I love open-world games, and I’m always looking for ways to change up how they look and feel, to pull myself into the world more fully. I have a whole involved way of playing GTA IV that involves killing the HUD and pulling in the camera. I love how it draws me into Liberty City.
It works partly because the HUD and Minimap aren’t around to distract me, and partly because by bringing the camera in closer to Niko’s shoulder, I feel more “in” the world, and regard it from something resembling his perspective.
Assassin’s Creed games have always been run to run through — while there are lots of ridiculous and weird things happening in the world to break the illusion, the look and feel of a good Assassin’s Creed free-runthrough is a lovely thing.
Assassin’s Creed III has tweaked the controls from past games in the series, and while I still think the game doesn’t control very well, I did discover a cool way to change your running perspective. Hitting the left trigger brings up the aiming reticle, which when compared to most third-person games feels sluggish and imprecise. But, once you’ve brought it up, you can actually begin to run around the city or forest, which places the camera much closer to Connor’s shoulder and makes free-running feel more up-close, disorienting and exciting.
I’ve demonstrated this approach in the video above — pardon my PC hitching a couple of times, it gets grumpy when I run FRAPS with a game going at full-resolution.
So, yeah, it’s sort of a little thing. Nothing earth-shattering. But it’s a fun way to get around, and a nice way to view ACIII‘s cities and forests from a new angle.
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