Titan Quest - Camera Control

Fantasy game art from Titan Quest. An art book, The Art of Titan Quest, is also available.

This screenshot is impossible in Titan Quest.

Titan Quest fixes the direction and movement of the camera, thereby saving a lot of processing. For example, the sky is calculated for reflections on water, but because you cannot normally see it, it does not need to be drawn. While the camera angle changes slightly when you zoom in and out toward your character, it still doesn't get low enough for you to look straight ahead in a first-person perspective, or get you close enough to really see some of the most intricate details such as the leaves on the wreath worn by the character above. It is also not normally possible to rotate the camera.

With a third-party camera mod, a lot of these restrictions can be lifted, but at a severe cost in processing power. If you lower the camera low enough to look at the horizon, you'll encounter some of the shortcuts used by the programmers. For example, in the shot below we see that there is no ceiling in this subterranean crypt complex; and you can make out coloured placeholders for game events that are not yet triggered because the character is still too far away. Nevertheless, better zoom combined with the ability to force even higher levels of anti-alising, Titan Quest is a game that can still be beautiful for years to come.