I played Gears of War for the first time today. It's a truly unique experience in the world of FPS games. Keeping your head down and moving from cover to cover are emphasized. As the player, you have a wide variety of manuevers to perform to interact with the game world and get yourself safely through a firefight. From behind cover, you are given the option to either aim your weapon and subsequently expose your head to the enemy or hold your weapon above whatever you're behind and blindly fire it at enemies. The game is built from the ground up to allow for fluid movement between cover and open areas.
This got me thinking about RO. In any given situation, you'd simply be kneeling behind a wall, or a large chunk of rubble. In Gears, you're firmly behind that rubble and pressed up against it. Which is more convincing? Need to advance but don't want to get shot by sticking your head out? A simple button combination has you quickly dash to the closest cover. RO makes claims of realism, but many times I had been put off by the "dated" methods of interacting with the game world. I'm not just talking about mantling either.
Despite how great it'd be to have the cover system employed in Gears, I wonder how to implement it into a game like RO. Would you move the camera to third person when taking cover? Would you keep it first person? Each view has its advantages. Arguably, third person would be best as it gives you a fuller picture of the environment that you would have in reality. First person deprives you of these cues that you would simply be feeling in real life. Third person can substitute these into the game. However, does this break immersion? A lot of thought would have to go into this and it would most likely need to be done from the ground up. UE 3.0 anyone?
This got me thinking about RO. In any given situation, you'd simply be kneeling behind a wall, or a large chunk of rubble. In Gears, you're firmly behind that rubble and pressed up against it. Which is more convincing? Need to advance but don't want to get shot by sticking your head out? A simple button combination has you quickly dash to the closest cover. RO makes claims of realism, but many times I had been put off by the "dated" methods of interacting with the game world. I'm not just talking about mantling either.
Despite how great it'd be to have the cover system employed in Gears, I wonder how to implement it into a game like RO. Would you move the camera to third person when taking cover? Would you keep it first person? Each view has its advantages. Arguably, third person would be best as it gives you a fuller picture of the environment that you would have in reality. First person deprives you of these cues that you would simply be feeling in real life. Third person can substitute these into the game. However, does this break immersion? A lot of thought would have to go into this and it would most likely need to be done from the ground up. UE 3.0 anyone?