can't see what I'm doing or where I'm going. My character runs into a wall that I cannot see properly. I get a glimpse of something interesting, but can't figure out how to actually look at it. (Look at 4:16 in the video above... the character goes up to look at something, and comments on it, but the player doesn't get to see it, because the camera is just hanging back, like an uninterested babysitter who needs to keep the character in sight but doesn't care what they actually do.) The controls are relative to the camera, not my character, so the key I have to press to make them go forward varies. I go forward and the camera shifts. My character turns and runs into a wall again.
I get a nagging feeling that the "player character" is almost secondary. Like I'm in the first person POV for a second, invisible character, who is controlling the "player character" via that thing in the back of their head, and silently following behind them. It's an uneasy feeling.
I persevere, thinking that maybe the camera is just wonky because I'm indoors and it's having trouble finding an angle where it doesn't bump into a wall. I make it outside. The camera is still doing its own thing. I guess it is tired and doesn't feel like moving from one spot.
A beautiful landscape!
Can you see the player character in it?
No, because the camera stayed stationary while the character ran off into the middle distance and jumped behind a rock.
A third person camera that tries to just stick right behind the character and turns when they turn (or a little slower) is fine. A first person camera that you move with the mouse so you can look at anything you want is fine. With either of those, I can see what I'm doing, look at things I want to look at, and quickly feel like the character is "me".
This... is not fine.
The game's beautiful, and it seems like it would be really interesting, but I don't feel like I'm exploring. I feel like I'm stumbling around half-blindly, fighting the camera. "Not being able to look around freely" is a pretty serious issue for a game where it seems like the appeal is exploring and looking at things.
I'm also having a problem with the mouse sensitivity. I move the mouse a tiny amount and everything goes zooming by. Even if I move the mouse what seems to be the smallest amount possible, the stuff on the screen moves so much that it's impossible to line up the cursor with the letters I'm trying to pick up (i.e. the tutorial stuff).
I was running the Windows version, and I'm using Windows 7 Professional. I have the pointer speed (in my computer settings) set to the 6th out of 11 notches. Setting the pointer speed to the slowest setting and restarting the game seemed to make it much worse, and setting it to the fastest setting and restarting seemed to make it a little better--I could, with extreme care, manage to line the cursor up with a letter and pick it up, but fine control was still impossible.