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Thief 4 - That Bad?


bobrpggamer

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Looks like I'm gonna have to be THAT guy. My opinion is as such thaaaaat.... Styx sucks.

 

 

I didn't like Styx either, and stopped playing after only a level or two. For me there was no sense of immersion. The guards were so robotic and the levels were so obviously designed to provide cover that I never really felt like I was actually in a real place.

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Bikerdude: another Through The Looking Glass Alumni.

 

Just a question, how old were you when The Dark Project was released sometime in 98, I was 31, and was blown away by it, when FPS's were all about finding the best guns - except Half Life.

28 young man! but I didnt discover T1 till a little while after that..

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I played Thief 4, and yes there is no anywhere jump/mantling. Its the one thing that frustrates you the most with it. Places that

you should obviously be able to climb over you can't. The whole idea of a thief is agility and this game takes that away from you.

What with no free jumping, and floating markers saying go here. This attitude of developers that all players are morons that need

to be hand held through a game is just insulting. I havn't finished it, because it just makes me angry at how patronising the developers

are towards players. The game looks gorgeous, and very atmospheric, but I just hate the whole quicktime mechanic.

 

Save yourself the grief, don't play it.

Edited by NeonsStyle
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I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Well, at least the markers can be turned off in the menu. This was one thing, Iiked about Thief 4: You have a lot of possibilities to modify the difficulty and hud. So, if you don't like the markers just turn them off. If you don't like the minimap, turn it off. If you don't like the "special abilities", don't use them. Just because a game offers an (optional) option, you are not forced to use it. And the "not jumping anytime you want" was also not too bad. It is true, that there are a couple of instances, where I would have liked to climb up, but it is less limited than people say. You can vault onto most obstacles, as long as they are not too high and you get feeling for the right height pretty quick.

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OK I've got a confession to make - one of the reasons I kinda liked Thief 4 (I have to say "kinda" because I almost feel like I have to apologize for enjoying the game) is that I am not a true Thief alumnus. I've never played Thief 1 and have only played the demo of Thief 2 (and for the demo I didn't get very far because I didn't "get" the sneaking concept at the time compared to most other FPS titles).

 

Ever since I found The Dark Mod however I became a lot more appreciative of the nature of true Thief-style sneaking games and how immersive they can be, so despite the formula being a bit distilled in Thief 4, I could still enjoy it for what it was. If I was a hardcore Thief fan though, I would probably have more of an issue. I see a lot of parallels with Deus Ex: Invisible War. I find that game rather dull, but if I wasn't a big Deus Ex 1 fan then maybe I could have appreciated Invisible War more as its own game rather than comparing it to the original.

 

Unfortunately I missed out on the optimal time to play Thief 1 & 2, but I find The Dark Mod to be a very worthy alternative. :)

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Sometimes developers put what I call player clip (something I learned with Half Life 2's Hammer editor) just to save time and effort to get the game out, some games are so

linear that you think you are playing Dungeon Master. I like to explore the levels or missions to find different approaches to the destination, like the way Deus Ex was famous for.

 

If you can turn off the "right here 2m" then that would be better in a game that is already linear enough, from what I have seen so far in Thief 4, but in huge games such as Morrorwind it can be a bit hard to pinpoint where to look for this or that, now if it had Oblivion's marker system then I would have not spent 2 days trying to find a necklace for some woman.

 

Maybe game developers cater to children or lazy teens, I don't know but I know they cater to the X-box and PlayStation where people turn on auto aim on - Yeah auto aim.

 

I think that the first 2 Thief games would not have sold that many copies for the N64 or PS2, it's an acquired taste for sure. Now every game is cross platform (except indie games) and has to have this or that to be right for this or that console while not pissing off the PC gamer's too much.

 

I know that the console is probably a higher market and you also do not have to add all the code for all of the different hardware, such as sound card, video card, physics system and so on. I have no consoles, I had a PlayStation 3 for a month to play baseball and Football games, and I had a genesis in 92 that I will nor curse at because it was a good console and also all I could afford as the time and the 386 (the cheapest compared at the time of the 484) IBM compatibles were around $2,000 with a monitor.

 

I don't dislike console players I just don't like consoles, but the hand holding way too may cut scenes are for the console players.

 

BTW who uses a x--Box 360 for FPS games who did not play thief 2 or even Half Life, it has to be hard to aim - without auto aim on at least

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OK I've got a confession to make - one of the reasons I kinda liked Thief 4 (I have to say "kinda" because I almost feel like I have to apologize for enjoying the game) is that I am not a true Thief alumnus. I've never played Thief 1 and have only played the demo of Thief 2 (and for the demo I didn't get very far because I didn't "get" the sneaking concept at the time compared to most other FPS titles).

 

Ever since I found The Dark Mod however I became a lot more appreciative of the nature of true Thief-style sneaking games and how immersive they can be, so despite the formula being a bit distilled in Thief 4, I could still enjoy it for what it was. If I was a hardcore Thief fan though, I would probably have more of an issue. I see a lot of parallels with Deus Ex: Invisible War. I find that game rather dull, but if I wasn't a big Deus Ex 1 fan then maybe I could have appreciated Invisible War more as its own game rather than comparing it to the original.

 

Unfortunately I missed out on the optimal time to play Thief 1 & 2, but I find The Dark Mod to be a very worthy alternative. :)

It's a nice alternative in terms of gameplay, but it will never match the atmosphere and narrative of the original thing.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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If you can turn off the "right here 2m" then that would be better in a game that is already linear enough, from what I have seen so far in Thief 4, but in huge games such as Morrorwind it can be a bit hard to pinpoint where to look for this or that, now if it had Oblivion's marker system then I would have not spent 2 days trying to find a necklace for some woman.

You raise an interesting point of what I consider an issue with a lot of modern games. Objective markers are very common place in a lot of games nowadays, and no doubt a lot of the motivation to use them is due to the mainstreaming and increased accessibility of games. Fortunately you can turn them (and a lot of HUD elements) off, but here's the problem - I get the feeling that many games are designed with these HUD elements in such a way that if you turn them off, thing become abnormally difficult because the developers didn't balance the game to work well with their absence. I just don't trust turning off most HUD elements these days because I don't want to expose myself to unnecessary frustration because the developers were under the assumption that you can't get lost because it's clear where you need to go.

 

Part of this is due to the fact that games do a LOT more than older titles and have far more visual density. Some people enjoy being lost and having to stumble across objectives like this, or try to use the in-game map or follow wall markings to know where to go. That's fine, but given that older titles didn't have these features, they had to construct things like visual landmarks and design areas such that you could find your bearings if you paid attention. Maybe I'm just talking shit and pining for the old days, but I stay away from turning off most indicators and HUD stuff unless it's really obnoxious.

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OK here's what I figured: Thief 1 and 2 mission "watch the next brilliant video before the mission brief https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj3948yVzxs no sound but the idea is there and that may never be reproduced, then narrated by Garret his mission brief, load out, and "finish the mission - period"

 

I have played a lot of late 80' and beyond RPGs, and the puzzles and finding this key or what do I do to progress or I cannot continue (without the walkthroughs on the internet) I have hated that, cryptic illogical nonsense that stopped the game in it's tracks. This would be another exception to having some type of aid.

 

By the mid 90's the games seemed easily enough that the hand holding (with the devil - sorry just popped in my head) was not necessary, until the huge game worlds were introduced. I may be able to turn off the HUD, but the start of the game had me quickly following whatever her name was, its much more cinematic and the lack of "do the mission" Dishonored had this for the most part.

 

So I am about to go play it and see if I have more freedom in the levels or areas or whatever. I have a 3.3GHz i7 3960x and a 1080 GTX so in the heat of the day I cannot play with my CPU shooting out 128 degrees, and my GPU shooting out 140 degrees with a well ventilated PC, and I have no air conditioner.

 

I just thought of something, i am sure you all know komag, and his amazing tutorials for here and Thief3edit. Well I bought his 6 CD or DVD massive thief FM's tutorials, editors, and the like and found out he lives in my county.

 

So Komag come have a beer with me, and thank you for the massive help in your tutorials. Anyway just say hi to him for me, I still have his tutorials printed and kept in binders to this day.

Edited by bobrpggamer
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You raise an interesting point of what I consider an issue with a lot of modern games. Objective markers are very common place in a lot of games nowadays, and no doubt a lot of the motivation to use them is due to the mainstreaming and increased accessibility of games. Fortunately you can turn them (and a lot of HUD elements) off, but here's the problem - I get the feeling that many games are designed with these HUD elements in such a way that if you turn them off, thing become abnormally difficult because the developers didn't balance the game to work well with their absence. I just don't trust turning off most HUD elements these days because I don't want to expose myself to unnecessary frustration because the developers were under the assumption that you can't get lost because it's clear where you need to go.

 

Part of this is due to the fact that games do a LOT more than older titles and have far more visual density. Some people enjoy being lost and having to stumble across objectives like this, or try to use the in-game map or follow wall markings to know where to go. That's fine, but given that older titles didn't have these features, they had to construct things like visual landmarks and design areas such that you could find your bearings if you paid attention. Maybe I'm just talking shit and pining for the old days, but I stay away from turning off most indicators and HUD stuff unless it's really obnoxious.

 

Yup, it's more "go to this location marker" than "find this location". As for visual density, I had this problem with Dishonored 2. Game looks gorgeous, but without interactive object highlight it would be impossible to find objects like keys or coins. With this ammout of clutter, your brain just switches off, for there's too much to process in every scene.

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Ooh, Morrowind is a very good example for getting lost. It was more of a "go northeast-ish of Vivec until you find a big rock. From there go north-ish until you reach a tree and just a little west from there is a cave". After an hour of searching you finally found it. This truly could be quite frustrating and is somewhat extreme, but I agree that most modern games rely too strongly on quest markers. It is generally just lazy, because even with a very detailed environment, it is possible to create landmarks through which you can orient yourself. But this would require to create said landmarks, to write the descriptions and for the player to read and follow the description. In some cases even a failsafe if the player gets lost. It is much simpler to simply slap in a quest marker and be done with it. I try to turn them off most of times, especially in games that rely on exploring. E.g. in Dishonored 2 I did not use them, as I was sure that I would find the objectives while exploring anyway. If I keep them on, I know that I do not explore as much, because I tend to follow the markers without sidetracking. Something similar happens, when I have a minimap. In many cases I do not use the minimap only for orientation, but rather walk around solely looking at the minimap, which is why I miss a lot of the gorgeous views in the game (happend in the Witcher 3 more than once), so I tend to turn it off as well.

 

As for visual density, I had this problem with Dishonored 2. Game looks gorgeous, but without interactive object highlight it would be impossible to find objects like keys or coins. With this ammout of clutter, your brain just switches off, for there's too much to process in every scene.

I think this is not 100% true. When you know what you have to look out for (e.g. the red and blue colours of the potions), your brain will filter them out for you. Also, most items are contextualised quite well in Dishonored 2. Thus, you will find bolts in training dummies, bathing salts in bathroom cupboards etc. I cannot think of items that were compeletely out of place in that game. So, as long as you keep your eyes peeled and know how the items look, you will find them. But at least for the first playthrough, when you don't know how the loot etc looks, I agree that the highlighting is necessary.

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Potions are a different thing. They have saturated colors, self-glow textures, and fresnel outline, they're very distinct. Other objects — not so much. try finding a key, switch or a document in places like these:

 

20170218210002_1.jpg

 

20170224004113_1.jpg

 

Note that devs had to put this huge lamp to point to the Outsider shrine and the rune, that's kind of design failure.

 

Maybe it's easier to sort out on something like 52" TV, not so much on desktop monitor. Although I have 27" model, so it's not exactly a small one.

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Well mission lockdown, was good and very similar to Dishonored's first map with all the sick folks laying around. just need to keep a save before going around what would be the end of the current mission, so as not to jump to the next mission and miss exploring the rest of the current mission.

 

As usual I come up short on loot and special loot, and was considered:

 

post-3455-0-56806500-1500281347_thumb.jpg

 

This way played at master - I don't know why the screen has no mention of it.

 

I love to knockout all guards and hide them ever since Thief the Dark Project, then I jump around the mission making all the noise I want and saying to myself "I own this place" or the days I thinks is spelled "pwn". Except for the skeletons and zombies I had to reserve resources to get by these guys

Edited by bobrpggamer
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I've never played Thief 1 and have only played the demo of Thief 2 (and for the demo I didn't get very far because I didn't "get" the sneaking concept at the time compared to most other FPS titles).

I was lucky enough to play it when it was new. Just recently I got Thief Gold and wanted to play it again, but the graphics did not age that well... As for the "get the sneaking concept", Thief 1 had a very nice tutorial for that. So, if you played this, you had no problem to know what the game was about. I am not sure, but the tutorial missions in Theif 2&3 weren't that good, but I might remember it wrong right now.

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there was a demo for thief 1, it appeared on some computer magazines demo cd/dvd disks. Half of lord baffords castle finished in the pool room. there was a demo level for thief 2 as well, you could stack things like pots and pans and go places, which is missing from further thief's, don't thinks its there in thief 3, and definitely not there in thief 4 where all objects are static and welded/glued down

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As for the "get the sneaking concept", Thief 1 had a very nice tutorial for that.

i must be confusing this with the demo. I remember jumping mattering, sneaking and the rest, for training with the keepers, but I do not remember playing Baffords's manor in a demo. Thief 3 had a very good tutorial as well.

 

I just remember taking out all the guards with the blackjack and piling their 10 polygon bodies I a dark spot. I also remember "a throne room, how pretentious can you get".

 

Thief 4 is so similar to dishonored that I really enjoyed it, although I thought there were 4 difficulty levels and master was the second to the last, but the last was custom. I do like the voice of the main character, not garret but good- a bit Brooklyn accent if you listen with good headphones, which is always weird in a game set in the past or an entirely fiction story.

 

Like the show Lucifer with the English accent, it does fit him but after a millennia or many millennial's of existence I an surprised he would have any modern accent. at all and then whatever that would sound like.

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I was lucky enough to play it when it was new. Just recently I got Thief Gold and wanted to play it again, but the graphics did not age that well... As for the "get the sneaking concept", Thief 1 had a very nice tutorial for that. So, if you played this, you had no problem to know what the game was about. I am not sure, but the tutorial missions in Theif 2&3 weren't that good, but I might remember it wrong right now.

Here's the Thief Gold Training and the Thief: Deadly Shadows :Training

 

Thief Gold:

 

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows:

 

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OK I have a confession to make, I remember only the Classic Thief guys take on Thief 4 from a long while back, so instead of asking if Thief 4 is that bad, I should have collected more recent info and asked "Opinions" instead.

 

What happened is; I have had my Thief 3 FM for so long (2007) I decided (thanks to GOG) to load up the editor and make a video of it. It's not great but I think that the FM is to be played not watched, there was far more that were not included in the video., and its unfinished state, without servants and guard quarters of which the guards quarters was a key place to progress the player further, and obviously the lack of NPC's in the front quarters, i was still proud of it and I spent almost a year on it, trying to perfect it.

 

Then I made the video and remembered my Dark Mod project (2010) - the raw unfinished entrance as it were- and decided to make a video of it as well. As the sewer entrance goes even that was unfinished and I had way more going on in my map out of about 2000 saves - I could not find the latest - so I made a video of what I had. I even tried to use some projection on the sewer walls so the player could see caustics rippling on the walls from the sewer water - never got it to work.

 

My Thief 3 mission if nothing else it is fun and the guards are funny as I fool around in the back quarters Because of all the secret doors I would have a no killing on even easy level, the player has too may places to hide and leave the guards little room to work with. So here am all "Tthiefy" (yeah that sounds dumb), I had also played thief 2 about a year ago as well, but never finished.

 

So where to turn from there, Oh yeah I have Thief 4, but then I was remembering the mediocre reviews and the fact that the Thief fans did really like it too much. So I open my big mouth and make this thread.

 

Well I am here to say I am really enjoying the Clock Tower hub thing and the freedom to explore the city at the moment. So I Guess I should have done more research before naming this thread to "Is it that bad" to instead "any fresh opinions on it".

 

And I did not even know I had a mini-map until I looked up some key bindings. BTW I have assigned take down to the middle mouse button, and seems to be faster to do it this way.

 

I played for 8 hours with a dinner break, and I need to see my dentist in 6 hours with no sleep. So I am Addicted.

 

Just found out that this game was after Dishonored and that this game is a shameless copy of that. I still enjoy it, but its hard to believe with the content so far being so alike its just wrong.

Edited by bobrpggamer
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Not over thinking is fine and all, but it's something that is asked of game players band movie goers more and more. The products churned out and label entertainment are not entertainment to me.

 

There is a mentality afoot that tends to put down the desire for thought provoking entertainment. "It's just a movie, shut off your brain". I just can't buy into that. Why can't they make better crafted products instead? lol

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Not over thinking is fine and all, but it's something that is asked of game players band movie goers more and more. The products churned out and label entertainment are not entertainment to me.

 

There is a mentality afoot that tends to put down the desire for thought provoking entertainment. "It's just a movie, shut off your brain". I just can't buy into that. Why can't they make better crafted products instead? lol

 

Aye. But even the motion picture industry has its Godfather and in opposition some black sheep, trash film like Scary Movie of Movie 43.

​Literature? There's Hamlets, Dostoievski and John Green's nice prose. But there's also 50 Shades of Gray that in its mediocrity seems like some poor reversed parody of American Psycho with a female protagonist and added in BDSM just because. But nobody cares actually since the reader target audience is going to be the same that thinks of Paulo Coelho as the next Kobo Abe. They won't give a crap about the quality of the prose but rather suck every pretentious, meaningless description that's supposed to have deep meaning and then use that in their daily lives as the creatures without fantasy or taste that they are.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

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Potions are a different thing. They have saturated colors, self-glow textures, and fresnel outline, they're very distinct. Other objects — not so much. try finding a key, switch or a document in places like these:

 

Frankly, i feel that a lot in nowadays games. Deus Ex Mankind Divided was such a case, e.g. Hours until you really get which objects in the world you can interact with, and which not. There's really a price to pay with all that world, and object detail. Maybe games should rather go back to the essentials, and don't overwhelm the player with so much unnecessary detail. I'm sure you can create a world, without such a load of useless waste in it. I mean, if you need a spotlight, to make the player focus on interactive objects, that's a real fail in game design, IMO.

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OK I did not mean anything close to an unplayable game as some games are, and don't take overthink too harshly, I am talking about stopping a movie every 5 minutes with commentary of how that could not happen or that's impossible do to this that or that. I will not watch a terrible movie or play a terrible game, but Alien 3 (i just started to watch all 4 of them in the collectors set) and thief 4 are mediocre, they are not bad to me.

 

Overthinking or maybe expecting too much especially remakes and how it stacks up to the prequels, (Thief 4 is not even close to the others I know) especially the games that were cult classics or just plain amazing, if you count all the ways it does not stack up, then the prequels the game will be garbage - but I you play the game as a single entity then maybe the game will be fun, scary or whatever the genre that it was intended to be.

 

Thief 4 is not a sequel anyway, but is a ripoff of Dishonored, and other than the 5 tower thing I have enjoyed most of it. One thing that pisses me off is how you just open a door or secret door or window without asking if you want to enter a new level here or there and instead you are not presented with an option and are starting a new level with no way back to finish what you wanted to do in the previous level, and then the autosave saves after you have entered the next level, I also lost an hour of play do to this system and trying to get back to where I was before the new level starts. This was of course the chapter Dirty Secrets and the secret door.

 

And why the teenager cussing in the game, this made me stop paying attention to a cut scene because Basso was fucking cussing about some shit - this should not be in a game of this time period or a fantasy game either. I cuss like a sailor all day but this is not a game to have that in it.

Edited by bobrpggamer
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