In filmmaking, there are a few major rules that one must follow to create a cohesive work. One of those rules is the 180 Degree Rule, or simply, the 180 Rule. This is a cornerstone of filmmaking when establishing the spatial relationship between characters, as well as between their surroundings. I believe that this rule can be examined and modified to fit within the realm of video games. Doing so could possibly make games easier to control, which is obviously a huge benefit to the player.Before we go any further, it must be said that this article applies to games that take place in the third-person perspective. So, what I’m about to discuss has no bearing on first-person games.
Alright, the obvious place to start is by looking at what exactly the 180 Rule is. The 180 Rule states that a camera must not pass an imaginary line that connects two characters. That’s straight from the Wiki. Imagine that you and a friend are standing in front of one another having a conversation. If you were to draw a line from the middle of your face to the middle of his face, this would be the imaginary line that we cannot cross. We don’t cross this line because staying on the same side establishes the same right/left relationship between the characters. That is to say, one character is always on the left side, and the other is always on the right. This also makes it so that the characters are looking in opposite directions the entire time, which illustrates to us that they are looking at each other. Crossing this line can cause all sorts of confusion. The viewer may not know where a character is standing in relation to others and may not know where they are looking when they speak. For instance, if both characters were to be looking screen right, it would seem like one was not looking at the other.
So, how does this relate to games? Well, thanks for asking. The obvious place to start is in cut-scenes. Obviously, since these are just like film scenes, the 180 Rule needs to be observed. However, the more interesting place that it exists is within gameplay itself. Let me pose this question. How many times have you played a game where you are running towards the top of the screen with a character, holding the analog stick up to do so, and the camera cuts and changes the angle so now the character is running down towards the screen yet you are still holding up, and the character has a slight hiccup as you try to adjust? I can think of a few examples, and it seems like an oversight that a lot of developers are content with leaving alone. Well, no longer friends.
The obvious fix for this problem would seem to be in the angles that the camera cuts to. By changing the angle of the camera slightly rather than a jarring front to back, the player is allowed to adjust their control positioning just as slightly. Sure, there still may be a slight misinterpretation of where the character is supposed to be running by the game, but it isn’t as drastic as the character turning completely around and then back again just because the player had to change their stick position.
The other solution has already been implemented, but I don’t think it’s as good of a fix. This entails leaving the current direction the player is holding, whether it be up, down, left, or right, and keeping that as moving forward when the camera changes. This means that the player could be holding left to run to the right. Once this happens, in some games, the player is allowed to adjust without the character changing course. It’s almost like a slight delay. The problem here comes when that delay isn’t there, and the character has a weird hiccup in animation, as I stated before. A problem could also arise when in the middle of a battle, some sort of sudden movement needs to be made once the camera cuts, and the player doesn’t know if they need to push left or right to face the enemy when it is clearly to the right of them. It’s just too disorienting already, and precious control is momentarily lost. Some games have pulled it off okay, God of War for example, but I have yet to see it executed perfectly.
One last, more radical, solution can be applied. The approach that Heavy Rain takes to controlling the character eliminates the problem all together, but some would argue that it brings up other problems with it. By making the player use the R2 button to walk forward, the left stick is free to choose the direction. That means that if the camera cuts while you walking screen right, and now you are walking screen left, it’s fine because the character is still on the path without you having to move the stick at all. Some may find this hard to control, but with a little getting used to, it may actually be a reasonable solution in some cases.
With games evolving in the way in which they are visually presented, now is really the time to test out different control theories to find one that works perfectly. It makes sense to borrow fundamental building blocks from a medium that we already borrow so heavily from, so I don’t know why gamemakers seem reluctant to in this instance. Applying this basic idea could resolve so much of the needless frustration in games that is caused by the camera and let the creators focus on other aspects of gameplay.