Thief 4 is trash.

[Serpentine]

What else will they remove/hide, and can the QA and debuggers sustain the load?

Their UEd evidently (little birds) had a <5 minute autosave timer, due to it crashing so frequently that staff were asking to be moved to other projects/offices. When your editor is that unstable for an extended period of time. I have a feeling they will be pulling in vendor support in the 11th hour and scraping past with stability at the cost of other things.

[jtr7]

.............

Edited February 19, 2014 by jtr7

[stumpy]

weren't they originally going to use the crystal dynamics engine, the one that was used for the tomb raider reboot, unless I read it wrong somewhere, or did they switch to the unreal 3 engine because dishonored was made in it. Am probably wrong I usually am when its about what game engines did they use.

[Serpentine]

weren't they originally going to use the crystal dynamics engine, the one that was used for the tomb raider reboot, unless I read it wrong somewhere, or did they switch to the unreal 3 engine because dishonored was made in it. Am probably wrong I usually am when its about what game engines did they use.

For some completely unknown reason people thought they were using CD (cough ttlg), but it was evident that they were using UE3 from the start. The use was mostly because they were going to move part of the DX:HR team onto T4 once it was done, however quite early on in DX:HR they figured they would outsource a lot of asset work and some level design etc. As far as I know this pushed back the T4 timeline since they would not get people with experience directly. But it was back during the ol 08 shitfest and people played it safe and just used less staff.

[jtr7]

..............

Edited February 19, 2014 by jtr7

[roosterMAP]

I am so tired of people hating on thief 4 when they haven't even played it. Judging an 8+hr experience from 15mn of gameplay and a few rumors on its troubled development is stupid. You know what amazing games came out of troubled development? Deus ex 1, Thief 1, Half-life 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Morrowind, LA Noire, Fable, STALKER... the list goes on.

 

Developers also said in an interview that focus mode can be completely disabled from the main menu.

Also, Dishonored does NOT look like Thief 4... at all.

 

I hope that thief 4 is going to be great and I trust the developer (who made the best sequel to the deus ex franchise since the original) to do a good job.

 

Come on people, have a little faith.

Edited October 14, 2013 by roosterMAP

[Serpentine]

I am so tired of people hating on thief 4 when they haven't even played it.

 

I will admit, the PR guy for thief 4 has been pretty bad...

Thats the thing, a lot of this is not criticism of the game for existing -- but rather how badly it has been managed. This is RAGE all over again, a project which can never satisfy expectations that were made by the creators. A different name and this whole thing would never have happened.

 

It is the inability of the PR and marketing guys to understand expectations management. Perhaps the financial guys for not understanding the game itself, and likely pressuring everyone. The lack of acceptance of how important it is to take into consideration the PC market, because of its ability to make or break public perception, since news sites, social media and blogs etc are generally PC heavy.

 

What people are enjoying with this saga is that they simply are not learning. Each time they talk to interviewers, they say conflicting things. Each trailer that has been prepared months in advance, shows the same issues that people have been worried about. It all just goes to reinforce perceptions that its got problems. And their reaction now? to do more interviews and more canned trailers. If they addressed the issues in a formal trailer that actually showed people gameplay that disproves common perceptions, and did not just keep on talking to the media on loose ground; I'm sure they would be looking way better.

 

We can promise the world and miss, because we're not being paid to keep to our word, or even to please anyone. At the end of the day, everyone makes mistakes, but to keep making the same ones just results in a spectacle of stupidity.

[Mr. Tibbs]

The fact that the game has been in development for 5 years, and they still are showing buggy demos to journalists, and scrapping XP systems, four months before release, speaks volumes.

This is going to be a disaster. That the Thief series got caught in this messy, unfocused development is a gaming tragedy. It'll be years before an team gets another shot at the series.

[Sakonosolo]

I am so tired of people hating on thief 4 when they haven't even played it. Judging an 8+hr experience from 15mn of gameplay and a few rumors on its troubled development is stupid. You know what amazing games came out of troubled development? Deus ex 1, Thief 1, Half-life 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Morrowind, LA Noire, Fable, STALKER... the list goes on.

 

Developers also said in an interview that focus mode can be completely disabled from the main menu.

Also, Dishonored does NOT look like Thief 4... at all.

 

I hope that thief 4 is going to be great and I trust the developer (who made the best sequel to the deus ex franchise since the original) to do a good job.

 

Come on people, have a little faith.

Troubled development is one thing. Troubled development on top of having a garbage game that shits all over its predecessors is a completely different thing. They're doing EVERYTHING wrong. I seriously can't think of anything more that they could do worse.

 

As for the focus mode being able to be disabled, it doesn't matter. The game is designed around it. I was optimistic about all the casual things that could be turned off in Hitman Absolution too and lo and behold the game is almost broken when you do that because they game was designed with it in mind. Another thing is the HUD in Dishonored, which you could disable, but I recall at least one part of the game (which was one of the choices in one of the levels) that couldn't be completed because you needed the game to tell you exactly where to go. It'll be the same in this game, sure, you can turn the stuff off but it's not going to make the game any better and will probably make it worse.

 

Also I hope you know that, while Thief 4 is being made by the same developer as HR, it's not made by the same team, so there's really no reason to rely on them doing a good job, especially in spite of all the shitty things we've heard about the game so far.

[Melan]

I am so tired of people hating on thief 4 when they haven't even played it. Judging an 8+hr experience from 15mn of gameplay and a few rumors on its troubled development is stupid.

More than enough information has been released to draw conclusions. Games don't exist in some sort of information vacuum; people can be familiar with predecessors, business trends, competitors, and so on. (Even if publishers no longer release demos which would let us make fully informed purchasing decisions - but they obviously don't want that.)

 

If most everything about a game rubs me the wrong way, it is not likely to do a U-turn and become enjoyable. Especially since the problems in this case aren't just a case of a few poor GUI elements they can fix with a minor change - there are issues fundamentally at odds with the things that attracted me to the Thief series, and these issues were introduced in the early, fundamental stages of the design process.

[Serpentine]

More than enough information has been released to draw conclusions. Games don't exist in some sort of information vacuum; people can be familiar with predecessors, business trends, competitors, and so on. (Even if publishers no longer release demos which would let us make fully informed purchasing decisions - but they obviously don't want that.)

I would pay good money to see a meeting at which Squeenix ask for a public demo to be released a month before release. I can just imagine the look on the developer sides faces. Terror.

 

But hey, PREORDER AND GET A FREE MISSION!111

[Springheel]

I am so tired of people hating on thief 4 when they haven't even played it.

 

Right, because it's impossible to get a decent level of information from spending years reading developer interviews, following development blogs, watching trailers, watching gameplay demos, watching people _playing_ gameplay demos, and listening to the feedback of people who have played the game.

[jtr7]

...................

Edited February 19, 2014 by jtr7

[Serpentine]

... That looks mighty legit.

 

Now if you would just send me your CC details in PM, I will hook you up with a pair of real X-Ray Glasses. Hurry before someone else gets the last pair!

 

Feel like nuGarr3t without even leaving the safety of your secret clock-tower penthouse.

[jtr7]

.................

Edited February 19, 2014 by jtr7

[New Horizon]

Anyone try that download? I would be curious to see if it's real. I wouldn't mind trying this demo to see what it's all about.

[_Atti_]

It is obviously scam.

[New Horizon]

It is obviously scam.

 

It certainly seemed like one, considering you have to do a survey, but then I've seen stranger things turn out to be legit. I read the comments about it last night around 2am, after waking up for a baby feeding. lol I think I didn't pick up on the sarcasm and thought...well, if these guys think it's legit...it must be. haha

[stumpy]

the website traces to one person in Tampa Florida. depending on where you look, it says first 500 that download it get it then no more, elsewhere the first 750 that download it get it then no more. looks like a scam. I seems odd that the website got updated when America went into shutdown.

 

the person who originally put the link up on ttlg says its a virus.

Edited October 15, 2013 by stumpy

[Nacht7]

Damn! Now I'm curious...

Any brave souls willing to try it out?

[rich_is_bored]

You don't have to be brave. Just smart. Create a virtual machine using VirtualBox. Download and "play it" from inside the sandbox you've crafted. If it's indeed a virus, no damage done. Delete.

[jay pettitt]

Me thinks Eidos Montreal maybe wouldn't be using 4shared.com to distribute its beta releases.

[skacky]

Wait is this legit?

[Mr. Tibbs]

It's a virus/keylogger. If a beta had leaked, like it did with Human Revolution, everyone would know about it. That leak only happened because HR's release date was pushed back by 6 months, and as a consequenc they were in the position to digitally distribute the first ten hours of gameplay of a nearly finished game. Thief on the other hand is still in heavy development. Eidos Montreal's still overhauling systems. It sounds like QTEs are going to be removed next.

 

http://community.eidosmontreal.com/blogs/Take-5-QA-4?theme=thief

[New Horizon]

I don't recall seeing anything in there about QTE's...you just trying to get people going?