First Person

Gothic series is 3rd-person only, but would it be
more immersive while restricted to first-person view?

Gothic series had this very good atmosphere, the game even created an illusion of total freedom of exploring. Plus the inherent rural motif making the world even more believable. The thing is, the creators decided to limit the gameplay to third-person camera mode.




It's like, 3rd person camera games tend to focus more on arcade, expecting the players to learn certain moves and tactics. Swinging weapons is said to be looking better while you can see the whole figure. But the question is - is it really important to see your whole character, especially while performing some skill-requiring actions? Yet the majority of big-company productions are forced 3rd-person games, or 3rd-person with the option of 1st-person gameplay (for example Mount & Blade, which isn't really a big-company production, but achieved a great success nonetheless).

Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord. MnB wasn't really
a game focused on immersion, more like
fighting and strategy.

Either Gothic or Dark Souls series could get so much more immersive feel when restricted to first-person view. Also giving the player the choice to switch camera modes is something that lowers the amount of spatial immersion that could be achieved. But this would lead to a total change in the gameplay and diffuculty, as field of view would be greatly reduced. This is the case especially in combat-oriented games like Deep Down or Dark Souls.

Dark Souls II is totally combat-focused, thus
restricted to 3rd-person view, and loses in terms of
immersion, despite masterfully created, dark world

First Person wouldn't work well here, because, for example, fantasy-driven spinning attacks player can make. Player moves wouldn't look that spectacular too. More focus would have to be given to the enemies, details of their animations and behaviour, as we would often see them way closer than in 3rd person view. A while ago first-person view wasn't used because of higher processing power requirements (in some older games camera was fixed so the player couldn't get a decent view of distant surroundings)

Skyrim hands, all the time in front of you,
always ready to catch a fish...

There are some things that could be bothering, like for example your character's hands directly in front of you in combat mode of Skyrim






Another case would be not seeing any part of your character except the weapon and the hand holding it, as seen in many games

Have you tried to hold a sword so far from the hilt guard for a while?

Or holding the weapon in awkward way, like seen on a screenshot from Morrowind below



There's a decent discussion about first-person and 3rd person views in the games, and its influence on immersion here:
<LINK TO DISCUSSION>