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Thief 4


chakkman

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I've paid 50 Euro for it, and although it may not be a "true" Thief successor nor an overhelming gaming experience, I must admit that I did not regret paying the price. The game is not as good as it could have been, but also not as bad as many people are claiming. It has its pros and its cons, and for me, they are pretty outweighted.

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Nice to know even AAA AI have trouble with doors sometimes....

 

Ah, the bugs in that game... :rolleyes: *excited voice* The bugs, man, the bugs... :laugh:;)

 

My personal favourite video about the character glitches and lackluster AI is this one:

 

 

B)

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don't resist, at a humblebundle price it surely worth it... Tomb reaider is also pretty good if you are not rebutted by all the QTE leading to various awful death...

Yeah, that was awful, too. In the beginning I thought it would develop towards a mixture of stealth/survival. But all the action/qte stuff really ruined it. And the bloody scripted ai. :( Played it through anyways. But if I would have paid 50 bucks for that one, I would really have get pissed of.

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But all the action/qte stuff really ruined it.

I've mixed feelings about that... while it is awful in term of gameplay it really add something to the narrative side... while I don't like QTE I feel that without it TombRaider would have looked pretty empty and repetitive.

Edited by elwing
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What's funny is that the T4 team waited until one week before the release to display some actual, non commented gameplay on youtube. Before that we only got to see little excerpts of game sections between scripted explosions and dramatic lines. If released a bit earlier, the simple gameplay video of the best levels played in maximum difficulty would have considerably changed the opinion of both the press and the gamers. Even if the game has severe issues, I still enjoy roaming on the city's rooftops - that's the best part of it.

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What's funny is that the T4 team waited until one week before the release to display some actual, non commented gameplay on youtube. Before that we only got to see little excerpts of game sections between scripted explosions and dramatic lines. If released a bit earlier, the simple gameplay video of the best levels played in maximum difficulty would have considerably changed the opinion of both the press and the gamers. Even if the game has severe issues, I still enjoy roaming on the city's rooftops - that's the best part of it.

 

I think we were all aware that there were sections like that in the game, the problem is that the developers decided to keep disrupting the natural flow of Thief type play by getting in the way to 'show' us something. It was ridiculous. All I wanted the game to do while I played it was leave me alone and stop pestering me. For a game that was presumably supposed to be Thief, it was a horrid experience.

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+1 except the horrid experience :)

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If released a bit earlier, the simple gameplay video of the best levels played in maximum difficulty would have considerably changed the opinion of both the press and the gamers.

 

 

I think the press and gamers based their final opinions on what they got to play, not on what they saw in the weeks leading up to the release. If the early videos had been fantastic and the gameplay just as poor, that wouldn't have resulted in a net increase in opinion.

 

The reason they probably didn't release much gameplay footage earlier is because the game was in an extremely buggy state even when journalists were getting to play it a month or two before release. After languishing in development for five years, I imagine there was considerable pressure to get it out the door, and the fact that so many bugs remain even now is a testament to how rushed the end was.

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I think the press and gamers based their final opinions on what they got to play, not on what they saw in the weeks leading up to the release. If the early videos had been fantastic and the gameplay just as poor, that wouldn't have resulted in a net increase in opinion.

 

The reason they probably didn't release much gameplay footage earlier is because the game was in an extremely buggy state even when journalists were getting to play it a month or two before release. After languishing in development for five years, I imagine there was considerable pressure to get it out the door, and the fact that so many bugs remain even now is a testament to how rushed the end was.

 

Exactly. It was no secret that that game was in a very buggy state late into development.

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After languishing in development for five years, I imagine there was considerable pressure to get it out the door, and the fact that so many bugs remain even now is a testament to how rushed the end was.

That's for sure, it's still a festival of glitches and audio aberrations...

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  • 2 weeks later...

That's for sure, it's still a festival of glitches and audio aberrations...

And old clichés :P

This game lives in the Deadly Shadows (pun absolutely intended :P) of Thief 2.....the story is potentially catching but really badly told (pagan and hammerite *HIDDEN* vestiges, where are you???) and "compressed" (see Crysis 3), some characters are simply stupid (ThiefTaker my ass General and Vittori), side missions are "my-first-FM" depth level, the City hub is badly segmented and badly exploited (but it's a beauty), the third person climbing mechanic is erratic.....Thief (4) is really the game you would love but can't love.

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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  • 3 weeks later...
NuThief had some interesting things, like the birds, but they were poorly executed.


The worst thing about it, IMHO, were the levels themselves. Each started out one way but ended in a completely different way. With that I mean, I wanted to, say, explore a brothel in a mission. And nothing more. But... the mission ends in some underground abandoned city that I had zero desire to explore because, well dammit, I wanted a brothel mission.


Or I wanted to play a mansion mission, so I started to the architect's house. Oh, that magnificent facade. This must be good, I thought. I go in... and mouses have smaller nests than that wreck of a house! And then... a murder, a chase, a burning tower, saving Basso, huge safe, survival of the fittest....


By the time the mission ended I was exhausted and flummoxed. I'd wanted a simple mansion mission. But that was only about fifteen-twenty minutes worth, while the rest was climbing up a towering inferno. Stupid beyond belief.


The developers didn't seem to get that in the original games, every mission had a specific location. Moving between locations was done with a cutscene, which I liked and would have preferred. That, I think, made the original games more re-playable (is that a word?), because if one was in the mood to play a mansion mission, they could do that. If they wanted an undead mission, go right ahead. You could replay one mission a gazillion times and nothing else, or all of them if you wished. Did we need to be chased by dogs through rooftops in NuThief? NO!


Had they made the architect's place bigger and better, had a cutscene, gone to the burning tower and saved basso, then had a cutscene, and go up to the giant safe... Well, that would have had three missions already had they spaced them better, sticking to larger, individual places for each mission. The overall time for the game would have greatly improved, and so would've the patience of the players, I think. Plus, I think it would have enhanced re-playability.


The only missions worth playing, to me personally, were the bank, the baron's mansion (that bit alone, as the crumbling bridge at the end is pure and utter shite, or is there someone who actually managed to steal everything there before getting burned, again and again?), and the start of the brothel mission. Thief 2 FMs are so much better than NuThief.


I wonder if there'll be a sequel... And if there will, will the devs learn from the feedback? Or will they continue without a single, cohesive vision, like they did with this one?


I am sorry I spent almost fifty euros on this dreck....

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I wonder if there'll be a sequel... And if there will, will the devs learn from the feedback? Or will they continue without a single, cohesive vision, like they did with this one?

 

They already got your money, that's all the feedback they need! (Sadly I'm only half joking)

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I think that when everyone you know who worked on it bows their head like a berated puppy when you bring the game up, they know what they did. The actual developers aren't even remotely blinded by the money: that's the attitude that caused the talented people to push out a crappy game, but it isn't theirs to begin with. If the suits were feckless enough to try for another, it's going to be with new people for sure.

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Wonder why that reboot sh** have to be anyway. If they plan to do a game with different people working on it which is different, they should just name it different, and do their own thing, instead of using the "Thief" franchise to create money with people expecting that it has anything to do with the original games. Yes, it has something to do with the original games, but so does Dishonored (Deux Ex and Thief), yet it's a different game with a different setting and different gameplay. So why not just make a different title? I guess they are shy of marketing expenses, and the effort to create a new game identity/brand. So they rather pick a name which people know and which already creates an identity. And that alone shows the complete lack of ideas or creativity (or rather the intention to make money rather than being creative. And of course that leads to mediocre games.)

 

Well a bit more ranting than i planned to in my own thread which was supposed to be less of a rant. :laugh: But can't help it...

Edited by chakkman
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I think that when everyone you know who worked on it bows their head like a berated puppy when you bring the game up, they know what they did.

I was pretty hyped for Thief 4.

But when i saw parts of it being presented by the development team, things happened.

First there was something proposed with XP earned by killing. That was cut from the game I think, but even that it was proposed made me think twice about the developers - and thus about the game.

Then there was the showing off of... don't know I think a lead developer or something. Talking about the swooping mechanism. In itself I didn't like it, and then the guy was always talking about how "powerful" it is. A developer... Trying to sell me on how powerful he made a feature?...

Noclip is superpowerful in thieflike games, why didn't they implement that as a skill?

 

To me there are enough hints, that not only the money was the reason for problems with Thief 4, the developers definitly played a role with that, in not thinking consequences of decisions through at the beginning.

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You can't really take what a person selling a product says and assume it's what they actually believe. They'll say anything to appeal to their audience, even as you see the sparkle in their eyes die mid-sentence. Conference shows and the consequent interviews are only useful for finding out what the game is through gameplay footage. Disregard everything that isn't raw gameplay footage (and even then try to figure out how much of it is representative of the rest of the game) at those shows, because they talk a load of shit during interviews. If it's a stage demo, ignore the dude talking and go off what you see because, again, everything they say is paper-thin buzzword spam. The more buzzwords you hear in an interview or stage demo, the more they're being paid to spout nonsense. The more effort they have to go to in addition to gameplay screenings, the worse the game probably is.

 

I mean it's common sense. Little Jimmy wanted to be a level designer, so he learned and it became his passion, then he grew up and men in suits wrote a script for him to present it on-stage. Little Jimmy doesn't agree with the script and thinks it sounds stilted and out of touch, but it's in his contract. That's if they even hire Little Jimmy. They might take his work and have Paul Marketing completely misrepresent it before his very eyes. Nobody wakes up in the morning and genuinely thinks "I know, I'll go put hours and hours of my time into a shitty game that'll garner me a bad reputation, then go lie at a few conventions so that my bosses can take a bigger cut of the shadily earned sales than me." The people who build the thing are generally talented, passionate people in my experience, and I've made a good few friends out of them. It's like Robert Patterson hating his role in Twilight with a passion. Dude loves acting but hates what he was made to do on that one job. The people behind AAA productions typically loathe the end result when they see it from a distance but talk about the great time they had making it. They're skilled people who enjoy their jobs, but the direction they're made to throw their work is decided by out of touch people who know more about economics than they do about the entertainment industry.

 

From what I've seen, it's not the devs' intention to create a crappy, buggy, lukewarm game, and it's not their decisions that screw it up, but the people driving them.

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This is why indie games for the PC gaming crowd are blowing up in a big way right now. Look at Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, FTL, Terraria, etc. People are waking up and realizing that by keeping the development team small, the creators are holding on to all that creative power that would be all but lost answering to publishers' demands at a AAA-studio.

Edited by Morat
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They already got your money, that's all the feedback they need! (Sadly I'm only half joking)

And you're sadly right.

[Marx mode]

This is the half blindness of capitalism :P

[/Marx mode]

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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