Within Gaming, there are genres, much like films,TV, Books, etc., and over the years, they have grown as games themselves have grown and got better. These include FPS, RTS, RPG, MMO, Tactical Shooter, Sim, and Turn-based Sim, among others. This time, we focus on Third-Person Shooters! They are a genre broader than most as they combine with several other genres, but let’s look at the history and some of the best there’s been.
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What is it?
A 3rd Person shooter is essentially where you see the character while they are shooting, unlike the first-person version where often you would just see the gun, with this you see the gun the character or whatever you’re trying to do. You can interact with objects, build, shoot, take cover etc or while the camera not really change this third-person view, these can sometimes be quite close almost like an overshoulder or much further way as you look down.
Early Days slumber
With all this said one of the big main differences with this genre is its involvement in so many other genres, action, adventure, platforms, shooters, RPG, sci-fi, historical, films and TV references galore. They have had some of the biggest budgets, volumes of different titles, and some of biggest sales in history. Its history is long but in reality, it spawned off some of those early action-adventure games, back at those side-scrolling days. Graphics limited to what it could do so you could see the character and the guns just going round shooting.
The New Platforms
But in reality, the genre was alive from the Era of PS2, Xbox, Gamecube and PC, games like Tombraider were a cross between third-person shooter and Puzzle platform, and Max Payne on the PC was another big title that crossed the Third-person and adventure, games were developing and understanding that it touched so many titles and genres.
Games like GTA with the improvement of graphics was now at times a third person shooters..kind of, the same for Resident Evil..kind of, but Games like Mercenaries, the infamous Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, Killswitch, 50 Cent, among others were definitely moving the genre forward.
GTA Spearheads the Genre
However the dawn of Xbox 360, PS3 and the improvements of PC moved the genre on again, the issue with third-person shooters etc… is that you see much more of the world and often interact, so at this point everything had been a little limited, Even GTA in retrospect was a little limited, so the improvements of these Consoles allowed the next generation of games to be made and some of these Games are still around today. With Metal Gear Solid and Splinter still shooting some really good improvements in the genre, this was all slower-paced and tactical.
Film Budget
Microsoft after big success with Halo released their next game changer in a Genre, Gears of War! this was huge and the sequels were even bigger, but they showed what was now capable, in came Just Cause, Saints Row, crackdown, Red Dead Redemption and ofcourse GTA 4 all catapulted the genre forward. Sony’s Uncharted series which was similar to the Tomb Raider series maybe have had puzzles and adventures but also a good amount of shooting in it.
Even Nintendo
But we were now in the era of PS3, 360 moving to PS4 and Xbox One, between this time frame we had so many titles that were adding the difference to the genre, Horror, Space, and now kids were being involved, the huge success of the Wii and then Nintendo Switch added games like Splatoon, which was another Genre defining moment.
We were adding a lot of titles, Max Payne 2, Alan Wake, Control, Psi-ops, Spec Ops, Divison, Red Dead Redemption, Returnal, Freedom Fighters, Sunset Overdrive, Dead Space, Batman, Evil Within, Star Wars Battlefront and so many others that are still played today or have series that have spawned many years, Even the newer MMO’s have Third person elements like wareframe, Final Fantasy, Guild Wars etc.
The Rise of Fortnite
Onto Modern days they are still bigger and better than ever, they may not be as simple as the traditional third-person shooter, character, gun and just shoot what in front of you. Now they are advanced, more to them with lots more to do, no game more than Fortnite is showing its popularity, another one of those Genre-defining games that were launched, right now every gamer knows it, love or hate it you can’t deny its huge success.
Not slowing down
It doesn’t look like the genre is slowing down, but as I’ve pointed out it touches other Genres because it had to, it had to be involved and now it has to do multiple things while still being in that third-person view with shooting. Its been so diverse and will include many of Gamers’ favourite games in history and there are so many that I haven’t mentioned that deserves recognition, games like Alan Wake 2, Helldivers 2, Divison 2, Valarant, Army of Two, Resident Evil’s, Days Gone, Mass Effect, again just so many.
