Guild Wars 2 has a perspective issue in the eyes of some fans: It is not possible to look at the world from the perspective of one’s own character. Two developers explain why this is the case in an interview.
Matt Wuerfell and Devon Carver, two developers at ArenaNet’s MMO Guild Wars 2, faced the questions from the fan site GuildMag in a long interview. One question that concerns the aesthetics in the GW2 community: “Why is there actually no first-person perspective?”
While Wuerfell somewhat evaded the question and explained that it is not something they are excluding, but also not something they confirm (this was their response to most questions), Carver shed light on the issue from another side. They invested a lot of time to make the combat in Guild Wars 2 understandable and immersive: “Position is everything.”
In PvE, it might not be a big problem to look at the world from the character’s eyes, but in WvWvW or PvP, it is different. Here, players would then miss important information and would not even be able to understand what is happening around them.
Similar statements were made by the developers when asked why the field of view could not be changed through any sliders or controls.
ArenaNet takes great pride in the work they put into the design of the world and the individual details. They want to ensure that players perceive these details and that the crucial immersion (the feeling of being in the world) is not lost with a shifted perspective.
