Why the attachment to overhead/top-down isometric POV?

[Eternal Dragon]

Yes, this is a serious question.

I honestly don't understand why the overhead isometric point of view is endeared to so many RPG fans. Again, this is a serious question and I really do not want to get involved in any sort of flame war -- which is perhaps not avoidable, given that this is a rather touchy subject for a lot of RPG gamers.

I've played and enjoyed the majority of the well-known and more obscure role-playing titles from the 80s and early 90s. I enjoy games on all platforms, and always have. I've never been fond of twitch-based action games, I don't generally like first-person shooters (unless you count the Deus Ex/Thief/System Shock genre), I don't generally like real-time strategy games, I can't stand MMOs, and I'm not a huge fan of games that consist almost entirely of nonstop fighting (action or turn based).

The things that matter to me in an RPG -- character development, story, freedom of exploration, interaction with the world and its inhabitants -- are not dependent upon the game world being viewed from above.

In fact, when I am playing an RPG where I am taking on the role of a single main character, I feel more involved in the game when what I see on the screen is not an omnipotent, god's-eye view of the world, but the world much as my character sees it. I'm not going to use the oft-reviled and over-used term "immersive" here, but I do feel a lot more like I am actually in the game world when I see things in either a first-person perspective or from a position of just behind my character (I admit that I do like to see my character on-screen).

And if you are the sort of RPG gamer who believes that the outcome of your actions in the game should be entirely dependent upon your character's statistics and skills and not the gamer's, then it seems to me that a point of view approximating what your character sees should be preferable to one in which you have this more omniscient perspective (An entirely different argument of mine is that if the player's skill should not be the determinant of the outcome of physical actions such as combat or climbing, then logically parts of the game such as puzzles should be solved entirely based upon your character's Intelligence and not the player's skill in solving puzzles, but you rarely hear RPG fans claming that).

Early CRPGs, in fact, seemed to favour a first-person point of view; the games in the Wizardry, Might & Magic, and Bard's Tale series all used a first-person POV. The Ultima games up to and including Ultima V all used first-person views for their dungeons, but used a top-down perspective for traversing the overworld and towns. I think that this was due more to technological limitations than to an artistic or stylistic choice. Having played Might & Magic I, outdoor environments truely looked like crap in a first-person POV; it was just a dungeon maze with flat trees and mountains painted on the walls. Dungeon Master finally made these first-person environments finally look good!

Later CRPGs, such as the AD&D "Gold Box" titles (Pool of Radiance and its eight remakes... er sequels) used a first-person POV for moving about the world, but broke into an 3/4 overhead view for tactical combat. An overhead view makes sense when you're controlling 6+ characters in combat, such as those AD&D games and Ultima titles pre-U7.

When you are only directly controlling a single character and you either have no companions or they are AI controlled (such as in Fallout or Ultima VII), then I don't really see that an overhead view really adds much. It does give you an "unrealistic" peripheral vision and omniscient view of the battlefield, but that doesn't seem to me to be staying consistent to the theme of being "in character." If I am playing a game where I have to control multiple characters or units, then not being able to see an overview of the battlefield is frustrating and disadvantageous.

A modern RPG is obviously not going to use static 2D sprites and tiles like the games of old. But there is quite a vocal desire for a game with a full 3D engine but with the camera locked at an angle to view the world from overhead. Zooming and rotation are part of this vision, but why restrict the camera in such a way? How is it more in the spirit of role-playing and staying in character to view everything from overhead and have text descriptions float up to tell you what you see when you look at or search something than to just pull the camera directly in front of what you are searching -- you know, to get the same point of view as if you were actually performing the action -- and seeing it right up close?

Ultima IX dropped the ball in more ways than I can count, but it was awesome to be able to just look around the world and up at the sky. Why have a little diagram on the side of the screen showing you the phases of the moons and position of the sun when you can just look up in the sky and see for yourself?

And while an overhead view gives you a wider view of your immediate surroundings than what you would actually see in that position, it is at the expense of how far you can see, unless you can freely scroll the view about, which is a bit of a cheat is it not?

I suppose the overhead perspective approximates the tabletop RPG experience of miniature figures on a battle grid fairly well, but I question how useful or appropriate that metaphor is when this medium allows so many other options. If the DM could render a first-person view of the action for each and every player on the fly, he probably would.

So why is this overhead, isometric point of view so beloved by RPG fans? I've been playing CRPGs as long as anyone else here (or close enough), but I don't have any particular nostalgic feeling for it. In most RPGs, it just feel limiting to me.

(Now, obviously, in a game like Civilization where you are controlling dozens or hundreds of units and cities on a global scale, anything other than a more-or-less overhead view is going to be problematic. But I'm talking specifically about RPGs)

 

[xdarkyrex]

The general view is that it is reminiscent of table top rpgs with miniatures and grids.


Actually, that was the aim of the fallout devs when they made fallout. They specifically stated that it was to be a game that goes back to table top rpg roots.



If you go browse the nma site and find the right pages, you'll see it.

 

[Brother None]

The general view is that it is reminiscent of table top rpgs with miniatures and grids.

That's a part of the view, of a number of people.

It's not mine. Isometric is one possible way to show grid-based turn-based combat. Since grid-based turn-based combat *is* an essential part of Fallout, a view that makes this kind of combat possible is a requisite. That means any top-down and bird's eye view. Isometric is one of them, but not the only one.

Not everyone agrees, but I've never seen a developer of Fallout 1/2 explicitly state fixed isometric view was not just a convenient choice, but a conscious one, like turn-based combat. Until I see a developer state that, I'll keep this opinion.

 

[xdarkyrex]

The general view is that it is reminiscent of table top rpgs with miniatures and grids.

That's a part of the view, of a number of people.

It's not mine. Isometric is one possible way to show grid-based turn-based combat. Since grid-based turn-based combat *is* an essential part of Fallout, a view that makes this kind of combat possible is a requisite. That means any top-down and bird's eye view. Isometric is one of them, but not the only one.

Not everyone agrees, but I've never seen a developer of Fallout 1/2 explicitly state fixed isometric view was not just a convenient choice, but a conscious one, like turn-based combat. Until I see a developer state that, I'll keep this opinion.

I am actually very excited to see a real time fallout.
I never cared that much about the grid based gameplay. Sure, I loved it to death in fallout, but it didn't tickle me as something that made the game what it was (in my own experience, not as an objective statement).

 

[Sorrow]

Three reasons:
-Table
-Miniatures
-Weird attachment to range of motion of my body, including my head and my eyes and a large field of view that stops me to treating FPP/Virtue Raider style games as "immersive"

Basically I strongly prefer the convention based on looks of gaming table with miniatures and I like looking at small, precisely made animated "miniatures" and terrain.

 

[Eternal Dragon]

It's not mine. Isometric is one possible way to show grid-based turn-based combat. Since grid-based turn-based combat *is* an essential part of Fallout, a view that makes this kind of combat possible is a requisite.

I can't agree that grid-based turn-based combat is an essential part of Fallout. "Because that's how the original designers intended it to be" doesn't make it an essential part of the game. It's up to the individual gamer to decide what is an essential part of the game and what isn't.

Not everyone agrees, but I've never seen a developer of Fallout 1/2 explicitly state fixed isometric view was not just a convenient choice, but a conscious one, like turn-based combat. Until I see a developer state that, I'll keep this opinion.

Every interview I've read clearly indicates that the isometric POV and turn-based combat were very deliberate decisions. That doesn't mean that it's the One And Only True Way to play a Fallout game, however.

My question wasn't about what the original designers of Fallout liked and wanted to use, but about what makes this perspective the untouchable sacred cow that it has become.

It doesn't even have to be about Fallout specifically -- I recall with great clarity almost identical discussions when development was resumed on Ultima IX after a year-long hiatus while Ultima Online was being completed. When it was revealed that the fixed-angle overhead camera had been scrapped and the game now played in a third-person "over the shoulder' point of view, the diehard fans were screaming bloody murder.

If you are playing an RPG where you directly control multiple characters in tactical combat, then an overhead view of the battlefield makes sense. But when you're only directly controlling a single character, how does it not serve simply to make the player feel more detached from the character that he or she is playing?

To claim that turn-based combat on a grid is a part of re-creating the pencil & paper RPG experience seems like an extremely shallow concept of what tabletop RPGs are about. It's analagous to following the rules but ignoring the spirit. In my experiences, a great pencil & paper RPG session was about the story that we were telling as a group, the adventure, the discoveries, and the interaction between characters.

Miniature figures on a battle map were merely a tool to help everyone keep track of the position of combatants (none of us being computers) and to make sure that we all had the same general mental image of what was going on. And the miniatures setup itself was a remnant of D&D's tactical wargaming roots. Miniatures, battle grids, dice, and turn-based combat sequences aren't the essence or spirit of the RPG experience -- they were necessary tools to make the game function.

When recreating the tabletop RPG experience on a computer, you don't need to drag all of that baggage along. There is only one person at the computer, so the view of the world doesn't have to be one that all seven people sitting around the table need to use; it can approximate what your character is seeing and keep track of everything else on its own. There will always be an underlying grid on the world to measure everything, but I sure as hell don't need to be aware of it. Nor do I need to be acutely aware of the simulated dice rolling. In an RPG where you control one character -- which is the norm in pencil & paper games anyway -- you don't even really need to keep the turn-based combat structure, as you only have to worry about one character's actions and the computer coorindates every else on its own.

But again, I don't believe that turn-based combat is essential to Fallout -- or to being a "real" RPG. In my view, the essence of what is Fallout is perfectly conveyed in the opening movies of Fallout and Fallout 2.

 

[Eternal Dragon]

Three reasons:
-Table
-Miniatures
-Weird attachment to range of motion of my body, including my head and my eyes and a large field of view that stops me to treating FPP/Virtue Raider style games as "immersive"

Basically I strongly prefer the convention based on looks of gaming table with miniatures and I like looking at small, precisely made animated "miniatures" and terrain.

I find that at odds with what many RPG fans seem to value about their games. For all the talk of well-written dialogue trees, meaningful choices with consequences, open-ended character development, non-linear exploration, and non-violent options for overcoming obstacles, a lot of Fallout fans really seem to harp on the aspects of what is essentially a tactical wargame.

Comments to a lot of the previews of Fallout 3 have criticized again and again how they aren't talking about how the dialogue system and are only really talking about the combat, but Fallout is about dialogue and meaningful choices and not about combat. And they they complain that Fallout 3 isn't a tactical wargame.

I just think that too many RPG fans (not just Fallout fans) get overly focused on the form -- the surface-level aspects of the game -- at the expense of the spirit or essence of the game.

 

[Black]

I can't agree that grid-based turn-based combat is an essential part of Fallout. "Because that's how the original designers intended it to be" doesn't make it an essential part of the game. It's up to the individual gamer to decide what is an essential part of the game and what isn't.

No, it's not.
Earth isn't square and it doesn't matter what you think.

 

[Sorrow]

I just think that too many RPG fans (not just Fallout fans) get overly focused on the form -- the surface-level aspects of the game -- at the expense of the spirit or essence of the game.

Who do you think you are to tell me what kind of games I should like? I like tabletop miniature games style cRPGs like Fallout with perspective and combat like in Fallout and I dislike Ultima Raider type of games. I don't need to adjust to the conception that all games should have the same perspective.

 

[xdarkyrex]

I can't agree that grid-based turn-based combat is an essential part of Fallout. "Because that's how the original designers intended it to be" doesn't make it an essential part of the game. It's up to the individual gamer to decide what is an essential part of the game and what isn't.

No, it's not.
Earth isn't square and it doesn't matter what you think.

Thats a false analogy. He is talking about personal taste, not scientific fact or fiction. He is right, The gamer gets to have their own opinion, and to each person that is all that should matter.

He doesn't need to care about the roots of the game at all, why should he? If he payed for the game, he can think whatever-the-fuck he wants about it.

 

[monsharen]

Ok, this is my opinion: usually I think that the first person perspective is great for games that has a lot of fast paced action. In fast paced action you tend to focus on the things nearest to you. With a birdsview perspective you get to see all the things happening around you. Giving you a much broader view. First person lets you focus on a single entity, dealing with it. In birdsview you base your decisions on what everybody else in the scene does. This of course requires a bigger effort from the player in decision making, and that needs time, which explains the turn based system.

Having the first person perspective with pause is pretty special. It's like letting the player deal with single entities at a time, which does not require much time. Yet let the player pause to deal with others too if they wish. But first person wasn't optimal for several entities, now was it? Another table top game is chess. Imagine that in first person. Chess isn't really about a war, even though it simulates it. It's about decisions and how they affect the other players. Sure, chess can be played as a high paced game, but they're still using the same system as we (I'm the ultra slow playing kind) are.

Different perspectives are suitable for different types of game play. So the choice of perspective is also very crucial to how the creator wants the player to play the game.

Remember SimCity 2000 and SimCopter. Two games that worked with the same data. Yet totally different games, made with different views of "fun" in mind. Speaking of names, Maxis chose to name the copter game differently since it wasn't really a simcity game, yet it still did simulate a city. I don't mind a fallout like game in first person perspective. I'd surely play it. But I do also want another fallout game.

Fallout made use of the bird view in a very good way. Just look at how many people who is still drawing pictures about how life is in the wasteland. There was something that made people think and use their imagination. The developers left room for it. Sounds a bit like good art in my ears.

but why restrict the camera in such a way?

It is not really an easy decision. It's more like the decision. Because either you design the game for a first person perspective, or not. This has of course to do with the amount of money that you are willing to spend, because you will have to design level objects with high detail for the close up view and be able to change that for a low detail object when you view tons of them in another perspective, like birds view. This has also to do with game controls. Because you play a game via buttons. Not really interacting directly with your hands. We use mediums to interact with the game world, and that medium would presumably be dependent on the type of perspective we use. Like in the real world I use my hands to interact with items. Lets theoretically introduce birds view, wouldn't there be a better/easier way to handle it? Something like a mouse pointer. Something that easily can cover the larger distances maybe. What do I know?

Of course this is really up to the game design. Of course you can combine them and surely come up with a good solution for it. It's most probably not impossible. It remains to be seen if beth have though.

 

[Vault 69er]

Thats a false analogy. He is talking about personal taste, not scientific fact or fiction. He is right, The gamer gets to have their own opinion, and to each person that is all that should matter.

He doesn't need to care about the roots of the game at all, why should he? If he payed for the game, he can think whatever-the-fuck he wants about it.

However, he's implying that his opinion overrides the developer's intent, which is ludicrous.
You can think whatever you want about Fallout. If you want to, you can think the only essential part of Fallout is Dogmeat.
That won't change what the original developers intended the essential parts to be, does it?

 

[xdarkyrex]

Thats a false analogy. He is talking about personal taste, not scientific fact or fiction. He is right, The gamer gets to have their own opinion, and to each person that is all that should matter.

He doesn't need to care about the roots of the game at all, why should he? If he payed for the game, he can think whatever-the-fuck he wants about it.

However, he's implying that his opinion overrides the developer's intent, which is ludicrous.
You can think whatever you want about Fallout. If you want to, you can think the only essential part of Fallout is Dogmeat.
That won't change what the original developers intended the essential parts to be, does it?

Not by any means, but we don't measure a game by its intent, do we? We measure a game by the final product.

 

[Sorrow]

We do.

Also, it's a false dichotomy.

 

[Sander]

I can't agree that grid-based turn-based combat is an essential part of Fallout. "Because that's how the original designers intended it to be" doesn't make it an essential part of the game. It's up to the individual gamer to decide what is an essential part of the game and what isn't.

Dumbest reasoning ever.
If you're going to look at Fallout's core design (specifically what it was meant to be), turn-based combat was very obviously part of it. Hence losing that, means you lose part of Fallout's essential design.
It may not have been important to you or someone else, but it most certainly is part of Fallout's core. This doesn't mean everyone enjoys it, though.

If you are playing an RPG where you directly control multiple characters in tactical combat, then an overhead view of the battlefield makes sense. But when you're only directly controlling a single character, how does it not serve simply to make the player feel more detached from the character that he or she is playing?

The overhead view gives you a tactical view of the battlefield. This is just as important with one as with 6 people in a party.

To claim that turn-based combat on a grid is a part of re-creating the pencil & paper RPG experience seems like an extremely shallow concept of what tabletop RPGs are about. It's analagous to following the rules but ignoring the spirit. In my experiences, a great pencil & paper RPG session was about the story that we were telling as a group, the adventure, the discoveries, and the interaction between characters.

False dichotomy. Combat is most certainly part of the P&P experience, and P&P has almost always been turn-based. Yes, there are other parts to the P&P experience that are arguably *more* important, but that doesn't mean everything else simply loses any importance.
The same can be said for your following argument:

I find that at odds with what many RPG fans seem to value about their games. For all the talk of well-written dialogue trees, meaningful choices with consequences, open-ended character development, non-linear exploration, and non-violent options for overcoming obstacles, a lot of Fallout fans really seem to harp on the aspects of what is essentially a tactical wargame.

Comments to a lot of the previews of Fallout 3 have criticized again and again how they aren't talking about how the dialogue system and are only really talking about the combat, but Fallout is about dialogue and meaningful choices and not about combat. And they they complain that Fallout 3 isn't a tactical wargame.

False dichotomy again. Fallout consisted of the classic RPG design. This includes dialogue, yes, but *also* combat.

When recreating the tabletop RPG experience on a computer, you don't need to drag all of that baggage along. There is only one person at the computer, so the view of the world doesn't have to be one that all seven people sitting around the table need to use; it can approximate what your character is seeing and keep track of everything else on its own. There will always be an underlying grid on the world to measure everything, but I sure as hell don't need to be aware of it. Nor do I need to be acutely aware of the simulated dice rolling. In an RPG where you control one character -- which is the norm in pencil & paper games anyway -- you don't even really need to keep the turn-based combat structure, as you only have to worry about one character's actions and the computer coorindates every else on its own.

The point of having a turn-based combat structure is largely one of player skill vs. character skill, ease of use and the ability to have a tactical system where you actually, *gasp*, think about your actions.

But again, I don't believe that turn-based combat is essential to Fallout -- or to being a "real" RPG. In my view, the essence of what is Fallout is perfectly conveyed in the opening movies of Fallout and Fallout 2.

That's neat, but not the point. Again, why are you harping that Fallout and RPGs *only* consist of story and dialogue?

Not by any means, but we don't measure a game by its intent, do we? We measure a game by the final product.

We measure it's quality by the final product, but we certainly measure its design by, gee, *the design* and not the product.

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

I like shooters. Especially the realistic, more tactical kind which are, in spite of (or more accurately because of) games like Rainbow Six: Vegas and GRAW a dieing breed. I like games where every enemy with an unprotected noggin can be killed with a single shot to it. I like being able to explore large, realistic levels from a first person perspective and engaging in combat in them.

And that's why I play first person shooters.


I love RPGs. Especially the good story based, intelligent kind which are, because of games like Oblivion a dieing breed. I love games where I have time to decide at my own leisure what tactics to employ to fight my enemies. I like being able to explore worlds from a isometric viewpoint and get clever descriptions of it's minutia.

And that's why I play Fallout.

Those are two very different things, and they are mutually exclusive because a combination of them is neither an RPG or a FPS. If I want to shoot stuff, I'll play a FPS without being nerfed by forced unrealistic weapon inaccuracies. If I want to play Fallout, I don't want to be have a forced first person perspective and faux RTwP combat.

 

[xdarkyrex]

They should make a medieval Rainbow Six hahahaha

 

[Per]

It's up to the individual gamer to decide what is an essential part of the game and what isn't.

Oh, goodie, this argument again. The most important thing is that it says Fallout on the box. So if the Halo crowd, which is decidedly much larger than the Fallout fandom, decides Fallout should be gutted of its characteristic elements - its defining elements by virtue of deviating from the prevailing norm - that's entirely OK because a) no one can really say what was important about Fallout anyway and b) the fans get SOMETHINGWOWHAPPYNAME-ON-BOX!

To claim that turn-based combat on a grid is a part of re-creating the pencil & paper RPG experience seems like an extremely shallow concept of what tabletop RPGs are about. It's analagous to following the rules but ignoring the spirit.

I've obviously not played in the same RPG sessions you have, but for me and the many people I've played with, role-playing has never been about attempting to emulate a first-person "you are there, no seriously you are REALLY there, here's some tunnel vision" experience. You don't say "I go forward ten paces, then I turn right, then I wait for the cart to pass, then I walk twenty paces forward, then I initiate dialogue"; you say "We go back to the last shop we were in" or "I talk to the guy guarding the door in the back." The GM doesn't say, "You are looking east, you see a wall and some torches and manacles, do you want to look north now?" He says, "You are in a room, ten by ten, there are torches and manacles and a dragon." Iso captures this better than first person; this is a fact. Then you can argue that the "spirit" of RPGs is something else and I've been doing it wrong.

The thing I seem to take away from all of your posts is that nothing from the old games really matter to anyone any more, but all the new things are promising and shiny and awesome. *peg*

 

[xdarkyrex]

Oh, I need to add, Eternal Dragon, before you think that I am affirming your entire argument, I believe you are right that the gamer individually should decide what matters to them, and if they will like a bastardized sequel.

But that doesn't give you the right to scream at thefans that they need to let go. For the same reason that your standards matter to you, their standards matter to them, and you must simply try to understand that we all have our priorities.

But for some of us, this is a last ditch priority, not just some trivial matter. This is upholding the spirit or a work of art, and what you want could be made be just as well made by someone who isn't using the fallout name.

 

[Silencer]

Please don't double-post, Eternal Dragon.

An iso view was just essential to the style of combat and movement that Fallout had. I've played both FPP and TPP view RPGs and it is my observation that and iso view works much better if any actual tactical planning is involved in combat - FPP combat tends to become a sort of a power-level showdown quickly.

RoA was a curiosity in that matter, having FPP fro movement (immersion anyone), but iso for combat since it just works better.

Also, FPP view sucks ass when it's supposed to represent a party of characters - although some games like Ishar allowed you arrange the setup of your party within a square, it was something I always found lacking in terms of actual effect the setup had on the fight. Iso takes care of that.

Or removing the party.