It was new technology, 3D was a fairly new concept in gaming in the mid 90s. But it took so long to get properly implemented. You have super mario 64, gex enter the gecko, lemmings 3D. I am wondering if it was a business decision and not the devs who pushed for a free roaming camera, since it was clearly not a satisfactory result gameplay wise. Because at the same era, you have games with fixed camera angles that are much better experiences overall.
I mean, they didn’t even have two analogue sticks to work with in a lot of early 3D games as well as a non-standard number of buttons (and most had up to half as few as is standard today). Some of the limits were just a lack of inputs to control everything you’d want the player to control.
I also have to say, I feel like many people don’t realize how much dexterity and skill it takes to constantly crank that camera.
The twin-stick camera controls are a terrible solution, even if they may be the best we have. They are a major barrier for entry IMHO. With 2D games, you could hand a controller to someone, who doesn’t play games very much and they’d still typically be able to play along. But with 3D games, that’s so much harder, because now you have to press buttons and move the camera at the same time.
So, I imagine, even when the hardware became available, that various studios still tried to find simpler solutions.
True that! I remember my girlfriend struggling at Xenoblade due to the constant manual camera control. In my opinion camera control itself got worse over time since players were expected to just control it themselves. I constantly apply micro adjustments to the camera, but I don’t even recognize that.