Dark Messiah Has A Bit O Thief In It

[Huckeye]

I know managing all the mods can be a pain. So I'm just going with this Oblivion Overhaul one and leaving it at that It sounds awesome enough.

 

Definitely. But, still, I can justify spending an hour to set up a game world that I can spend 100 hours playing in.

[Komag]

I recall spending around 6 to 8 hours setting up Oblivion last summer, then played it for 200+ hours (according to game clock), so it was worth it to me.

 

I'll play it again sometime, perhaps soon, and I'm sure I'll set it up with a ton of mods again, plus I'm sure there have been a lot of great ones come out in the past few months.

 

As far as thieving goes, I didn't do much of it during my first play through, but I plan to be a "bad" guy the next time, assasin, vampire, thief, etc. We'll see.

 

As far as thieving in Dark Messiah, it seemed to have some good potential, but the game is so linear designed that a large part of thief gameplay just can't be done. To me, having a large mission area that you can explore from different approaches and accomplish the objectives in what order you wish is a very important part of Thief's immersion.

[thestemmer]

I know managing all the mods can be a pain. So I'm just going with this Oblivion Overhaul one and leaving it at that It sounds awesome enough.

 

There's actually a tool for Oblivion called the Oblivion Mod Manager that makes installing new mods a snap. Basically you just drag some files into the right directory, and the mod manager lets you choose which ones you want to run. If you end up not liking one, it's as easy as unticking a check box.

[SneaksieDave]

Yeah, heaven forbid Bethesda should supply such tools for their friggin game. Maybe they'll sell one to the fans for $4.99 some day soon. With Morrowind they couldn't even be bothered to fix the goddamn doubling and GMST bugs. Nice "mod-friendly" (hell, supposedly beyond "mod friendly", it was supposedly built FOR modding!) game there, guys.

[thestemmer]

Yeah, heaven forbid Bethesda should supply such tools for their friggin game. Maybe they'll sell one to the fans for $4.99 some day soon. With Morrowind they couldn't even be bothered to fix the goddamn doubling and GMST bugs. Nice "mod-friendly" (hell, supposedly beyond "mod friendly", it was supposedly built FOR modding!) game there, guys.

 

Hey, that's not quite fair -- Oblivion does have a built in mod manager, it's just that the user-made one has more functionality -- like having different mods for different save games. Judging from the number of mods out there, I'd say that Bethesda did a pretty good job making it mod-accessible. They should get credit at least for not including any ugly copy protection software, although that should be a given.

[SneaksieDave]

I'll humbly retract that part then... and just complain about something else like levelled lists. I've actually only played the game about a half hour at a friend's, but their bonehead decisions like that just urk me so.

 

Is there any of the GMST or doubling type of crap again? I sincerely hope they fixed that. There would be just no excuse for leaving such glaring problems in yet another iteration of the same game.

[DopeFishhh]

Dark messiah has plenty of open freeform areas to deal with things but then you get choked off into the next section, and there are some bits where it's linear all the way. though there are bits that make you wish you hadn't spent all your experience on stealth and instead beefed up on your tanking abilities. But all play types get a fair whack, for most of the game you can choose either to stealth it or tank it, and then there are some bits where magery and archery come out on top. You can't play without steam unless you've acquired it in an underhanded means. Ohh yeah you get points for completing objectives and not for kills, so you could just as easily run past those 10 orcs as kill them and win, unless of course killing those 10 orcs is the actual objective in the first place.

 

That 6.7 score could not have been thought through (or arkane didn't pay up for a good review), it does get repetitive in some bits, but i noticed that it was because i kept focusing on one particular way of dealing with a challenge and trying until i succeeded, i'm sure the moron reviewer did the same but had no clue to his own failings. The story is fine, nothing spectacularly thief like but good all the same. I have noticed only a very few technical glitches.

 

back to oblivion, yes the design team are complete boneheads. "hmmm they hated cliff racers. so we won't put them in, instead we will make wolves and spawn them in everywhere and then make them attack the player and the player only when it sees him." yeah that sounds so much better than cliff racers...

 

Seriously, a lone wolf wouldn't go near the player, a pack sure, and then they'd run for their lives when they get hurt, or they see some spectacular glowy / fire / loud effect. later on it's lions, then bears, then minotaurs. and NONE of them see fit to engage each other in combat despite there being no obvious reason why they wouldn't and plenty of reason why they should, and again none of them have any sort of life preservation instinct, no ai in oblivion does.

 

instant kill spell for any creature under or equal to 100 health:

drain health 100 for 1 second

 

Whats its cost? at 100 destruction 9 mana and it only requires destruction 25 to cast, your extensive play testing is for naught bethesda, ohh wait you didn't do any.

 

</rant>

[Huckeye]

Dark messiah has plenty of open freeform areas to deal with things but then you get choked off into the next section, and there are some bits where it's linear all the way. though there are bits that make you wish you hadn't spent all your experience on stealth and instead beefed up on your tanking abilities. But all play types get a fair whack, for most of the game you can choose either to stealth it or tank it, and then there are some bits where magery and archery come out on top. You can't play without steam unless you've acquired it in an underhanded means. Ohh yeah you get points for completing objectives and not for kills, so you could just as easily run past those 10 orcs as kill them and win, unless of course killing those 10 orcs is the actual objective in the first place.

 

That 6.7 score could not have been thought through (or arkane didn't pay up for a good review), it does get repetitive in some bits, but i noticed that it was because i kept focusing on one particular way of dealing with a challenge and trying until i succeeded, i'm sure the moron reviewer did the same but had no clue to his own failings. The story is fine, nothing spectacularly thief like but good all the same. I have noticed only a very few technical glitches.

 

back to oblivion, yes the design team are complete boneheads. "hmmm they hated cliff racers. so we won't put them in, instead we will make wolves and spawn them in everywhere and then make them attack the player and the player only when it sees him." yeah that sounds so much better than cliff racers...

 

Seriously, a lone wolf wouldn't go near the player, a pack sure, and then they'd run for their lives when they get hurt, or they see some spectacular glowy / fire / loud effect. later on it's lions, then bears, then minotaurs. and NONE of them see fit to engage each other in combat despite there being no obvious reason why they wouldn't and plenty of reason why they should, and again none of them have any sort of life preservation instinct, no ai in oblivion does.

 

instant kill spell for any creature under or equal to 100 health:

drain health 100 for 1 second

 

Whats its cost? at 100 destruction 9 mana and it only requires destruction 25 to cast, your extensive play testing is for naught bethesda, ohh wait you didn't do any.

 

</rant>

 

 

Stinks about Steam. I'll have to pass on this one, then. (weird that the demo didn't require it).

 

As for the wolves in Oblivion, they attack the NPCS too. all creatures do. I had a secondary quest person get killed on her way in between 2 towns by wolves. Thanks to Oblivions non-linearity, I was able to find another way to complete the quest. I also saw two NPCs figting a bear (both archers) one hit the other by accident and after they killed the bear they started fighting each other. I sat and watched and looted everything but the one that lived. (tee hee)

[Spitter]

I'm pretty sure you can play the single player portion without Steam.

 

As for the game, I enjoyed it immensely. The ending videos are a bit disappointing, but other than that the game was solid gold all the way through.

[Huckeye]

I'm pretty sure you can play the single player portion without Steam.

 

As for the game, I enjoyed it immensely. The ending videos are a bit disappointing, but other than that the game was solid gold all the way through.

 

Well, that's promising. The game looks good. Did the patch make much of a difference (I kind of thought the demo had problems).