First-person shooter

There is more information available on this subject at First-person shooter on the English Wikipedia.

In First-person shooters, the surrounding environments are experienced through the playable characters' own eyes. As is demonstrated by this screenshot of Halo: Combat Evolved.

First-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre. FPS games center around the usage of guns and other projectile weapons in combat, and the action in these games is depicted from a first-person point of view—that is, the player experiences the game through the eyes of their character.

First-Person in Halo

Nearly all of the action in the Halo games is seen from a first-person view. There are certain circumstances (such as driving a vehicle) that will switch the viewpoint to a third-person view, however. Players can see their character's arms and weapon on-screen, and from Halo 2 onwards, a player's legs are also visible.

In all of the Halo games, each playable character actually has two sets of arms. The third-person arms are visible to everyone except their "owner", and tend to be relatively lacking in detail. The first-person arms are visible only to their "owner", and since they are much closer to the in-game camera, they tend to be far richer in detail. If you look quickly after dying you will see the game kind of hide your usually unseen arms.

In Halo: Combat Evolved, the entirety of a player's body is hidden, and the first-person arms are shown. However subsequent Halo games such as Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo: Reach do not hide the player's legs; but they do hide everything else. Finally, there are also differences between first-person and third-person poses.