Honestly, now that I've had some time to think about it... first person makes a
ton of sense for an Indy game.
Looking back at the films, a
significant amount of time in them is spent in small, cramped environments. Tombs, dungeons, castles, etc. Usually with him looking for clues, avoiding traps, and so on. Stuff that fundamentally doesn't work well when you've got a camera which needs a foot of leverage behind the character's back.
For an example of what I mean: Uncharted's puzzles are usually pretty great, but they almost always take place in these big, wide-open spaces, with puzzles that encompass a large physical amount of said spaces. Both being necessary to give the player enough room to move whilst having the player character in full view at all times. See below:
The few times where puzzles
are more intimate - like those that involve Drake's journal - are ones that lock the player in place, and either move the camera very close or - unsurprisingly - move directly into first-person. They need to do so because, if they simply let you have free control, there's a big chance that the crucial puzzle piece will be blocked by Nathan Drake's ass.
Which, again, is fine for Uncharted... but this is Indiana Jones, and if they want to capture the types of puzzles, locations, and so on seen in those films, simply making everything 'bigger' won't work.
Take some of the most iconic scenes of "Indiana Jones figures out some specific shit about his environment," from the films:
(There are better examples in Temple of Doom, but I could not for the life of me find a good screenshot of them)
How do you do those if you're not involved in actively observing the environment around you for small, and specific 'puzzle pieces'? Of course there are ways to do so, but I'd argue that the
best way to do so is by implementing a first-person camera. That way you can find those small details, and do this game's equivalent of the above (and many more) scenes.
Hell, you only need to look at the pioneer of 'controversial first-person moves', Metroid, to see this dichotomy on full display, and how it can work against a franchise's established vibes. Metroid Prime's environments are intimate, small, and very exploratory. The exact kind of feeling that the classical titles aimed to convey (titles that - again, unsurprisingly - were often very zoomed in in comparison to other 2D titles). Metroid Other M's environments are large, often detail-sparse, and relatively simple primarily because of its more traditional third-person perspective. Whilst part of that is because Other M wasn't exactly a great game, part of it does come down to the fact that third-person perspectives naturally represent a larger, less detail-oriented take on the environmental themes they wish to portray.
So, yeah. I'm actually on-board with the idea now, and I think those that aren't should - at the very least - think a bit about what the game might want to be trying to achieve, instead of simply thinking about what genre trends it should follow.
