Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback It should be possible to tilt the camera upwards

In areas with height differences it is annoying not beeing able to look upwards. Even simple stairs like right at the beginning on the ship are a an visual obstacle, if you can only look down. In addition to that I could enjoy the environments much better.
Dragon Age Origins implemented the kind of camera control I'd like to see.

I'd like that, too. The environments are very beautiful, I'd love to be able to look around a bit. And of course it would facilitate the orientation.

It really shouldn't, since apparently (according to several youtubers/dataminers) Larian uses the "ceiling" of the map to preload a lot of assets not visible to the player.

Meaning that being able to point the camera upward would have hilariously bad results.

But I DO agree that you should have more freedom to move and tilt your camera in general (except not upward, for technical reasons).

This makes me sad. Not being able to look up kinda lets me feel like I'm playing in a shoe box. I guess I have to get used to it until release.

I really hope you are able to get used to it. I have been playing off and on since the beginning and am still fighting the stupid camera. Can't scout properly, finding good vantage points is a right pain, and it won't even let me see if I can truly hit enemies, most of the time I am clicking on an enemy portrait to attack and crossing my fingers. About the only time combat feels comfortable is if I am high up (like the rafters and walls in the goblin camp.) I may as well only have the top couple of inches of my game window, the rest is useless (ooh look, more ground to stare at. Yay!)

I could honestly do just fine without any "tilting", even in a limited form, if:

- the camera could be set to be a bit more distant from the ground
- they would kindly avoid that annoying "deforming lens" effect that makes thing closer to the camera significantly bigger rather than maintaining a more rigid, "orthogonal" perspective.


I'm not an "isometric hater", quite the opposite. It's my favorite waypoint for party-based games when done properly.

I could tolerate it if it was like that. I tend to play mostly TPS and usually as a sniper, so would prefer a proper third person camera. Isometric causes me a fair bit of disconnect (feels like moving chess pieces rather than actually being a part of the game) but if the story is engaging enough then I don't mind it.

The little engine that couldn't.

Its a little too late to rebuild their engine, I would think. Perhaps in the future they will overhaul it.


It is certainly the best looking graphics for a D&D title to date, but that particular aspect is fast becoming bleeding edge.

It becomes really hard when you want to jump to a surface that you can reach, but can't see.

Perhaps a Z-Up/Down control would be a happy solution.

I was not aware of that, this would indeed lead to hilarious results. Looking up and admiring the beautiful tree canopy, and suddenly, you see Halsin up there. Well, bears ARE good at climbing...

I would prefer 3rd person camera mode for exploration and isometric view for combat. It seems like it's not a hard thing to do

Just had a thought...what if they preload the objects under ground?

The ceiling is now free to view ...key angelic "view the sistine chapel" music.

Yes

...and If they work out how to pan, a middle mouse zoom in to 1st person.


Right now it takes great patience to rotate the camera, just to target the hostile that is literally in your face.

Think of all of the broken controllers and anything in their path..."This is to be avoided" ~Gale

The camera controls for BG3 are the most frustrating I think I've ever experienced for an RPG of this sort. Since the camera isn't anchored to the selected PC and has to be "driven" around on it's own the whole time, it's just a constant annoyance. Trying to rotate and pull back just to get a decent view of whatever it is I'm trying to see/target grates hard. The way this camera is designed hinders the groove for me, and the sort of relaxed exploration that I'm used to in other similar 3D games. Not being able to look up is just maddening. I honestly don't how they've managed this long with such a whack design. We've had decent orbital cams in 3D games and design applications that could do all this stuff since like the mid 90s, so the choice to eschew a conventional scheme here is really baffling. I could understand if the game was totally ISO with no rotation, but it's really not, and we're constantly shifting to an FP or cinematic POV that would really seem to recommend a regular orbital cam. Having rotation, but no decent tilt for the Z axis is decidedly lame. I'd rather wait for a load screen so the assets could drop in, than be denied the ability to look up, if that's really the reason.

I had to switch my controls in the settings for a right-click-mouse rotation, since holding the middle mouse for that was straining my patience and my fingers big time, but yeah, using the middle roller to zoom in/out FP more normally would be way better. The way it's set up now, the middle mouse roller just swings back and way up, and only has like 3 distance/angle positions, with the one in the mid range very fidgety. I also play all my games with the Y Axis inverted for the view control, which may factor into why the default scheme in BG3 is so annoying for me, but I haven't had this level of frustration in a game for a while.

Even 15-20 degrees of tilt would make a huge difference over the current situation for me, but I haven't seen anything yet to suggest a serious cam or controls overhaul, though it was surely noted almost as soon as EA launched. Right now the game is basically fake-y FP/Over-the-shoulder cam for exploration. You can sort of get a taste of what it might be, but it's very obvious that the game is meant to be played zoomed way out in Iso at the furthest possible distance the entire time. It's just a bummer, because the game looks cool, but I can't really enjoy any of that, cause it's too wonky just moving around and re-positioning the view.

I don't know if anyone else has had this impression, but often when maneuvering around I find myself clicking the ground at some awkward angle way off in the distance, or at a sidewise oblique view of the action - one that really doesn't flatter the scenery or the characters - just because I get tired of reorienting the camera constantly. So I just sorta play through half the time like that, at a bad angle, like the camera man is shooting from the hip and totally checked out. Of course I'm that camera man, and the reason it's going down is often because I'm just trying to click the path for the hurry up leaving the camera behind, but still it doesn't do much justice to the scene lol. I don't know, it could definitely be better.

As you said yourself, Larian has never given ANY sign of being aware, interested or worried about the fact some people have grievances with their controls or camera. Never.

Not even some vague "We'll try to improve some aspects of it" handwaving the issue as something to address later.

My favorite part is when you have an obstacle between the camera and the character getting transparent to let you see through.... But if you click the party STILL starts move toward the obstacle rather than toward the point on the ground you were trying to click.


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P.S. It's apparently an unpopular opinion here but I still don't care one single bit about getting a third person camera in an isometric game. I don't even think the environment has enough detail to make that type of camera look good upclose, for the record.
Better isometric perspective/more responsive and intuitive controls, though? I would pay a ransom-extra-fee just for that.

Me too. When I first started playing, trying to look straight ahead and not being able to almost felt like something was holding me down, like the back of my head had hit the ceiling of a very small room and I couldn't stand up straight. It was a bit claustrophobic. Over time I've gotten used to the angle and now it feels much more comfortable - fingers crossed that's the same for you.

I am pretty sure this is EVERBODY's first reaction. My last run was patch 7 and this run was..."Crap!...forgot how bad the interface was".

Think of all the people who will experience this type of game for the first time. Will they be motivated to "get used to it" ?

DOS fans will...DnD fans will...but others, perhaps not.


EA user feedback...this will definitely hold back your numbers and overall satisfaction rating. Watch the praise if you do address it...It will be high, very high.

Has this video been posted yet? Seems like the camera has the potential to do a lot more than what Larian allows. The mod can be found in the Steam community guides section, but it seems like it might not function with the latest version of the game.

+1 to better camera controls. Better zoom-in, zoom-out, over-the-shoulder option, and tilting upward are my main requests. I have mixed feelings on the mixing of the isometric perspective and 3D environments that require a great deal of rotation just to see where you are and are not able to go. Feels like I'm spinning the world on a top sometimes. The old school RPGs had handmade 2D backgrounds that were flat as a board. This is much more "dimensional" in where you can go and how you can move the environment about, so a better camera is in order. It would improve exploration, perception checks, and combat targeting, but would be at the expense of similarities to the game's predecessors. But, once again, those games did not have the same type of environments that this game has... where enemies are not positioned around you on a single plane, but on many intersecting planes that can be difficult to maneuver about with the camera. In the old isometric games, everything was perceptible from the same fixed perspective. The same cannot be said of this game at all. While we have rotation, it feels like we have a 2D camera for a 3D world, giving off vibes from this (start at 43 seconds in)

Edit:
This requires some elaboration, and I hope the isometric fans don't get mad at me. In the old RPGs, you had one perspective and no rotation, so you are stuck staring at a single plane. There is no other intersecting plane in these games. In this game, the game takes place on two intersecting planes. Like in the old RPGs, BG3 lets you move forward, back, left, and right, and you can pan the camera along the base plane. The introduction of a secondary plane allows us to rotate about the initial plane on multiple axes. Now, that's all well and good on the first plane, but we can also move up and down, and face enemies that move up and down and move to places which require rotation to reach. The camera is not capable of allowing us to perceive what our characters can perceive in this world, as it is a 2D camera in a 3D world (only a horizontal slice of the actual world perceived by our characters, in a gameplay and roleplay sense), and so it is immersion-breaking and harmful to targeting, and therefore is not good game design.

So Their engine actually CAN do it. No excuse then

AND THERE'S A SKY!!! With CLOUDS!!