It was new technology, 3D was a fairly new concept in gaming in the mid 90s. But it took so long to get properly implemented. You have super mario 64, gex enter the gecko, lemmings 3D. I am wondering if it was a business decision and not the devs who pushed for a free roaming camera, since it was clearly not a satisfactory result gameplay wise. Because at the same era, you have games with fixed camera angles that are much better experiences overall.
I think it was trial and error. When people tried Mario 64 for the first time, it was VERY challenging because we'd never really done it before. It didn't take long to get the hang of it, but I remember myself and others just spinning around in circles at the Walmart demo unit because we had no ideas how to navigate in 3 dimensions.