Thief 5

[Kurshok]

Without getting all angry and saying "I'd rather they didn't" or the like, if they decided to make a Thief 5, but the Eidos Montreal team listened to real old school Thief series fans for gameplay mechanics and plot advice, what would you like to have happen on Thief 5 to salvage the series? If this was the last chance to fix the Thief series, and it could be done, what would your advice regarding it be?

[chakkman]

I'd rather they didn't. But jokes aside, i think it may depend on who they let do a potential fifth part. I wouldn't have an issue with Arkane Studio doing it, but they're already affiliated with Bethesda, so that's unlikely. I wouldn't want another part done by the team which did Thief 4, i think it's pretty much common consent that they didn't do a good job with it. I'm sure you would do an absolutely awesome Thief game with the technology which is present now, but, the feeling for the franchise has to be there, especially with such a cult franchise. Realistically though, one has to see that stealth games is not quite the stuff which sells like hot cakes these days. Most Thief fans have grown old by now, may not even be playing games anymore, so you have to tailor your game to the present audience, and, if you want to make your game sell well, you better don't do a stealth games. Even games like Dishonored, or the new Wolfenstein's have rather crude stealth dynamics, and the Splinter Cell series even completely refrained from what the games once defined. I'm not sure if anyone even wanted to do a pure stealth game like Thief anymore, let alone do a worthy successor, which i think will never happen. And, if it isn't a worthy successor, then i probably wouldn't want it either.

 

Maybe a reboot of Thief Gold would make more sense. Imagine that game with a current graphics engine, and some advanced stealth and movement mechanics, and better AI, wow. I doubt anyone would want to do that though.

Edited November 19, 2017 by chakkman

[Kurshok]

A remake of Thief Gold with modern tech would be epic. At least the Dark Mod is here. Shame Springheel hasn't made a main mission campaign yet to "cement" the setting, as it were. Something to drive home the idea of "this is what the series is about".

[Oktokolo]

My thoughts in random order:

 

If the new Thief will be sort of a sandbox again, they should add a fast travel system. Traveling thorugh the city of all-the-same buildings featuring insane geometry got annoying fast.

 

They should make the night less blue. Yeah, it is dark and cold and stuff - but some missions of The Darkmod show that it is possible to make the night look dark and cold, and have colorfull outdoors too.

 

They should get rid of locked animations. Let us gradually open doors and please drop the consolesque button-mashing sequences too.

 

They should drop boss fights and call-of-duty-style sequences, where you have to run down a preset path fast enough to survive. Such stuff does not fit well with a stealth game.

 

They should allow us to outsmart traps by clever positioning and triggering them by throwing stuff at them. There are not much traps in TDM missions. But when they are, they can always be outsmarted and reward cautious behaviour even if you did not notice them in time.

 

They really should allow Garrett to not beeing an idiot. The cutscenes and plot feature a good amount of facepalming. Always give the player the option to not walk into an obvious trap or do obviously stupid stuff. Yeah, i know, it is so much moar drama when Garrett does a frontal confrontation - but it also is an insanely stupid thing for a master thief to do. Next time let us just frame, poison or sniper that "Thief Taker General" and the Baron. Yeah, it does not make a good movie if i just sniper the super villian. But that is fine, because it is a game and not a movie anyway.

 

Make more modules or reduce the size of locations. I do notice the heavy reuse of modules and it really hinders navigation a lot if everything looks the same. Geometry was superb otherwise.

 

Drop the fake reflections. I do get confused if i see a window in a reflection that was not there last time i looked behind me. Use parallax corrected cubemaps, realtime reflections or just ordinary specular maps. No reflections are better than false reflections.

 

Most of the buildings' floor plans are not believalble at all. I guess, that is on purpose and because of level design. But there are TDM missions showing the possibility of sane room layouts. So please get a rwal world architect into your team.

 

Do not try to continue the old Thief series. You would need the original team for that. Without it, you are bound to fail. In that regard, it was a wise decision to not even try to do that but only using the "trade mark" for marketing.

[Oktokolo]

I wouldn't want another part done by the team which did Thief 4, i think it's pretty much common consent that they didn't do a good job with it.

They did not do a good job. But they did not do a bad one either. It is an average stealth game with good visuals and technically challenged sound design (forgot that one in my list, but the sound is really bad in that game). Don't be fooled by the name. It is not a part of the Thief series. It borrows some elements from it and they got the trade marks to aid advertising...

See it as some independent bootleg "influenced" by the genre, the original series established. then you can play it without having to puke most of the time.

 

They should try a second one. It will not be like the original series either. But that is fine. We got TDM and all the fan missions for the originals. And they could not catch the feeling of the originals anyway - no matter how hard they would try. But they diversify the genre. And i had some fun playing their "Thief" - even completed the "campaign" (well, it was more like a lengthy intro; but would not have completed it if i would not have had some fun with it).

[CarltonTroisi]

A remake of Thief Gold with modern tech would be epic. At least the Dark Mod is here. Shame Springheel hasn't made a main mission campaign yet to "cement" the setting, as it were. Something to drive home the idea of "this is what the series is about".

 

Well, "The Crucible of Omens" is supposed to be an official campaign but only the first of a planned 7 or 8 missions has been released.

 

It's understandable given the ambition and depth of the work, of course. But I wish there'd be some updates on it

[chakkman]

Don't be fooled by the name. It is not a part of the Thief series. It borrows some elements from it and they got the trade marks to aid advertising...

See it as some independent bootleg "influenced" by the genre, the original series established. then you can play it without having to puke most of the time.

 

I don't quite see how it is supposed to be seen as an "independent bootleg". They got the rights to use the name of the series, they got the rights to use everything in the franchise, and they got the rights to use the names of every character of the original games. It's a "reboot" in an alternative universe, but, it's quite obvious that they wanted to dress the franchise in a more "recent" dress, making it appeal to nowadays audience. Most probably also wanting to take benefit of the name, even though that's always a gamble, because you most likely will turn a lot of players off, if you do such a different game.

 

Anyway, i'll stick to what i wrote, i wouldn't want the same game studio to do a new Thief part. I think i even wouldn't want Eidos to have anything to do with it. Best would be Arkane and Bethesda. Unlike Eidos, they know how to handle classic franchises with care.

Edited November 19, 2017 by chakkman

[Epifire]

Well games have come back from worse in the past. I'd only like to see them make a Thief 5 if they took a big look at what the results were. They did indeed gamble that by dumping the old lore and mechanics that they'd attract a newer audience but didn't actually pull it off. If they returned to Thief's roots and started over with a proper sequel I'd be down for that (however skeptical I would be). Though right now I think it's safe to say Eidos would remark, "too soon" to that one. The loss is still all too relevant and the worst part about it is nobody wants to touch an IP that failed on a reboot.

 

The flip side is the attempt at trying to appeal to fans of the original series (and taking another huge risk) as we're very dedicated but also a very small fraction of their sales. Trying to appeal to an old fanbase that already hated your last game isn't exactly a good target demographic. Especially in modern day where trying anything new or, "breaking out of the norm" is financially very risky. If you bank on that option and fail, you're looking at possibly being shut down after a mediocre launch that fails to sell. And last I heard people like keeping their jobs.

[AluminumHaste]

I think it would only work out if the same guys doing the System Shock remake got the IP for it and did another kickstarter. I would back with an entire paycheck.