What in the actual [self-edit] are these camera controls on PC?

[evermore]

This is really disappointing. And confusing. And I can sort of see why I'm not being given the option to review the demo.

I started the PC demo, and immediately ran into a problem which breaks the game for me: The camera controls are a very special kind of broken. I'm guessing this is the "camera spin" I see mentioned, but that really doesn't do it justice.

Mouse or controller, either one, same issues,

As the character moves the camera doesn't properly follow. This means that the more I move him around, the more and more out of sync the camera and character become. Rapidly. Attempting to turn-head-and-look also throws the camera out of sync.

Attempting to rotate the camera manually to resolve this doesn't work, the game will interpret the attempt as a character head-turn only, snapping back to whatever stage of getting out of sync it was at+a bit, the moment I release the controls. I assume this is because camera follow is EXPECTED to work properly, so why would we need to ever correct it? Why, indeed.
A secondary effect of this is that during a head-turn-to-look, the camera doesn't IN ANY WAY actually focus on whatever my character is looking at. It turns the appropriate amount, but since its starting point is way off, so is where it ends up looking.

Switching camera view mode to the secondary mode and back again resets the camera placement, but does nothing to prevent it from immediately getting messed up all over again. I'd have to do this correction at roughly 10 or 15-second intervals minimum for the entire duration of gameplay which involves any kind of moving around or looking at things, so it's not a particularly functional solution. Nothing else from the Dance Of Does Doing This Fix It has had any effect so far.

In short, I can't speak for the full game, nor will I anytime soon after this, but the demo is very prettily unplayable for as long as this remains a problem.

[evermore]

It's actually slightly worse, since I'm finding as I attempt to solve this that this "reset" doesn't always work. I can end up trying to turn a corner and look into/enter a room with the camera stubbornly staring my character in the face and have NO way to resolve it except to wander around aimlessly until the camera is back at a useful angle (temporarily).

Gosh, I hope nothing in this game has a time limit attached...

[CrackeR]

Actually made me put the game in the uninstalled list lol
I couldn't take the $hitty movement controls and camera switching.

[evermore]

After still more fussing... Yeah. It needs either a glitch fix or some kind of camera calibration or both, badly. Nothing I do affects this at all.

I played Dark Souls again recently, and as much as I love that game, saying that compared to this demo the camera follow in PC Dark Souls feels positively elegant is no compliment to either game.

[Edit: I'm not asking for a proper chase cam... Okay, I am, but that's in addition to wanting the camera options it has, to work. Seriously, I can't tell what's right in front of my character without randomly wandering until I can see it, probably from across the room, can't see a room he's about to enter because the camera's busy staring at his eyebrow; there's no way that's right.]

[Whooda]

The camera controls take some getting used to. If you've only ever played games with chase cam, the free cam feels... wrong... at first at least. It's like getting used to the classic Resident Evil games. Imagine you're controlling a drone camera with the mouse while moving something on screen with the keyboard and it makes more sense.

Hitting Ctrl reorients the camera and generally gives you a clearer view of where you're going/looking at. Assuming the demo is the first level, that apartment has some really wonky angles in it, but the areas after (at least so far) are a lot more straightforward and easier to navigate.

Also, slight spoilers, but you play as a few different androids and for some reason the detective/negotiator android's camera feels especially loose. I think it's by design because they expect you to be carefully examining the rooms, but who knows.

But, then again I don't like the Witcher games because controlling Geralt felt about as responsive as steering a boat, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

[evermore]

@Whooda -- I appreciate your perspective. :) I'm used to multiple camera behaviors, though, and there's still no "getting used to" a camera which constantly orients itself in a completely useless or actively detrimental direction, especially during movement, whether it resets or not. This is like trying to drive a car with my head turned so far to the side that I can see only a tiny sliver of the road; I wasn't crazy about Geralt's movement either, but it wasn't enough to stop me from playing the way this is.

Also, it's just really not fun to find things by meandering half-blindly around until something pops up onscreen. Trying to pick up an object in the first room happened entirely blind, because a prompt came up. Until the view shifted to "examine what's in his hand" mode I'd never seen what it was the game was suggesting I examine, because, as I passed by, the camera decided the opposite side of the room was far more interesting.

Now, while I was TRYING to look at that other side of the room before that, the camera was more interested in trying to turn around to see the elevator he'd come out of... However this is intended to work, I'm reasonably sure it's not doing it right, because I literally can't see where this guy is walking half the time in the second room in the demo. I'm just aiming in some direction I hope is further into the room, and bouncing off of what it took me three goes to realize are android-program-barriers saying "do this thing first before you can go here", because I couldn't see them while they were activated, being as they were in a direction the camera wouldn't point at the time. I finally read one by turning his head at the right time. That CAN'T be right, they're intended for the player to read when they're triggered, clearly.*

CTRL key is good to know, thanks, but if I'm using a controller right now, that usually means the keyboard is far out of reach. Even if I could bind this to the controller somehow, though, I'd have to reset the camera three or four times a minute (Edit: as in, absolute minimum, "I can't see what I'm doing at all"; much more to keep it at a reasonable angle all the time), which is both awkward and silly to have to do**. Not that this would be the first game to require manual camera correction, but I so prefer being able to give the angle a nudge to having to "pop" it back to some zero-point constantly, and this camera refuses to be nudged.

*Edit: It's worth mentioning here that I've seen part of a console playthrough of Detroit: Become Human on YouTube, and as far as it's possible to judge camera behavior when I'm not the one controlling the character, it didn't seem nearly this bad.

**I suspect it'd also test my tolerance for motion sickness after awhile; small stick-corrections are fine, but sudden, major camera jumps aren't kind to my stomach. There's a reason I don't do VR. ;D

[PM1982]

Anyone still having this problem needs to download "Hidhide". https://kanuan.github.io/DS4WSite/guides/solving-double-input/
Followed this guide yesterday & can now play the game without the controller spinning.