Occasionally, when I’m playing a video game, I might stumble upon something that will quickly pull me out of the experience and remind me that this is a man-made medium, and, like man, isn’t going to be perfect. One of the most common situations in which this happens is when I notice that the character I’m controlling doesn’t have any legs. I’ll realize that I’m really just controlling a pair of arms, and a gun, and that, if I could somehow see my enemies’ point of view, I’d probably just see a pair of floating arms moving around, shooting things.
Discovering The Floating Arms
The first time that I remember noticing this was while playing the original BioShock, which, despite having a pair of arms as its main character, was an incredibly good game. The way I came to this realization was by making sure my character’s back was facing a nearby wall, and then having him back up to the wall as far as possible. At that point, I looked down. What did I see? A wall, and two arms and a gun sticking out from that wall, but no legs below me. I almost couldn’t believe it.
After I made the discovery, I began to do this in almost every first-person game that I played. I’d back up to a nearby wall, look down, and check to see if there was a pair of legs below me. I wanted to see if the game’s developers gave the character a full 3D model, or if they just lazily crafted his design and stopped at the arms. Not understanding what goes into actually making a game, I considered it a shortcut that developers were hoping gamers would either miss or choose to ignore. It wasn’t until years later that I genuinely became curious about this decision, and why a developer might choose to go this route instead of giving their character a full body design.
A History Of Floating Arms
In order to really understand where this floating arms vs. full-bodied models phenomenon started, it’s important to go back and look at the beginning of first-person shooters. The very first 3D first-person shooters, such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, didn’t include character models with legs, simply because they didn’t need to. In the early days of the genre, you couldn’t look up and down, only left to right. Gamers just had to turn either to their left or their right, firing whenever an enemy lined up in their sights, regardless of whether or not the enemy was above them or below them. There was never a point in the game in which the character’s legs would be visible, so they just didn’t include any.
With that knowledge, one suggestion could be the simple idea that games had been designed a certain way for such a long time, that there was really no legitimate reason to ever change that design. First-person shooters never included full character models, so why should they start now, just because the player is able to look up and down? After all, the only thing that really matters is the character’s hands, and the weapon that he is holding, right? This argument might have worked in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but in the year 2019, nearly thirty years since Wolfenstein 3D’s original release, it doesn’t necessarily answer the entire question. After all, each and every year developers are continually trying to give us the best graphics, the best gameplay, and the best story experience that they possibly can. So, why wouldn’t they go as far as to give their main character a pair of legs?
The Real Reason
The answer is actually pretty simple, and it’s the same answer that solves a lot of the world’s questions: money. Developers don’t give their characters legs so they can save the money and better utilize it towards something that the player is actually meant to be looking at. Instead of crafting a realistic pair of legs, the money is more than likely going to an intricately designed, menacing boss fight, or awe-inspiring environments that you’re meant to explore. Most developers don’t take into consideration the weird kids like me, standing up against a wall and looking for their character’s legs.
Some games go for both. In Fallout 4, I noticed that while in first-person view, my character had no visible legs, but when I would switch to third person, they were obviously there. Also, multiplayer games like Call of Duty are more than likely going to give your character legs, because multiplayer is a crucial component and requires that people can see each other.
An Intriguing Decision
Either way, whenever I play a first-person shooter, I religiously check to see if my character has legs or not, even in games released today. Sometimes the developers give the character a full body, sometimes they don’t, and whether they do or not doesn’t always coincide with the type of budget that they have available to them. Although it does cost a bit more money to include a full bodied model for a first-person character, the option to do so is as much of a design choice as it is a matter of finances. For example, a game like We Happy Few, an independently released game funded by a Kickstarter with a considerably small budget, gave their character model a pair of legs. Whereas big budget games, like Far Cry, include character models with only arms. So the reasoning behind this type of decision can come from a few different places, and it really just boils down to whether or not a developer wants to spend that extra time and money to create something that the player won’t be looking at for 99% of the game. Unless you’re weird like me.
This article was based on a Quora question. Read the original here.
