Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

A new way of looking at Thief 4


Springheel

Recommended Posts

I feel like many people complaining about this reboot tend to ignore or forget about how simplified certain aspects of Deadly Shadows was compared to the first two games although it was still a great game in it's own right.

 

I often forget about the 3rd person in TDS, but when I'm reminded I realise again that the reason I don't hold it in as high esteem as T1 and 2; the 3rd person borked the 1st person movement.

 

Cheat-lean, lean/sidestep falling, lurchy movement. All mentioned itt. I bet that's why rope arrows weren't included - the 3rd person body probably got trapped all the time.

 

 

With regards to the system specs - TDS's were a bit unreasonable at the time iirc. T4s are very reasonable. Surprisingly so in fact. I haven't upgraded for a while and I still just about meet recommended specs. It's like the tech rush has slowed down or something.

Edited by Subjective Effect

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

TDS marked the moment when stuff like that came to an end.

 

In fairness, Ion Storm did go out of business shortly following the release of TDS.

 

But I understand the point about dev's putting less time into correcting bugs, etc.

Edited by Deadlove
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, back then a lot of people were still on Win98. They also fell for the load of crap which was the Geforce 4 MX series of cards. I was fortunate to be on XP with a shader-capable card, so I ran the game fine.

 

There was a Geforce 4 MX and a Geforce 4 TI. The MX did not have shader support but the TI did. Of course a lot of clueless users had the former.

 

I had a Geforce 3 Ti500 (still have it and it still works) at the time and it got me through the GF4 and "FX" squirrel cage blower eras just fine. It was a great card.

Edited by Lux
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't upgraded for a while and I still just about meet recommended specs. It's like the tech rush has slowed down or something.

 

No, that's just the 7 year old consoles bringing everything development wise to a crawl. I despise consoles and this is the main reason, they slow down next gen everything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We don't tend to ingore that at all. We didn't and still don't like that about TDS, either. I've made a point, myself, to mention it a few times here alone, at TTLG, and the Eidos boards, and everywhere EM peeks in that I know of. Since 2008, I, and many others, have been hoping and expressing our desire to see those issues rectified, not copied and made even more of a feature. Oh well. We also don't give a rats ass about how gereat it is if it's not even playable for reasons you guys keep seeming to ignore. Around and around we go...

 

 

:rolleyes:

 

Why not respect the OP? Isn't there a "Thief 4 is trash." thread you can post this in? We're all painfully aware of your disdain.

Edited by Lux
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Springheel, interesting thread.

Tbh, I don't really have a new way of looking at Thief as I have always remained open-minded throughout development.

I can only judge the poker game when all the cards are on the table; so to speak.

 

I have liked/enjoyed what I've seen so far in the game. All that's required now is for me to truly "feel" it - and I can't do this until I experience for real and actually play the game. I've preordered....stay tuned.

Other than that... I hope the majority of taffers enjoy the game. If not, I hope it doesn't prove to be too much of a disappointment.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

:rolleyes:

 

Why not respect the OP? Isn't there a "Thief 4 is trash." thread you can post this in? We're all painfully aware of your disdain.

 

They're fighting the good fight as the vox populi and we're the foolish sheeples who want to judge it by its own merits rather than compare it to a game that came out 15 years ago.

 

I'm hoping for at least as much fun as Dishonored gave me. That was easy, uninspired and generic but it was fun. A good few hours of fun is all it takes for me to feel my money was well-spent. I've had my TDP/TMA fun and I've enjoyed TDS for different reasons, now I'm having my TDM fun. To be honest I can see myself getting tired of the gameplay, just because I've played hundreds of hours of it over the past decade. Now I'll probably enjoy this for completely different reasons but I'm not going to complain about a AAA publisher releasing a dumbed-down version of an old franchise. They can still be fun and they probably will be, despite all their simplified mechanics. Compare Deus Ex to this studio's Human Revolution. The latter is way, way more simplified and I actually enjoyed it a ton more than the first. This Thief isn't going to come close to resembling its predecessors, but I know for sure I don't have a stick up my ass telling me it's a bad thing if it doesn't pander to me because I complain somewhere the devs can see it. They've already changed a load of things people have decried but all those people do is check it off and yell "next" in a 65 page circle-jerk disregarding the efforts of people who've worked at it for years, simply because it doesn't resemble old memories they have. I don't understand the mentality that the next game in the series has to play and look the same as those before it, only shinier and more optimized. Honestly, just take it for what it is and enjoy it for what it is, not for how similar it is to ye olde series. If you're so hell-bent on prejudice, why bother to make a big ol' self-indulgence thread anyway? "I'm not going to buy this but I'm sure as Hell going to let people know about it. Nothing will change during this thread; I will simply re-iterate myself and echo others who agree, thanking them for their support in this hard time. For the good of the sheeples." All this obnoxiously exaggerated hatred for trying something new that resembles the contemporary rather than the dated, and all the while the devs are seeing it and they're just:

 

Woody-Harrelson-Wiping-Tears-Money.gif

 

Buy it, don't buy it, say why and then leave it. I preferred it when it was near impossible to contact devs. That way, you got what you got and you either liked it or didn't, no pre-flop all-ins based on nothing concrete for months before release.

Edited by Airship Ballet
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Springheel, interesting thread.

Tbh, I don't really have a new way of looking at Thief as I have always remained open-minded throughout development.

I can only judge the poker game when all the cards are on the table; so to speak.

 

I have liked/enjoyed what I've seen so far in the game. All that's required now is for me to truly "feel" it - and I can't do this until I experience for real and actually play the game. I've preordered....stay tuned.

Other than that... I hope the majority of taffers enjoy the game. If not, I hope it doesn't prove to be too much of a disappointment.

 

The only disappointment for me right now is the freakin' wait time!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@New Horizon: Didn't you have a part in the development of TDS? Or am I just remembering wrong?

 

No, but I was a Moderator on the Ion Storm forums. I also put together the Minimalist Project and a few of the fixes for that were assisted by former TDS devs who were kind enough to point me in the right direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, that's just the 7 year old consoles bringing everything development wise to a crawl. I despise consoles and this is the main reason, they slow down next gen everything.

I thought that but then there are games with much higher system specs and resolutions than the consoles. And extra graphics tech. Take Batman AA for example. It looks good on a PS3 but much better on a PC because it's higher res and has a whole bunch of physics things possible in it that you can't have on PS3. All the Crytech stuff is higher quality (if you have the power) on PCs, isn't it?

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All the Crytech stuff is higher quality (if you have the power) on PCs, isn't it?

 

Generally yes but those games have been so gimped by console design parameters. Even the current gen consoles just now coming out are not on the level of a high end gaming PC right now. So in 5-7 years.... bleh.

 

Look at the original Crysis. It touted "large open landscapes", "long view distances", etc. Crysis 2 I also played and everything in it just felt smaller and contained. Crysis 2 had to dump most of that in favor of 5 year old consoles. I haven't played Crysis 3 because of the sadness that was...Crysis 2 but from what I've seen its just more of the same Crysis2 stuff.

 

Sure they run and look better on PC, what doesn't, but the overall game architecture, map boundries, load zones, etc. that have to be altered to fit within console constrainsts just kill the experience for me.

 

The new consoles are much more capable so we will probably get a good 2-3 years of great games coming out but after that all the limitations are going to put us right back where we were prior to their launch. I guess all about how much money companies can squeeze out of existing products but seems like they'd do better to have a 2-3 year release cycle on new consoles.

 

Only problem with that is when the platform completely changes, developers have to learn the new platform again for the new gen and that's expensive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The progression is as gradual and unnoticeable as somebody you see every day aging. I went back to play GTA IV just a few days ago and damn, it looks and plays like a PS2 game to me now. I may be cynical about the baby steps up each hugely expensive hardware upgrade is but it makes a hell of a difference over a few years.

 

It depends on how the devs use the hardware, too. The PC will always be the prettier, higher FPS alternative but GTA V looks pretty great on ye olde 360. They may be comparatively crippled but they still hold their own in some respects. I say that as a PC master race enthusiast, too.

Edited by Airship Ballet
Link to comment
Share on other sites

They're fighting the good fight as the vox populi and we're the foolish sheeples who want to judge it by its own merits rather than compare it to a game that came out 15 years ago.

I'm hoping for at least as much fun as Dishonored gave me. That was easy, uninspired and generic but it was fun.

 

The big difference there is that dishonored didn't have a precedent to live up to. You can judge such a game on its own merits easier than you can judge a game that needs to be coherent to a series. No matter how long ago it came out, what made it fun made it fun.

 

I often use XCOM as an example, because it's a good example (or Jagged Alliance - but I prefer XCOM because JA3 is a hideous game either way). The stuff that made the old ones fun wasn't so much the plot as it was the gameplay mechanics involved. Come a decade later and the sequels come out not featuring half of what made them commendable in the first place. Things could improve instead of being replaced, complex systems could be made easier to understand instead of streamlined or stripped apart. I don't have a problem with simpler systems, I just have a problem with the wrong mentality on making sequels. Like I usually say, the recent XCOM, as it is, would be a rather good spin off (despite the bland voice acting and characters and generic soundtrack).

 

This mentality mostly stems from the unjustified fear that people these days aren't willing to be challenged. It's bad enough that this generation is getting flooded with press-button-to-win kind of crap or "quick-time-event-them-ups" (as Nerd3 eloquently put it).

 

When it comes to thief, turning him into a hollywoodish super-hero that goes up against a typical B-Movie villain is an amusing thing to do, considering the series' plots used to be intelligent ones. It's as if Stephen King suddenly wrote a sequel to Salem's Lot featuring a stereotypical silver-bullet gun-toting bad ass smoking a cigar and ready to pop some vampires Commando style. Now that wouldn't make much sense, would it?

 

I really hope we're all wrong (all of us with a negative view) about this game. I don't yet see how it can happen, but I hope it does.

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I say that as a PC master race enthusiast, too.

 

Lord Gaben be praised!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Skaruts

 

The problem is that people really aren't willing to be challenged nowadays; it's not an unjustified fear. You can go check out any general gaming forum you like on a game and there'll be illiterates like Garreth who can't take good advice and just rage and moan when it doesn't go their way. They condemn the company and the series and they make a net loss in sales. People never have been consistently willing to be challenged, though. The vast majority of people just straight-up aren't good at video games. You play any multiplayer game, be it co-op or competitive, and you'll find there are people you can walk over and there are people you have a tough time with, and others who just play it obsessively. It's the same as in The Gatehouse, the FM that just came out. Tons of people were struggling with the simplest of mantling at the end of the mission, and that's because they either grew up playing one type of game in particular or have vastly decreased their playtime in later life. People are, for the most part, casual gamers. You aren't going to sell copies if you don't make it possible for people to take the easy route. I'm playing Dune Legacy with the updated AI and Jesus Christ it takes an hour or two of retries until I finally manage the one mission. Average Joe McCallofDuty would have gotten angry, broken some hardware and gone to whine on IGN's forums by now. It's always been the same, though. Thief, Doom, Unreal Tournament, Quake, XCOM, Daggerfall, Anvil of Dawn... yhadda yhadda, they all have crazy easy difficulty settings if you want it like that. They also all have crazy difficult settings, same as Thiaf purportedly does. You can impose a playstyle to make it difficult if there really isn't anything built into the game but in this case there's tons you can turn off, as far as I know. Even if there wasn't, I'd play something else for difficulty and this for enjoyment. Entertainment =/= difficulty when it comes down to it.

 

Also with regards to it having to live up to its series, that's a purely psychological thing. People always argue that devs should have called it a spin-off and that it doesn't live up to the Thief name and that on its own it'll be decent but it's tarnished the series forever so on, so forth. Well turn that around; why can't people just treat it like a spin-off? No Stephen Russell, no Looking Glass, no Builders or Keepers or whatever lore they've missed out. It's a game about a dude sneaking around a city, nabbing stuff and meeting supernatural ghoulies of the night. It's called Thief. They use it as a means to pull in people who enjoyed the series, granted, but it sure as hell isn't a sequel to the first three. Think of it differently and you suddenly take it a lot less personally. It is a different game, it isn't a Looking Glass sequel and is essentially a game in its own right. Why not treat it like one instead of mourning predecessors past?

Edited by Airship Ballet
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I reached my liking quota for the day after reading through XendroX's amazing model post but I completely agree with you Airship Ballet. Approach a game on its own and don't try to hold anything upto it and you can fairly judge a game on its own merrits, it's the only way really. Don't over hype and don't trash it just come in neutral.

 

The last game I really hyped myself up for and was let down was Oblivion.. not because its a bad game either (it's a fantastic game) but because I was placing it in a god tier level game expecting a daggerfall/morrowind with modern graphics and all of these other things when really if I just approached it as ok.. this is it's own game and don't compare it just enjoy it. We are consumers not reviewers so we should enjoy things on their own and if they are still shit well then yeah it's shit but if you don't give it a chance then that's your own fault.

 

So many people have already made up their minds about Thief which is sad but hey it's their loss. I'm fairly certain that I will enjoy the game as I play it and after i'm done.. I can come back to TDM and the Thief 2 FM's, I get the best of both worlds instead of sitting like a Gollum wannabe obsessing over such trivial things that are meant to be enjoyed.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Airship Ballet, but it's one thing to motivate people to get challenged and another to motivate them to be lazy (I wanted a better word for that...). Many people are hardly ever motivated to stop being lazy, or even to think too much, and a good example of that is the way the dumbest shows on TV are among the most viewed. The problem resides in the way businesses are prioritizing their products. They're placing first what is likely to be profitable, and maybe if there's some space they'll place something instructive or intelligently entertaining.

 

People will buy almost anything that is well marketed regardless of its quality, and if businesses had any sense of integrity they could pretty much turn it all 180º. At first there would be a loss of income, but there's no reason to believe it wouldn't catch up to what it was over time, as long as marketing campaigns kept being decently made.

 

The snowball effect is the key. The more they sell dumb things, the dumber people become, and the less likely they are to ever want to be mentally challenged. But it's possible to invert that snowball effect to positive consequences.

 

Similarly with games, the more often you leave challenges aside the more you're contributing to move things towards the lazy side. And perhaps also the more you're turning the gaming industry towards becoming a movie industry.

 

At this point you can say "there are people who don't have time or patience". Fair enough point, as far as I'm concerned. But there's plenty of room to make games to cater to those people without ruining series with sub par sequels.

Edited by Skaruts
  • Like 1

My FMs: By The Cookbook

Link to comment
Share on other sites

(...) and the less likely they are to ever want to be mentally challenged.

 

That sounds vaguely like saying "your dog smells better than you". Very open to misinterpretations... :) Not intended, though.

 

 

Don't think you read that last part.

 

I did but forgot to address it.

 

Well, simply because it wasn't marketed as a spin off. It's "not a sequel" in the very same way TDS "wasn't" a sequel: because it's intended to attract new people. For that effect they both just refrained from using 3 and 4 in the titles. Marketing techniques.

 

EDIT: I must point out though, that I'm open to admit that T4 may not actually "ruin" the series. JA3 totally ruined that series, and the next ones just kept stepping on its dead remains (here's hoping Full Control can revive it). XCOM didn't really ruin the series, it just brought it back but left many fans wanting a bit more (like getting half a cookie). And maybe T4 doesn't, too.

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Purely psychological techniques that naysayers can't seem to look past. Serialising is purely logistical, made to let people know what intellectual property it is and to take audiences from previous titles as guaranteed sales day one. It's a business; gotta make money or no more food for you. Having said that, sequels are in no way obligated to so much as resemble those that came before it. There is almost always some tangible thread pulled through them all that unifies them, but beyond that they're their own games. Friday the 13th ended up in space and Final Fantasy uses a different universe, battle system, characters and meta in almost every game.

 

This game is called Thief; it's a game about sneaking and it was advertised to the people who enjoyed the Thief series as well as everybody else, which is also about a thief. Similarities stop there. Like I said, no Russell, no Looking Glass, no late '90s culture, nothing. Call it a reboot, call it a spiritual successor, whatever you like, there's nothing tying it down to the original games but the name and the overly nostalgic fanbase who got sucked in by the marketing and are now pissed off because it's not Thief The Dark Metal Age Project Mark II Electric Boogaloo. It's nostalgia, it's longing for a past that is still accessible elsewhere and it's presented in the whiniest way possible in most cases.

 

I don't really mind how negative people are about a game that doesn't exist yet: their tunnel vision only affects their enjoyment.

Edited by Airship Ballet
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having said that, sequels are in no way obligated to so much as resemble those that came before it. There is almost always some tangible thread pulled through them all that unifies them, but beyond that they're their own games. Friday the 13th ended up in space and Final Fantasy uses a different universe, battle system, characters and meta in almost every game.

Well, they have no obligations at all. But...

(...) if Stephen King suddenly wrote a sequel to Salem's Lot featuring a stereotypical silver-bullet gun-toting bad ass smoking a cigar and ready to pop some vampires Commando style. Now that wouldn't make much sense, would it?

If you never read Salem's Lot, it's a highly realistic take on vampire huntings.

 

Friday 13th wasn't an intelligent series to begin with... (don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it when I was a kid)

 

Final Fantasy is a series of completely independent episodes (most of them). Quite the opposite of Thief series. Or Sherlock Holmes.

 

Thief is called Thief, but Thief still features Garrett. That there isn't a Stephen Russel is another story, it's still the same Garrett despite the differences in his looks.

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it's still the same Garrett despite the differences in his looks.

 

Only when it suits your argument, otherwise he's NuGarrett.

 

And yeah, that was my point about Final Fantasy. They're all different games that are judged independently but are under the umbrella of 'Final Fantasy' because they're all made by Square and are RPGs. Picking up on the fact that there's a guy called Garrett and saying that means it must adhere to the values and mechanics of the first three is nonsense. That's like taking Final Fantasy and saying that since there's a Cid, a Biggs and a Wedge in almost all of them, they must all be the same but revamped since they're in a series and share similarities.

 

It's just nostalgics refusing to believe that the original Thief games are long dead and that the values of the time that made it what they are are gone. The entire games industry has been revolutionised time and time again since then. You'll never, ever get such a small dev team working on a non-indie game now and certainly not on one being published straight into the AAA scene. People need to move on, enjoy LGS' Thief (because it isn't going anywhere) and give this thing a fair chance as its own game. If people can't, that's their issue, but it's pretty damn close-minded.

Edited by Airship Ballet
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Only when it suits your argument, otherwise he's NuGarrett.

 

Don't make assumptions about me based on what other people say that I've never hinted at. I don't have a fanboyish mentality.

 

Especially when what I said goes right against that assumption.

Edited by Skaruts

My FMs: By The Cookbook

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't make assumptions about me based on what other people say that I've never hinted at. I don't have a fanboyish mentality.

 

Especially when what I said goes right against that assumption.

 

Well then if it's not NuGarrett, what is it? It's certainly not Garrett Garrett because he has a completely different voice, methodology and frame of mind given the coverage thus far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      Please vote in the 15th Anniversary Contest Theme Poll
       
      · 0 replies
    • Ansome

      Well then, it's been about a week since I released my first FM and I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised by its reception. I had expected half as much interest in my short little FM as I received and even less when it came to positive feedback, but I am glad that the aspects of my mission that I put the most heart into were often the most appreciated. It was also delightful to read plenty of honest criticism and helpful feedback, as I've already been given plenty of useful pointers on improving my brushwork, level design, and gameplay difficulty.
      I've gotten back into the groove of chipping away at my reading and game list, as well as the endless FM catalogue here, but I may very well try my hand at the 15th anniversary contest should it materialize. That is assuming my eyes are ready for a few more months of Dark Radiant's bright interface while burning the midnight oil, of course!
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...