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Thief 4


Unstoppable

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Welp I was dead on about Deus Ex 3. Soon the prophecy shall be fulfilled and Deus Ex will return to it's glory. It shall fulfill it's destiny.

 

However this post isn't about Deus Ex, it's about Thief, specifically Thief 4. There's a curious little tidbit located at this webpage.

http://www.eidosmontreal.com/en/games.html

 

AAA games, with high quality licenses that offer exciting challenges – e.g., the first two games we develop will revive successful franchises

 

Games for next-generation consoles – Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and Wii

 

What other franchise could they revive other than Thief? Man I would love to work on those games. Anyway Thief 4 perhaps in the year 2011. :laugh:

 

Just remember, Unstop told you first. He can see the future. :laugh:

 

By the way here's the new and improved Deus Ex 3 forum. You can use your regular Eidos forum name and password.

 

http://forums.eidosgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=252

Edited by Unstoppable
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That depends on the viewpoint of the person. You can say Thief was never successful but Thief 1 was commercially and technically successful. Otherwise Eidos would of never fronted the cash for Thief 2.

 

Thief 2 was not a commercial blockbuster and it's sales weren't lackluster. It was in between but it did not sell enough to keep Looking Glass Studios from having to shut down.

 

Despite all that though Thief itself the franchise is nothing short of phenomenal. It has spawned thousands of mods/fan missions, stories, music, etc.

 

Thief 3 unfortunately I heard that it did not recuperate what it cost to make. However there are reasons for these past failures.

 

The primary reason why Thief 2 failed was poor marketing. Not enough people knew about the game and not many stealth games were being made. Especially an FPS game, it is a niche market until Splinter Cell broke that barrier.

 

The primary reason why Thief 3 did not sell well was because the engine was fubared. As you probably know the programmer hired to make the renderer for DX: Invisible War instead made a whole engine. He was then let go and they didn't realize the engine's limitations till halfway into Invisible War.

 

By then it was too late to back down from both projects. Also Harvey Smith shoudln't have been given the leadership role, Spector should of kept his crown.

 

Thief 3 was a better game than DX: IW because they had more time with the engine and better leadership.

 

Just wait and see Deus Ex 3 is going to blow your mind. Then after that Thief 4 men friend. ^_^

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With all the sequelitis going on at the moment I really wouldn't be surprised. But it'll be set in the present day or future with Garrett's descendant who has "genetic memories" of Garrett and a centuries old Keeper conspiracy and oh god it's going to be awful what ever they do.

I want your brain... to make his heart... beat faster.

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They could easily make it a money-maker though, and a good game too. Look at HL2 - a money-maker and an excellent FPS. Why? Because people bothered to spend time on perfecting it.

 

If they just spent time on designing and writing rather than just doing it half-cocked, like TDS was, it could be great.

I want your brain... to make his heart... beat faster.

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The primary reason why Thief 3 did not sell well was because the engine was fubared. As you probably know the programmer hired to make the renderer for DX: Invisible War instead made a whole engine. He was then let go and they didn't realize the engine's limitations till halfway into Invisible War.

So you tell me that the normal customer knew (and cared) about the limitations of flesh? I sure don't think so. The original thief fans of course were pissed because of loading zones, but the other players assumably just accepted it and all of us probably didn't know the other limitations of the engine until the editor was out, which was a lot later after the original TDS release. So I say, the initial success (which is always the biggest part of the whole) of that game got nothing to do with the engine, but only with gameplay etc. . (Movement mostly, which was kinda drunken master style)

 

They could easily make it a money-maker though, and a good game too. Look at HL2 - a money-maker and an excellent FPS. Why? Because people bothered to spend time on perfecting it.

 

If they just spent time on designing and writing rather than just doing it half-cocked, like TDS was, it could be great.

Well that again is just a question of taste. I prefer TDS very much over HL2. You play FPS like that through once and that's it. There's nothing that would make it worth replaying it, because it's more linear than TDS and there's nothing to explore at all. Just regular Hitboxshooting and some nice physics... wooooohoooo! :D (If you want to bring up the source engine, then at least use the excellent Dark Messiah as an example and not such a lame ass FPS)

Edited by STiFU
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So you tell me that the normal customer knew (and cared) about the limitations of flesh?

 

No, but they care about the end result. And the end result is a direct consequence of the limitations, the developers have to work with.

 

The original thief fans of course were pissed because of loading zones, other players assumably just accepted it and all of us probably didn't know the other limitations of the engine until the editor was out, which was a lot later after the original TDS release.

 

Actually I predecited some of the limitations, based on observations of the game itself, and knowing how developers in such projects work.

 

So I say, the initial success (which is always the biggest part of the whole) of that game got nothing to do with the engine, but only with gameplay etc. . (Movement mostly, which was kinda drunken master style)

 

Well, if the gameplay is strongly influenced by the limitations of the engine, then of course the success is also based on the engine. The developers said several times that they often couldn't do what they intended, because of those limitations.

 

If you have a good engine and you screw up the gameplay it's one thing. If you have a crappy engine to being with, it's quite another. Of course most people wont see the engine as a seperate issue, and just think that TDS is bad, no matter the reasons. And rightly so, because players shouldn't care about the internal details of a game.

Gerhard

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Revive successful franchise owned by Eidos...

 

Tomb Raider

 

Garrett's boobs aren't big enough to make Thief popular with the masses, hence the lack of success. Unless the little girl at the end of T3 grows up and have implants done by the Order of the Siliconians.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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...

Thief 2 was not a commercial blockbuster and it's sales weren't lackluster. It was in between but it did not sell enough to keep Looking Glass Studios from having to shut down.

....

 

The primary reason why Thief 2 failed was poor marketing. Not enough people knew about the game and not many stealth games were being made. Especially an FPS game, it is a niche market until Splinter Cell broke that barrier.

 

It had more to do with Eidos blowing 30 million US$ out of the window for Daikatana, than with Looking Glass Studios spent 1 million US$ on Thief 2.

 

For the money that was sunk into Daikatana, we could have had at least 10 great games from Looking Glass Studios...and still have enough over to pay for Romero never ever touching making games again. :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I can't really see where they'd take Thief now. The game was good but the fan community is what elevated it to greatness, and I think it's appropriate that the franchise is succeeded by something of that community's own making. I think the people who will go to work on the Dark Mod once it is released have a better understanding of what made the Thief games great than whoever would end up doing another sequel.

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Well STiFU, I agree with sparhawk in that I don't think customers need to be aware of the engine limitations to be affected by it. Why would they be? The gameplay issues are there for all to see - the movement, the map limitations in size and freedom of exploration and so on.

 

Well that again is just a question of taste. I prefer TDS very much over HL2. You play FPS like that through once and that's it. There's nothing that would make it worth replaying it, because it's more linear than TDS and there's nothing to explore at all. Just regular Hitboxshooting and some nice physics... wooooohoooo! :D (If you want to bring up the source engine, then at least use the excellent Dark Messiah as an example and not such a lame ass FPS)

TDS is not an FPS so I would never directly compare it to HL2, except to say that I enjoyed HL2 much more.

 

People who come out with nonsense like "Just regular Hitboxshooting and some nice physics... wooooohoooo!" just make me laugh. So you're saying that Dark Messiah has no "Hitbox" attacking? It has the same elements as HL2 - enemies that are attacked and injured via a weapon-to-hitbox system and physics in the environment that you can use.

 

You are just being silly - every single game can be broken down into constituents like this; TDS, ha! Just lighting manipulation and AI algorithm exploitation. The physics even sucks!

 

If fact I could attack LIFE in the same lame way; Vision! LOL! Just light energy conversion into visual sensory perception!

 

It is the sum of the processes that makes anything, a game, vision, whatever, what it is. Trying to trivialise anything in this way is to sidestep the important point - what is the result of the sum of these sub-processes and what is the effect on you?

I want your brain... to make his heart... beat faster.

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Hehe, I see this is going to be a nice discussion... :) I think, no one can deny that HL2 belongs to the rather trivial gaming gernre. It's just a normal first person shooter like every other featuring nothing significantly new. It was done ok, but in general games like that bore me, which again is just a question of taste... ;) Dark Messiah in contrast gave the player a lot of different opportunities to finish a mission and there was a lot to discover, it actually felt close to thief sometimes. And that is what I like in a game. If I can never decide how to accomplish my aims, I can just go ahead and watch a movie. That is definitely not my definition of interactivity...

 

It is the sum of the processes that makes anything, a game, vision, whatever, what it is. Trying to trivialise anything in this way is to sidestep the important point - what is the result of the sum of these sub-processes and what is the effect on you?

Yeah, which is kind of the same I said: it's a question of taste. The "subjective effect" on me was, that that game didn't bring anything special and was boring, which is ending up in my trivialisation of the gameplay...

 

 

 

But you guys got some points about the engine. I didn't realize that the movement was linked to the engine, because of the bodyawareness. Ok, then we got the loading zones and the movement. This both sucks to the original thief fans, but I wonder whether the other potential customers could miss something they don't know.

 

I must admit that I actually finished Thief 3 before the other two thief titles. I only played the demo of Thief 1 and I loved it, but I couldn't buy it, because I was still too young. (I am 21 now, so you can calc back) So when I played TDS I didn't find the movement to be itchy at that point, but when I came back from T2 to TDS I absolutely hated it.

Since that game was also released for the xbox, it was presented to a mostly new targetgroup, which didn't know the thief series so far and is used to loading zones. So I guess we'd have to dig deeper for more reasons, why the game didn't sell well.

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They could easily make it a money-maker though, and a good game too. Look at HL2 - a money-maker and an excellent FPS. Why? Because people bothered to spend time on perfecting it.

 

If they just spent time on designing and writing rather than just doing it half-cocked, like TDS was, it could be great.

 

HL2 is good in your opinion. Not everyone likes the same kind of game, and not many people liked the Thief 1/2 type of game, even if they are all obsessed nutcases.

I'm sure there are lots of people who love all the sorts of games that I hate.

There is no way they are going to make a T1/2 game for ps3 or xbox360 owners, and there's no point even discussing it.

It'll go even further down the consolisation route than TDS did.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Revive successful franchise owned by Eidos...

 

Tomb Raider

 

Garrett's boobs aren't big enough to make Thief popular with the masses, hence the lack of success. Unless the little girl at the end of T3 grows up and have implants done by the Order of the Siliconians.

 

You're wrong on that one as well. Reason being Tomb Raider has already been revived. First it was revived as Tomb Raider: Legend and enjoyed selling over a million copies if i'm not mistaken.

 

Then to celebrate it's 10th anniversary it was brought back to her previous adventures (Tomb Raider 1 remake) in Tomb Raider: Anniversary. (10th Anniversary Celebration.)

 

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/itemsearch.asp

 

Both did good in scores and sales.

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I think, no one can deny that HL2 belongs to the rather trivial gaming gernre. It's just a normal first person shooter like every other featuring nothing significantly new. It was done ok, but in general games like that bore me, which again is just a question of taste... ;)

You are so, so wrong. HL2 is anything but trivial, and it most certainly brought some new things to FPS gaming.

 

The physics are used in a way that was never done before. It's not that other games don't have physics, but there is so much scope in HL2. The plot is great. It's just so dark and so different to that in HL1. It's almost like HL1 is just a prologue, and the way the cut-scenes are handled compounds it's brilliance. The end of HL2 is just fantastic. Valve do set-pieces like no-one else. Yes, we've seen it all now but HL2 set new standards for set-piece quality. Finally the art direction is just outstanding - the beauty of the dystopia still gets me, even when I play mods like Minerva.

 

Dark Messiah's strengths, imo, lie in it's replayability and the solidity of its visceral combat. It looks good too and I'm really disappointed that there is no editor. But it's plot and writing is some of the most predictable and juvenile claptrap ever put into a game. It was so bad it was embarrassing. I can't imagine how awesome that game would have been if they had good writers (and made it a tiny bit longer).

 

If you don't like FPSs then you won't like HL2 (and I suppose I'm fortunate in that there is almost no genre I dislike) but, and take this ok?; If YOU do not like certain genre your dislike of it may be due to that and not that it is a bad game. In fact this is HIGHLY likely. This is why you won't find me playing a racing game. I like FPSs and for an FPS fan HL2 was great, as are the following Episodes.

 

oDDity - you may be right about the consolisation thing, but I think that a compromise can be made. There are plenty of "non-console" games that have come out on consoles.

I want your brain... to make his heart... beat faster.

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I'll take it!! :) Still, it's not like I dislike any FPS, it's rather that I need to see real innovations. Maybe I just played HL2 way too late. I really enjoyed Prey, and you can imagine why. That game was really innovative, as was Portal, which can hardly be acknowledged a first person shooter though. Neither a FPS but a genre close TPS was Gears of war, which absolutely rocked my world, no matter it is a big console title. I played it through twice. This game is rather simple either, but it's a whole different experience in coop, besides its architectural beauty, massive graphics and evil characters. (Let's forget the crappy story for a moment) :D If you hate console games like I normally do, I'd still give this shooter a chance.

 

So as a conclusion let's just say we demand different things of a Shooter... :)

 

And I must support Oddity's oppinion as well. If there will be a thief 4, it'll be bad, because of the consolisation, which in my eyes means nothing more than simplifying every gameplayelement to that extend that every nut can finish the game without any problems in a couple of hours, or days.

Edited by STiFU
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You say that as if it were a good thing.

 

The masses already have some pretty good stealth games.

 

Actually, it's not the mass market appeal per se that puts me off a Thief 4, but I think these core concepts of which you speak, parallel platforming them on a console doesn't do them justice. The gameplay was honed so well that I feel like it's a "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" situation for most things, and if they make a sequel it's too predictable they're going to treat it as if something was broken and try to "fix" it. That and I feel like Thief(style gameplay)'s best days to come for a while are in FMs.

 

Besides, if they really want to make a new stealth game, there are plenty of fresh ideas they can try out before reprising the Thief franchise. I want to see the genre branching out more into new territory; that's something that mass market appeal might actually be good for. Even a modern day thieving game might be cool, but it doesn't need the connection to classic thief; they should try out new ideas in a new world.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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