After addressing the Ranger Mode DLC issue, 4A Games and Deep Silver decided to shed some light on why Metro: Last Light does not feature any FOV slider. According to the devs themselves, a Field Of View slider is not ‘as simple a thing to implement as it might appear‘.
First of all, let’s see what the developers had to say about this:
“The main reason for maintaining a fixed FOV is because we have 3D elements like the watch and weapon ammo that need to remain visible.
In addition, all the game’s first-person cut scenes and cinematics and each and every animation involving Artyom’s hands – idle weapon animations, reloads, ladder climbing, melee attacks etc, – were created assuming the same, fixed field of view.
Changing the FOV would break all the cut-scenes and animations – you would be able to see inside Artyom’s arms, or they would appear to float in the air in front of you. Or worse.
We had considered offering three FOV pre-sets, but this would still require significant work to re-do every animation, adjust the HUD and UI and other seemingly small but incredibly time consuming tasks.
Even with a wider but still fixed field of view, Artyom’s hands would look too far away. We know – we tried. “
Now let’s examine those claims. The developers claim that certain 3D elements need to remain visible, something that is quite simple to do. Instead of a fixed value (which is what 4A Games seems to be using right now), those elements can have a dynamic value that is relevant to the FOV settings. In other words, if the developers can ‘tie up’ the placement of those effects with the FOV values, then everything should be working fine.
As for the other claim, we’re a bit puzzled. The developers claim that players would be able to see inside Artyom’s arms, or they would appear to float in the air in front of them. This seems bogus but since we are not certain what 4A Games means by that, we’ll have to take their word on this.
Good news is that with the upcoming update, 4A Games will give PC gamers the ability to change the FOV via the game’s cfg files. However, this workaround may trigger a number of issues listed above. Still, it’s better than nothing, so kudos to 4A Games for at least doing that.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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