Why can't third-person shooter get cover mechanics right?

Why can't all these AAA shooter get the cover mechanics right? You hire military consultants that gives you the playbook, but yet you can't get this very simple concept correctly. This post is from my blog at blog.robothappy.com.


I am playing Spec Ops: The line.  The game has intriguing story and characters.  It has decent shooting mechanics.  It obviously had someone from the SF community providing input.  But yet, it still gets the cover system wrong.   Maybe it is Hollywood influence from action movies?  But for some strange reason, in all third-person shooters (TPS), when your soldier goes into cover, he turns around and faces the opposite direction from the enemy.  He also will drop his weapon and points it to the ground.  Like this:

 Look at that awesome cover position, gun pointing the wrong way, head looking the wrong way, his body weight is leaned forward against the cover, so he can't move quickly even if he wants to.  What if someone just walks right around that cover, there would be nothing he can do.  Well, I guess at least he looks good.

 Now lets look at how a real soldier stands behind cover:

The only game I have seen gotten this right is the trailer for The Last of Us where the player's character crouched behind some cover facing the thread, he then popped up and fired his weapon. Also, you don't just pop up from behind cover to completely out of cover to fire your weapon either, that is just ridiculous.  You edge out slowly than lean out with your weapon to minimize exposure.  I can't find a good picture or video that demo the correct stance, so I am going to draw some stick figures.

To clear a corner, you would do that, lean, unlean, edge out a little, than lean again, rinse and repeat until you clear the corner.

 Below is a good solid crouch stance behind cover.   Imagine if there is a low wall in front of him approximately his height.  If he wants to minimize his profile, all he has to do is slowly lower himself down to sit on his right foot and straighten out the left leg.   When he needs to pop back up, he can quickly return to this position and fire over the cover.  Doing this also gives him complete control of how much of his profile he wants to expose over the cover while keeping his weapon up and facing the threat  Also, as a general rule of thumb, you should always try to shoot around cover instead of over cover because shooting over cover usually gives off a more contrasted profile.

 So yeah, I don't know why video games hasn't gotten this control right yet.  It would really add a lot to shooting game's mechanics if they do this correctly.  I heard RO2 has implemented a good version of this in first person.  I have not tried it yet, but kudos to them if they did it right.