Escaped free-cam in the dam area
Posted July 11th 2011
When viewing the dam area in Theater mode, the camera is normally limited by a ceiling slightly higher than the pump station roof. But there's a way to get the free-cam out of the standard containment area to let it roam far and wide. It's done using the Phantom which drops reinforcements outside Johnson's jail. I described many uses of that ship in Using the jail Phantom, but I've separated out this particular use as it's somewhat different in nature, relating to viewing more than playing, plus I wanted to draw attention to it.
The method
What you need to do is man one of the Phantom's cannons (which is easily done as described in the aforementioned article) and let gameplay continue at least until the Phantom rises. When you later save your game, go into Theater mode and start the saved film. Let the Phantom rise, then get the player-cam so it's somewhere above the aforementioned ceiling. Thanks to being on a cannon, you can back the player-cam away considerably to aid in that (angle the left stick downwards to pull back). Switch to the free-cam using the Y button, and that's it; you've got the free-cam out of the standard containment area.
Roaming free
The 'escaped' free-cam can roam far and wide as long as you remain out of its standard containment area (or you'd become impeded by the normal barriers once again). In particular you can take it so high that the map can be seen as a patchwork amid a sea of white. The crashed Pelican from earlier can be seen, along with the large area it's possible to explore by taking a ride on that Pelican - something I've yet to write up for the site. But as well as going high and wide, you can also go low. If you take the camera past the edge of some land, you can sink it down to look at stuff from below, at which point you can see a lot of surfaces or features blinking on and off as you move around. Plenty to explore then! Note also that if you freed Johnson before boarding the Phantom, you could watch the final battle from unusually high up.
Another method, but using the same principle
The camera can also be freed in a slightly different way, though it works on the same principle I believe. For this, your gameplay needs to've continued until the Phantom takes you past the dam, at which point it stops, apparently prevented from leaving due to your manning the cannon. Let the film play until that occurs. There's an invisible elastic barrier past the dam which would normally stop the camera. Back the player-cam away so it's past that barrier (the camera doesn't have to be high), then switch to the free-cam. It's now out of the containment area and can roam free like before.
The common underlying principle here is to get the player-cam out of the containment area then switch to the free-cam to roam outside it. I wouldn't be surprised if this principle could be used to get an escaped free-cam in other situations where you take an unscheduled ride on a Phantom. That's something I'll probably be testing in due course.
Further remarks
When you've got the player-cam outside the containment area and you're trying to switch to the free-cam, you may need to have a certain orientation relative to MC - or something like that - else the Y button might have no effect. It's a bit fickle (possibly buggy?) and I'm not sure of the exact workings. All I know for sure is that the player-cam doesn't always switch to the free-cam when you hit Y.
It does seem important to be manning a cannon for the escape to work. Standing on the Phantom's deck or roof seems insufficient. I tried those things and was unable to get the player-cam out of the containment area to break free. Crucially, when MC is manning a cannon the player-cam can be moved much further away from him than when he's on foot.