Over-the-Shoulder Aim

Camera sits offset to one side so the character occupies part of the frame without blocking the target, and the reticle projects into the scene rather than sitting at screen centre. Player sees their own body, its animation and its cover, while aiming with the directness a shooter demands. Offset introduces a permanent asymmetry, since one shoulder is always exposed, which is why so many games let you swap sides.

Namco's kill.switch in 2003 introduced the framing alongside its cover system, and Resident Evil 4 canonised it two years later. Attribution is contested in the usual way, because kill.switch was there first and is barely remembered, while Resident Evil 4 is what designers actually copied. Motivation in both cases was identical: keep an animated character visible while giving the player accurate control over where bullets go.

Framing became the default for third-person action within a decade, since it supports cover, melee, animation and precise shooting at once. It also narrowed the field of view, made left and right asymmetric, and pushed cameras so close that level design must accommodate a lens near the wall. Series that once used fixed angles rebuilt themselves around it, and their remakes are a running argument about what was lost.