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brightknightie) wrote2024-08-11 01:31 pm
brightknightie) wrote2024-08-11 01:31 pm
Entry tags:
learning some video game vocab: "2.5D" & "top-down"
Having never been much plugged into the fandom before, when the hype began for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, I was briefly puzzled that folks kept calling it 2D when it is clearly, by common non-gaming parlance, 3D, and also referring to its entire subset of Zelda games as "2D Zelda" instead of as "top-down Zelda," or something similar. I quickly leaped to the conclusion that this must be a legacy usage -- that when the first 3D Zelda game, Ocarina of Time, came along in 1998, everyone naturally immediately distinguished it from the others as it being 3D and the others being 2D, and that this had persisted over time, with "3D" being used for all the third-person (roaming movie-camera perspective?) games and "2D" for all the top-down (fixed three-quarter perspective?) games, even though the top-down games have also long-since adopted 3D.
Wrong! Echoes of Wisdom is apparently indeed "2D," in video game jargon. The internet seems to be telling me that for a game to be "true 3D," it must be 3D in each of three different specific ways, while if it is 3D in only one or two of those ways, then it is "2.5D," commonly shorthanded down to "2D" when speaking aloud (with the term "true 2D" reserved for approaches with zero of the three possible 3D elements). Many sites say something along the lines of: "2.5D uses 2D environments and camera tricks to create a 3D feel." Read the "2.5D" Wikipedia entry.
But wait! There's more! Apparently, there's a technical distinction between "2.5D" and "pseudo-3D," and "2D Zelda" may in fact qualify as "pseudo-3D!" But no one seems to call it that. And "pseudo-3D" doesn't have a Wikipedia page. So. :-)
Wrong! Echoes of Wisdom is apparently indeed "2D," in video game jargon. The internet seems to be telling me that for a game to be "true 3D," it must be 3D in each of three different specific ways, while if it is 3D in only one or two of those ways, then it is "2.5D," commonly shorthanded down to "2D" when speaking aloud (with the term "true 2D" reserved for approaches with zero of the three possible 3D elements). Many sites say something along the lines of: "2.5D uses 2D environments and camera tricks to create a 3D feel." Read the "2.5D" Wikipedia entry.
But wait! There's more! Apparently, there's a technical distinction between "2.5D" and "pseudo-3D," and "2D Zelda" may in fact qualify as "pseudo-3D!" But no one seems to call it that. And "pseudo-3D" doesn't have a Wikipedia page. So. :-)
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