GodzillaX8 on 13/12/2013 at 00:21
Quote Posted by Brethren
What you don't seem to be understanding is - it
is true for most people here, even if it isn't for you. You can come up with as many historical gaming examples as you like, but you're missing the point. There's a reason a petition was started up and has been signed by thousands of people. The voice IS important to them.
You've made it clear that other things that are important to diehard Thief fans aren't important to you, such as contextual movement, leaning, jumping, etc. So maybe you just need to move on and be content with the fact that you're not a "fanboy" like most of the people who hang out on these boards. You know, these boards that honor the memory of Looking Glass Studios?
Because quite frankly, your arguments are getting tiresome. They just don't apply to the majority of folks who post here. And who are you to say that these opinions are wrong?
This board is about Thief IV Anticipation, I don't know what title you saw when you came in, but that's what I saw. If you're not anticipating it, and you're only here to whine and moan about how the game can never live up to your frankly insane expectations, why are you posting?
Your opinions are tiresome. You all keep ranting and raving about the same pointless crap as though EM's going to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. Contextual movement isn't leaving, contextual rope arrows aren't leaving, they're not going to add a water level, they're not going to suddenly recast the lead actor. Why you people feel the need to bring it up constantly, I will never understand. Your opinions are wrong simply because they're not grounded in reality. Your argument for just about everything you dislike about the game is that, without even having played the game, you can 100% determine that its systems are inferior, when realistically, you can't possibly know how much better or worse the mechanics are until you've actually compared them side by side yourself.
I really don't think anyone here comprehends the fact that no matter how good the original Thief games are, they would be an utterly terrible investment for a business to make. They're not going to spend a million dollars developing a game that WOULD NOT MAKE A PROFIT. You seem to live in a fantasy world where niche games also include a AAA budget, and that's not going to happen. Best case scenario, you'd get a very short game with not-that-great visuals, it would sell poorly, prevent any future titles in the series for another decade, and it likely STILL wouldn't live up to your outlandish standards, no matter how hard they tried to stick to the same formula. You either don't understand business economics, or you are being willfully ignorant to the fact that the older Thief design doesn't appeal to that large of an audience, or both.
This looks like pretty much the best official Thief game we could possibly hope for given the current standards for AAA games. A reboot is also far better than a sequel in this instance, and reboots tend to recast the actors, so I REALLY don't think it should matter to you anywhere near as much as it does. It's completely insane to be this opposed to any other human on earth playing the role of a character. What if Stephen Russell weren't alive anymore, or had retired? Would you demand that they never make another game again? No, because that's illogical. So is demanding that he play the role in every possible instance of the role. We get it, his performance was good. But he's hardly irreplaceable. He's an actor. Actors can be replaced without anyone even noticing if they choose to cast it like that. Voice actors have amazingly talented voices and can imitate just about anyone's performance (See: Troy Baker in Arkham Origins). It's completely ludicrous to state that no one can play the role other than Stephen Russell. This isn't opinion, this is fact. You might not prefer the new actor, but they chose him for a reason. You may not like the reason, but that's honestly just too bad for you, and something you should get over. The new actor isn't that bad, and if you could take off your nostalgia goggles for 3 seconds, you would recognize a competent performance.
Stop being completely unrealistic, start living in the modern world, and you'll be a LOT happier with the new game.
Quote Posted by Azaran
This.
Moreover, it's not only that they hired a new voice actor - if SR really couldn't do it, and they were forced to hire another actor, it would still suck but I'd live with it - but in this case the public reason for replacing him was that they needed a young fit actor to sync Garrett's lip movements with his body, which is absurd, they could have simply synced the lip movements with SR's voice, but then they give the excuse of "oh, it just wouldn't look natural". They knew how much SR meant to the established community, but they chose to replace him anyway (the real reason probably being they completely want to redo the game for entirely new players, and so flipping off and alienating the classic Thief fans is part of the process). Not to mention the disrespect they've shown us over the years (deleting mention of our petition on their forums, banning people for mentioning it, completely ignoring our opinions, etc.)
I believe the reason was more because of the cutscenes where Garrett is doing something athletic, they wanted the voice to actually be affected by the physical actions he is taking, not for lip sync. You're going to sound different if you're talking while running and jumping than if you're sitting there staring into a microphone in a recording booth. They stated that Stephen Russell was not of the appropriate build or athletic ability to pull this off, thus they recast it. Big deal.
P.S. They don't do things just to spite you, that's paranoia to the max. They didn't recast him just to piss you off. They haven't been ignoring opinions as evidenced by the amount of last minute tweaks and fixes they've been doing in the past month or so. Some of your opinions they disagree with, that doesn't make them heinous jerks that hate you and want to ruin Thief for you.
There's a reason they ignore you guys.
Azaran on 13/12/2013 at 00:25
Quote Posted by GodzillaX8
I really don't think anyone here comprehends the fact that no matter how good the original Thief games are, they would be an utterly terrible investment for a business to make. They're not going to spend a million dollars developing a game that WOULD NOT MAKE A PROFIT.
I have to disagree there. Bringing Stephen Russell back would give them a lot more profits, because old fans like myself would buy the game. So keeping him would have been a smart decision on their part, and a great investment.
GodzillaX8 on 13/12/2013 at 00:28
Quote Posted by Azaran
I have to disagree there. Bringing Stephen Russell back would give them a lot more profits, because old fans like myself would buy the game. So keeping him would have been a smart decision on their part, and a great investment.
If the only thing holding you back from buying and enjoying a game is the voice actor they cast... wow.
That's just completely and utterly ridiculous.
I don't know if I should find that hilarious or pathetic. Maybe both.
Azaran on 13/12/2013 at 00:31
Not exactly:
Quote Posted by Azaran
if SR really couldn't do it, and they were forced to hire another actor, it would still suck but I'd live with it
GodzillaX8 on 13/12/2013 at 00:32
Quote Posted by Azaran
Not exactly:
SR couldn't do it. He's not athletic enough to do the stunts. For what they wanted out of the performance, he couldn't do it. Therefore, new actor. How hard is this to comprehend?
Azaran on 13/12/2013 at 00:34
Quote Posted by GodzillaX8
SR couldn't do it. He's not athletic enough to do the stunts. For what they wanted out of the performance, he couldn't do it. Therefore, new actor. How hard is this to comprehend?
Yes, stunts are movements, we're talking about a voice here. It's 2013, we have the technology available to use one voice actor and another one for movements and make it look natural.
GodzillaX8 on 13/12/2013 at 00:35
Quote Posted by Azaran
Yes, stunts are movements, we're talking about a voice here. It's 2013, we have the technology available to use one voice actor and another one for movements and make it look natural.
So you think Garrett should being doing all kinds of acrobatic stunts, while never sounding like he's exerting himself, never short of breath, oh and also sounding like he's 50+ years old?
R Soul on 13/12/2013 at 01:09
As an actor I'm sure Stephen Russell could pretend to be out of breath. And he could do a bit on an exercise bike, go up and down some stairs a few times, or anything else that gets him genuinely out of breath but without the risk of injury.
Starker on 13/12/2013 at 01:26
Quote Posted by GodzillaX8
This board is about Thief IV Anticipation, I don't know what title you saw when you came in, but that's what I saw.
Maybe people have stopped anticipating. Quite a few people have suggested a change of name to something more appropriate, btw.
You seem to spend a lot of time telling other people what they should think. Perhaps you should just accept the fact that not everyone is going to like the game, whatever their reasons.
Quote Posted by GodzillaX8
So you think Garrett should being doing all kinds of acrobatic stunts, while never sounding like he's exerting himself, never short of breath, oh and also sounding like he's 50+ years old?
It worked fine in Bioschlock Infinite. Also, Russell still sounds great. He hasn't stopped voice acting since Thief, you know.
Also, while we are on the subject, I personally did not appreciate Garrett becoming a clichéd brown-haired thirtysomething with a stubble.
Inline Image:
http://race.iheartsociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/video-game-protagonists.jpgRenault on 13/12/2013 at 05:16
Quote Posted by GodzillaX8
So you think Garrett should being doing all kinds of acrobatic stunts, while never sounding like he's exerting himself, never short of breath, oh and also sounding like he's 50+ years old?
This has been an extremely weak argument from the beginning - what about the German, French, Italian, etc versions of the game? They'll just dub the new voice in, making the stunts argument completely useless.
And by the way, I am greatly anticipating this game, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to nod my head and say OK to everything EM does, like you are. If I see something I don't like, I'm going to bring it up. And guess what happens when people do that? EM gets rid of QTEs and XP systems, for starters. If everyone was just as accepting of everything as you seem to be, these changes wouldn't have been made. You've even admitted that they're dumbing things down. You're just settling for less, for whatever reason I don't know.
But hey, maybe coming in in here and talking down to everyone and referring to us as "you people" all the time makes you feel good, so knock yourself out.
