The actual reason is because they want the character to look like they’re being seen using a different FOV (Field Of View) than the rest of the scene.
There are other ways to do this, such as rendering the character as an overlay in a different 3D scene (lots of FPS games do this for their HUD guns), but this comes with the side effect that the model cannot interact with the world around it and may not occlude correctly or cast shadows.
The actual reason is because they want the character to look like they’re being seen using a different FOV (Field Of View) than the rest of the scene.
There are other ways to do this, such as rendering the character as an overlay in a different 3D scene (lots of FPS games do this for their HUD guns), but this comes with the side effect that the model cannot interact with the world around it and may not occlude correctly or cast shadows.
It looks like they’re trying to simulate a fisheye lens to me.