Quote Originally Posted by VeloZer0 View Post
I actually found the design of FF12 had me spending an inordinate amount of time not looking at the scenery. Why? Because I was spending the whole time running around with the camera planted on my backside I was constantly getting disoriented and looking at the minimap. For like 50% of the game I was running around starring at a wire-frame drawing. What a waste of of developer money on such a gorgeous little country. (I refuse to call FF12 a world).
I played director and would shift the camera around to fit the locale. Yet in some locations and towns I actually took the time to really just look around the locations, seriously, the towns in XII are some of the most well crafted towns in the series in terms of visual content. I mean just watching airships go by in Bhujerba and then quickly panning the camera on the people and scenery was nice. I also shifted the camera often in battle when I needed to move my characters to specific strategic points and to keep my bearings as I watched to make sure the boss didn't spot me. I only used the minimap to check for traps and to help when I got lost or worse, turned around.

I can agree as well, I think the happiest hybrid of the two would be to pull of Xenogears/BoF3-IV dungeon layouts where the camera is fixed but its possible to rotate it anywhere from 90 to 360 degrees depending on what's needed.
The camera was one of the weaker aspects of Xenogears IMO. I never found the ability to control it added anything to the game, only the hassle of moving it from places you didn't want it to be and causing disorientation when entering areas with the camera on a different facing. I don't see what having it movable added that having smartly crafted camera angles for every area wouldn't.

*Also note that when I say 'fixed camera' I don't mean it has to stay in one place. I mean that it's movement is predetermined and not in the players control.
The movable camera was great for spotting hidden items that simply moved off camera but would have been unnoticeable otherwise, the camera helped with setting up some of the platforming elements (better than KH1's godawful camera...), and it was utilized in some of the more amusing mini-games like the hide and seek game in Aveh. Hell it was because of than mini-game that I actually started to play with the map as I explored towns and dungeons to notice items I wouldn't have otherwise. I found it a fun element of exploration, and as I said when I praise XII, exploration is something that has been whittled down to nothing in modern JRPGs. I feel its something that needs to be refocused on and I find the camera is often an underutilized tool for exploring towns and dungeons.

As for moving cameras, I'm going to disagree, its one thing to have a moving camera when you're controlling it, but when the game does it, I find it visually jarring cause I'm trying to focus on my characters and the moving camera keeps distracting me cause my peripheral vision keeps picking it up. I find as soon as the camera moves, I suddenly halt to a stop to see what the camera is doing and I find it disrupts the flow of the game for me. So no camera for the game designer during the playtime portion. I never liked when the game would combine the movement with the cutscene cause the cutscene was always more distracting. You have no idea how many times I fail the fight mini-game at the battle between Gardens in VIII cause my focus keeps shifting to the fighting in the background instead of the playable part. I think in terms of panning cameras, Suikoden III might be the only exception I can think of.