thanks for the feedback, i liked the harsh shadows but could have probably been a bit more balanced.
For the obstacle camera I projected another camera on to a circle gameobject in front of the main camera that did not render a specific layer where I put all the objects into that could obscure the player. Then I shot some raycasts out of the camera to trigger the circle game object (with a bit of pop) whenever you ran behind something.
It's something I've used before for corner maps and radars so I thought it might work for this so I'm happy someone noticed