Trigger Happy
Tomb Raider games (see fig. 13), this is a perspectival construction in which the player can see the character under control, and the representational viewpoint itself is a completely disembodied one.
Disembodied? I mean that the view we are given corresponds to no actual pair of eyes in the gameworld. The point of view from which we see Lara Croft is constantly moving, swooping, creeping up behind her and giddily soaring above, even diving below the putative floor level. We are spying on Lara even when she is alone in the caves. The player can choose to zoom in to a point just behind her shoulder, nearly sharing her point of view, in order to guide her more accurately across a chasm, but she remains oblivious. Tomb Raider plays a lovely joke in one level, indeed, which features a figure who imitates in detail all of Lara’s movements. You assume it’s an enemy, and try to shoot while dodging,
The important aspect of Tomb Raider’s representational style, in fact, is that the modus operandi has been borrowed not from painting but
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