Thanks for putting up with the technical issues. I am glad to at least find the source of the problem.
I am using a render capture overlay on a separate camera to render the inventory. Only inventory items are rendered on this screen. I probably need to come up with another solution because I didn't think the performance dip would be that bad. The main inventory can be accessible from the pause screen, but it probably would have lagged anyway, and really only serves as flavor text in the demo, and to tell how many health packs you picked up.
I planned on adding signs for each area but ran out of time. Signs next to the door to show 'maintenance' or 'employees only' or something would have been nice to indicate. I don't know why your gamepad was attacking constantly, that sounds like a bug, but the camera recentering sounds like a problem with the camera itself. I'm supporting keyboard and gamepad in the next versions I think. It shouldn't be too hard.
There's caveats to both camera systems I guess. The third person system gives a lot of agency to the player, but detracts from the experience. A fixed camera can make for engaging sequences, but can sometimes be frustrating if the player wants to look at something, or maybe there's an enemy around a corner and they can't see it.
Overall, I would like to come close to the fidelity of SH3, both camerawork and graphic fidelity. I think designing levels having a lot of fixed camera angles in mind would be a good thing, but for areas with a lot of dimension, I think it would be nice to let the player have some agency. So I guess in the end, it comes down to how I design the levels, ideally with very few areas that have larger dimensions. This build in particular had two larger areas to get a better feel of the camera.
This feedback helped me think about things a lot. Revisiting my references shows me that i'm a bit far off my mark, and I can use this information in the new refactored version. Thanks again.