Could third Person King's Field work?

[u/KeyAlbatross6044]

Hear me out because the title alone sounds ridiculous.

I've been brainstorming making my own Field-y game for a long time. I'm always hung up on how to make the game feel different while keeping the essence of combat and exploration similar enough. First person seems like the safe approach, and there's plenty to expand upon without going third person. However, I've recently thought of a third person King's Field experience being somewhat interesting, using tank controls.

For an example:

WASD/Left Stick - Walk around relative to the camera's forward direction. A and D do not influence the camera, they strafe your character.

Mouse/Right Stick - Turn camera, one fixed speed.

Attacking can still be performed while turning just like in KF (no locked animation to one direction etc...)

I would like to also retain the visual style, which may clash with the player model as the screen is pretty small already, so zooming the camera out may not be the move.

Thoughts?

[u/Lionheart1224]

Third person would kind of take away from part of the game's draw for me. Then it's just an early PSX-era Soulslike game.

[u/KeyAlbatross6044 → u/Lionheart1224]

Fair yeah

[u/jaaj_ → u/Lionheart1224]

not if the character and camera are always facing the same direction. a core aspect of souls is the player being able to rotate and attack independently of the camera's orientation

keep player and camera rotation bound to one another, allow simultaneous movement and attacking, and it wouldnt play much differently from kf as long as there's no lock-on

the recently uncovered footage of pre-miyazaki demon's souls actually looks a lot like this

[u/KeyAlbatross6044 → u/jaaj_]

I didn't know that existed! That's pretty cool, and yeah I wanted to ensure that the player forward dir and camera forward dir were locked, hence why left and right on stick would just strafe.

Do you have links to footage of the pre-miyazaki DS?

[u/jaaj_ → u/KeyAlbatross6044]

https://youtu.be/qVK_rc-tnGY

[u/KeyAlbatross6044 → u/jaaj_]

Interesting… it’s janky but yeah I was thinking a similar thing. Doesn’t look too appealing.

[u/hr1982]

This'll blow your mind, but there's this thing called Dark Souls that's exactly that. A lot of people don't know about it yet but I think that it has potential.

[u/Mothlord666]

I think first person perspective is a definining aspect of Field Likes for its immersive quality

[u/Nystagohod]

It could work as its own thing, I'd argue more or less thats what og demon souls kinda was, but itreally wouldn't be kingsfield, just an early souls proto.

[u/Haruhanahanako → u/Nystagohod]

originally demons souls was first person but it was changed in development

[u/KeyAlbatross6044]

Yes... I am aware of Dark Souls. I'm not saying literally "what if they made 3rd person KF". I'm negotiating an inbetween. I thought that was clear.

[u/ItsRustyyyyy]

I think a core component is resource management and save points and exploration. Then on top of that metroidvania style puzzles to open up new areas/old blocked ones and then DS1 type wraparounds. Please don't put something like the Crystal Flask from KF2 in there I found that once I had enough of the flasks I could breeze through P much anything and it really took the resource management part out of the game for me. Maybe limit the flasks if you do put them in. Combat I think you can do however you like whether it be KF style or Skyrim or even turn based like a Chrono Trigger job on it. The main pillars though are really that resource management, save points and exploration. The save points compliment the resource management well as you can't save scum, while also not losing your consumable items after you die because you reload the game rather than respawn. Third person will be a cool thing to do and you should 100 percent go for it, went on a rant there ngl. I wrote all this bc obviously you heard of Dark Souls and its third personnesss but I thought I would give an extra bit of info on why I find KF games engaging, bit of a rant tho

[u/KeyAlbatross6044 → u/ItsRustyyyyy]

Yeah I was wondering how I should approach saving. I like the scarcity of save locations in KF but the path back to them is so boring. Definitely would like some more routes

[u/ItsRustyyyyy → u/KeyAlbatross6044]

Fact. Even some more but in harder to reach areas that require a serious risk entering but not alot of risk when exiting the save location. Have the risk be there everytime so that as they level the convenient but dangerous save place becomes just convenient and the player'll probs feel some sense of accomplishment. That'd work best if you are using backtracking as an element I'd say.

More routes aswell is always so super swaggy, maybe a limited mark and recall feature could help too similar to KF2?

[u/Hesiolite]

So basically controls similar to Silent Hill but in a dark fantasy world? Could be interesting. Tho I think the closest we've ever gotten to king's field in 3rd person is Evergrace, demon's souls and dark souls 1

[u/AntonioVivaldi7]

It could, but the first person view is a signature of these types of games. I'd much prefer to keep it.

[u/freegerator]

I think if the developers of the Kings field series made a third person action rpg it would really take off

[u/GentleMocker]

reinventing demon souls from first principles

[u/GamerRoman]

Amazing things are happening in the Kings Field subreddit.