The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker From ... - Douglas Wilson

VI. The Externalized Third-Person View
"The external view of the player's character, although putatively less 'realistic,' is very
often more desirable in gameplay terms than the fashionable first-person view.” 32
– Steven Poole, Trigger Happy
In retrospect, the 3D environments of Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were not as
groundbreaking as the compelling way the games portrayed those spaces. At the time of
Mario 64’s development, the success of shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had
already made the so-called “first-person” perspective the de facto standard in the
representation of 3D space. The perspective renders the scene from the viewpoint of our
avatar’s own eyes, as if our virtual location was also our physical location (right in front
of the screen). Thus, the view is an internal rather than external one. Much as we cannot
look at ourselves in real life, the first-person view prevents us from seeing our avatar
(except, in some cases, for a pair of virtual arms that extend out from the bottom of our
avatar’s field of vision). As Steven Poole explains, the first-person perspective attempts
to “persuade us we are looking into the screen or canvas, rather than just looking at it” 33
in an effort to “cross the barrier between onscreen action and the player’s physical
situation.” 34 The argument held that the perspective is more realistic because it better
approximates natural experience.
Mario 64, however – like every 3D Zelda game that has followed – rejected the
first-person standard in favor of an externalized “third-person” view. From such a
perspective, players see their avatar, often looking from above and behind (“over the
shoulder”). This view, writes Poole, is “a completely disembodied one,” in that our
perspective “corresponds to no actual pair of eyes in the gameworld.” 35 In Mario 64, this
externalized perspective was aptly portrayed as the view from a hovering camera (flown
30