chakkman

I LOVE the TDS soundtrack. Just recently played the game through, an absolute cracker in terms of atmosphere.

Well, that was exactly what I said. IMO, the market for stealth games or "immersive sims" rather shrunk, proportionally. Most (all?) publishers won't even touch anything stealth or "immersive sim". I think it's pretty distinctive what Ken Levine said, for example. That he feeds on crumbs falling off AAA titles' table.

I saw this a few days ago. PvP/multiplayer is no-no for me though.

The games market in general has grown exponentially. Most play action games or "RPG's" like Assassins Creed though, so, I'm very doubtful that the percentual amount of people playing "immersive sims" (I don't like that genre designation at all, it says nothing about the kind of game really) is higher than it used to be. Steamspy for Deathloop (which is probably the best to compare as it wasn't sold for peanuts yet) says 500.000 to 1.000.000 owners, which sounds high, but, if you compare it to the really popular games, it's a fraction. IIRC, Dishonored 2 was lower at that point, which makes me think that Deathloop is more popular because it's a more modern setting with guns in it. By the way, you may know the game Myst. It used to be the most popular game world wide. Could you imagine that game being the most popular these days? The market has changed, people have changed. To be fair though, one has to say that video games used to be something for nerds, while the market has vastly opened up, of course, with especially console gamers making a big part of the market nowadays.

I'm happy when I find those as well. Let's just say that it's gotten increasingly more difficult over the years. I was really happy about Penumbra, Amnesia The Dark Descent and SOMA, for example, because, I wasn't at all convinced that I would like them. Turned out I liked them, a lot. Especially Amnesia Dark Descent was a really nice experience (and a very nicely rounded game in general, where you notice that a lot of thought was put into the game, and that it just "makes sense"). I think those are still niche games though. But, I guess so am I now. Niche.

I get that. The cult around these games speaks for itself though. Same with the original Tomb Raider games (don't get me started on the reboots...). I pretty much accepted that I'm not the AAA studios' target audience anymore. I've never been a big fan of Indie games, but, I added more and more of them in my Steam account throughout the games. Some of them are really nice (to avoid the term "great" ), and IMO also show a lot more creative freedom than modern AAA games. The games also show that the pressure of big projects is just not there, and the developers can afford more risks. This may be the future for me personally, as it allows things which I simply miss from the "big" games. It's sad, because, games I liked in the past were mainstream, and now I have to resort to the edge, but, I guess that's how things go.

No, I'm interested in what you personally consider to be a "great" game, when you talk about great modern games like you did. Dishonored and Prey, yeah. But, what is Prey exactly? I think it vastly builds up on System Shock's ideas. And Dishonored does the same with Thief and Deus Ex. Of course, you have a point about the rarity of genre defining games, fair enough. They are rare by definition. BUT, there's just so much copycat sh** these days, just made to bring in the hundreds of millions of € development and marketing money, playing as safe as possible, for a professional industry which kills creativity. That's the sad truth. Not to mention the way games have evolved over the years, into cinematic "let the player do as little as possible because he rather likes to watch a movie than do stuff for himself". I absolutely detest that development. I recently played through Gothic 1 and 2, and, it was quite an eye opener, TBH. No quest markers, riddles, no 10 minute cinematics inbetween, no magical focus view to know which items in the game world you can interact with, no item highlighting, no nonstop babbling companions... just good how it used to be. It's interesting, by the way: I always thought this mod was a reaction on the way Thief developed since Thief 3. For about the same reasons I just mentioned: Dumbed down gameplay mechanics. Personally, I don't find Thief 3 half bad, I recently played it through, and it was loads of fun again. But, Thief 4 was very badly received, because it not only implemented a lot of the modern aspects of games these days that I described, but, also because it pretty much failed in converying the vibe, atmosphere and characters of the original games. Thus I'm always surprised again that modern games are held in such high regards by you guys. I think most of them are absolutely bloody awful. I agree though that Dishonored, Prey, SOMA (in parts... I absolutely hated the babbling NPC's), Fallout New Vegas, or Dead Space are nice games. Are they great games, or genre defining games? Hm... I don't think so. Fallout 3 came out before New Vegas, and, if anything, you could call that genre defining. Amnesia came before SOMA, so did Penumbra before that. I think the industry had its pinnacle in the late 90's to early 2000's. If you take Deus Ex for example, it screams "Let the game designers roam free" at you from every pore. At least that's how I perceive it.

Name some great games from the last 10 to 15 years. Great like the original Thief's, System Shock 2 or Deus Ex. I know, I'm being a bit confrontational here, as I can't really see those games. Hard to develop such games anyway, when everything remotely AAA has to be a commercial success, thus will be developed in a safe manner, so that the expenses will be covered 99% sure. And, that's the thing really, and why there aren't any great games anymore. Note also, and that's my subjective opinion now, that games these days are way too cinematic, and way too little how games used to be: Games where YOU are the active protagonist, and don't walk through a movie with very little you have to do yourself. No doubt, games are great movies these days. That's not how I like games to be though. Games shouldn't be movies, they should be games.

I think the difference is that there was definite technical progress, and things which objectively make cars better these days. Nowadays' technical progress in games seems to be limited to graphical bombast. Which is sad.

Good question. There are not many new designs which are really innovative, or interesting to me.

What I also always noticed is that, when an industry or a "thing" gets popular, commercial and professional, the creativity atrophies. Happens in music, happens in games, happens in movies, simply everywhere. Must be why I still play games from the 90's, same with music. The peak for games for me were the late 90's, early 2000's. Thief, System Shock 2, Deus Ex. I consider those the pinnacle of creativity in game design. It's unfortunate that everything go so dumbed down after that. But, It's understandable I guess, especially when you consider today's audience.

Thanks. The most important settings for me to remember are the gamma and brightness settings, so, I'll just write the values down somewhere. Any particular reason why the settings are defaulted? Potential new or changed configuration settings which might be messed up on an update? If I recall correctly, the settings weren't set to default on former updates. I could be wrong.

Just wondering, but... is it normal that the TDM configuration reset itself after the update? Don't think I had that before. I had to set all the ingame options again, as they were all on default...

Yay! Grats to the release.

So, if I understand this right, this would be an optional setting which is not activated by default, right? I like the mantling the way it is.

You're right. Never knew it were 2 separate persons.

Yeah, I'm registered there. What I meant was: I'll just assume that @Shadow meant LGS (Looking Glass Studios).

What happened to Obsttorte? "Last visited October 2022".

What is TTLG? TBH, I'm a bit tired of those "legends" riding on their legacy. Talking about "egos". Warren Spector also does a lot of talk of how glorious his games were, and yet he didn't manage to bring about a proper game in years. The most prominent disasters being Underworld Ascendant and System Shock 3, which will probably never surface. Well, at least Randy Smith did some good stuff in the meantime. Although I also see quite a decline in the line of Arkane Studio's games... Deathloop didn't grip me at all, and I'm very sceptical that Redfall will.

Hmm... kinda bad that there was an omission to prevent the player from carrying a body up ladders and ropes. That would be a critical thing for me to fix, but, if there's already missions built around that "exploit"... Guess it doesn't even matter anymore then if the player can mantle everywhere with the body on his shoulder or not. I mean, what's more unrealistic than being able to carry 100 kilo plus bodies up ropes? Not even Schwarzenegger can do that.

What I also often noticed is that he likes to play with stereo effects, with the same "melody" or tones playing left and right slightly staggered and alternating left/right. You can hear the effect at time code 21:40 in the video I posted above, for example. Also notice the often recurring background rumble which is in a lot of the ambiences in the Thief 3, Thief 1 and Thief 2 OST. I think the guy is an absolute genius, by the way. And very versatile. E.g. he also did the soundtrack for SWAT 4, which is quite different to the Thief soundtracks (obviously).

I really like the Thief 3 soundtrack: I don't know if it's written in the video, but, the tracks are named in a descriptive way.

There were some changes to the beast in the tavern and some other enemies. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1150760/view/3657519988464705790

The thing is, if some mission author decides that he wants a whole area without any dark places (for whatever reason), and you can all of a sudden easily climb up a ladder, and dump all bodies on the rooftop, then that's not the way the author intended it to be, just because an update suddenly implements carrying bodies up and down ladders. Just a (stupid) example, there are probably much better examples. In the end, as you say, I don't see a compelling reason why you'd want to be able to make such acrobatics anyway when carrying a body, when there's more than enough spaces on the same level in most missions which don't require you to mantle up and down anywhere. Anyway, maybe I shouldn't get involved that much, as I'm a mere player, and never really contributed anything useful to the mod anyway.