Thinking of a game like the original God of War, as enemies get within combat range, you could add the enemies to that target group, and when you launch a character and juggle them in the air, the group target now tracks you and the enemy, but also doesn’t go all the way; it still has some weight from the enemies on the ground. This allows you to maintain awareness of the status of the ground enemies you will invariably land in after you do your aerial juggling.

This can also be used for shared focus, like during co-op games and things.

Now, this is a great feature, but requires a lot of deliberate command: You need systems to identify targets, add to the list, remove from the list. Or, in the most reductive of ways, already have the x number of targets pre-set and just live with only exactly that.

On the flip side. Camera “Tug” is a reactive and open-ended system. I have been floating around the terminology. It evokes ideas like magnets, gravity, or pull. But I like “Tug” for being very uncommon wording for other systems, preventing overlap with a dozen other game features.

Tug, as the name describes, is a mechanism of pulling the camera out of its standard alignment, like a lasso dragging you from an originating source.

The idea behind tugging is that you can make your cameras reactive to channels of tug fields, making them susceptible to those outside forces to alter the base behaviour of the cameras. Be it ground combat, aerial combat, or others.

An example could be: you have a fireplace, and above the mantle is a portrait, the key element of that piece of level. You should be able to frame it and make sure the player recognizes it as a focal point. In this case, you could always put a stationary camera and blend to it. But often, a stark camera change as you’re navigating an area also means that there’s a stark blend back when you shoot past the camera field and exit it faster than it repositions the camera. Otherwise, a survival horror, hard camera cut isn’t always appropriate for your game.

What if, instead, as you get closer to the fireplace, it tugs harder and harder towards the portrait, and again, as you veer away from the fireplace, the tug weakens and finally releases the camera back to its original state. This then allows for a more organic and situational adjustment to the camera that doesn’t necessarily need an entirely uniquely authored camera to work. You can preserve the usage of your core character camera, while still modulating it in a controlled way for situational needs.

Now returning to high-action character combat scenarios. You’re highly mobile, the arena is expansive and complex… Today, that means you’re fighting in a desert and are being swarmed by enemies. Just then, a massive sandworm comes blasting out of the ground, the first reveal of a very critical boss/hazard/enemy. You don’t know where the player will be at this reveal, you don’t know which angle their camera will be looking, you don’t know which state they’ll be in, like air juggling an enemy.

Sure, you could have a “Look at the focal surprise enemy” camera. Countless of them configured to every special reveal and telegraphed enemy attack state. Or, you could give that sandworm a Tug field. As big as the entire level, even. Like an AoE, it would hit your camera in any state whatsoever and pull the attention of the camera to the worm, for that brief reveal. As it returns to the sand, and the gameplay resumes its normal flow, the camera snaps back to what it was in the middle of, and you’re back to the play.

This, like I alluded to, also applies to special attacks. Like some enemy charging a massive level-wide explosion that you need to interrupt. Use a more gentle tug, but ensure the player knows the enemy is doing it as it engages its nova attack telegraph. Situational, reactive, and additive. Tugs, to me, are an incredibly valuable subsystem for cameras to enable very precise authoring for designers, along with the rest of the palette for painting beautiful cinematic experiences.

Very excited for these.