Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Camera Controls: How to Zoom, Pan, and Enter First-Person Mode

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has quite a few camera controls that can make your time in Aionios much more comfortable and efficient. Unlike most things in Monolith Soft’s expansive JRPG, shifting perspectives and angles doesn’t have its own tutorial. With that in mind, you may be wondering how to zoom out, pan the camera, or activate first-person mode. 

Understanding the game’s camera controls can make a big of difference no matter what you’re doing. Sometimes, you’ll want to zoom in or zoom out to get a better look at things, which can be especially helpful in tense battles once your party grows in size or when you start changing classes. Other times, you may want to enter first-person mode because the environment’s pushed the camera too close to your character and you can’t see the exact position of a hidden container. 

Whatever the case may be, this Xenoblade Chronicles 3 guide will list all of the game’s camera controls to get you up to speed. 

How to Bring Up Camera Controls

To bring up the camera controls, hold ZL. When you’re exploring or hanging out in a Colony, holding ZL also brings up a small menu in the bottom right corner that allows you to access things like the area map, quests, the current quest route, characters. Underneath that, you’ll see the camera controls. 

Tip: It’s worth noting that you can also change presets for the exploration quick menu (not for the camera controls) by pressing the + button, letting you swap out menus for things like the Affinity Chart, Hero Roster, Party Skills, and even saving.

In battle, holding ZL switches to your Tactics menu in the bottom left portion of the screen. The camera controls listed below will not appear when pressing ZL during battle, but they work just the same.  

How to Pan, Zoom In and Out, and Reset Positions

Of course, the normal function of the right stick is to move the camera about. Pressing it left or right will rotate the camera left or right, while moving it up and down will move it up or down. That is unless you’ve chose to invert these controls in the global options menu. 

While holding ZL: 

• Move the right stick left and right to pan left and right. 
• Move the right stick up and down to zoom in and zoom out. 
• Press the right stick down to reset the camera position. 

How to Activate First-Person Mode

First-person mode in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is technically just moving the camera around to get the desired effect. Press forward on the right stick until you can’t any further, making your character disappear. This works while exploring and while in battle, where you’ll see your character’s weapons in front of you. Sometimes, first-person mode will shift back to third-person automatically when a battle ends. 

And that’s essentially everything you need to know about the various camera controls in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, from how to zoom in and zoom out to the details regarding first-person mode. Sometimes, simply climbing walls around Aionios will be enough to get a good view.