The Witcher 3 has some phenomenal fantasy environments, including one of our favorite cities in PC gaming, Novigrad. The third-person camera does a good job of zooming in and letting you absorb all the detail of those lavish interiors, but sometimes you just want the intimacy and immersion a first-person camera could provide.
We reported on a previous mod that added a first-person camera to the Witcher 3 back in 2016, but the download page and video demonstration of that project both seem to have been taken down.
Luckily, crthdr over on NexusMods has released their own first-person mod, and it goes even farther than that initial 2016 project. Gervant First Person makes the entire game playable from the first-person perspective—even the combat.
Now, I’m not entirely sold on tackling The Witcher 3’s most difficult fights from first-person, but that provides a helpful transition into one of my favorite features of the mod: a mappable toggle for on-the-fly switching between first- and third-person, similar to how The Elder Scrolls games or Grand Theft Auto 5 implement the feature officially.
Crthdr is even working on first-person versions of the Witcher 3’s cutscenes. It’s not a feature I think I’d take advantage of, but I respect the ambition and technical know-how required to pull it off.
A shift in perspective can sometimes be just the thing to refresh a well-worn experience. I’ve played through the first Witcher numerous times with its Enhanced Edition’s over-the-shoulder camera, but I found myself really taken aback and looking at things with fresh eyes when I tried the isometric camera mode from the game’s initial release. I think I’ll take advantage of crthdr’s mod when I replay The Witcher 3 next (after going through all of The Witchers one and two again, naturally.)