First Person Perspective

When the action is viewed through the eyes of one character, this trope applies. It's most commonly used in literature as a narrative technique and in video games a genre. It is noticeable and notable when it appears outside of those two areas, especially in movie and film where it's relatively rare to see anything directly from a characters perspective, rarer still for it to be maintained throughout. It was a major breakthrough in art when this was subverted and perspectives that no human could reasonably have started to be used in painting, such as a birds eye view.

First Person POV, especially when accompanied by first person narration unintentionally functions as a Spoiler Opening. Subconciously, the reader assumes with good reason, that no matter what happens during the story, the viewpoint character must survive the events in order to be in a position to tell the tale.

Sibling trope of Second Person Narration.

Example Tropes:

• The All-Concealing "I"
• All First Person Narrators Write Like Novelists
• Captain's Log
• Diary
• First-Person Shooter
  • First Person Ghost
  • Freelook Button
  • Unbroken First-Person Perspective
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator
• First-Person Smartass
• Point of View
• Private Eye Monologue

Examples:

• In the Doom movie there's a sequence shot in first person meant to reflect its First-Person Shooter roots.
• In later seasons Numb3rs used gun barrel perspective as the FBI agents performed operations intercut with more regular footage.