Nuth on 1/5/2013 at 11:21
Yeah, the Jacknall's Paw is difficult for me to get my mind around. Is there even any reference to what or who a Jacknall is? I remember some speculation that the paw is the hand of the Kurshok king who battled the Trickster. So maybe the Jacknall is some pagan term of derision referring to the king? Calling the hand a paw could also be considered derision. If that artifact is the hand of the king, it would seem it became sentient some time after it was severed. Maybe sentience is generated by the belief of the people who regard the objects as totems. That could explain the Paw, Chalice, and Crown. But there's some writing that says the Keepers devised the Sentients--could that have just meant the Keepers devised a use for them? Or maybe the Sentients actually were created by the Keepers but were in some incorporeal form until they were somehow assigned to the artifacts. Were the sacrificed Keepers' spirits somehow fused with the Sentients to create artifacts with the specific purpose relating to the final glyph and binding the Sentients to it?
I'm sure I'm getting timelines, ideas, and events hopelessly muddled. And I'm sure other taffers have given this stuff a lot more thought than I have. Everything just seems so murky to me.
jtr7 on 1/5/2013 at 11:58
I don't know where the Jacknall term comes from, but the Kurshok lore and tapestry show Gruliac's hand severed and the three falling to their fates, Gruliac, the hand, and The Crown. I still want to know if Con chopped off Gruliac's hand with The Sword he let Garrett have, and if Garrett got rid of the blade like I would, not knowing what else that thing might be capable of or knowing how that thing was forged--give it to the Keepers for study and judgment, or give it to the Hammerites for study and judgment (melting down?). It's possible that the Jack part is indeed gender-based, like jackrabbit, jackass, but I dunno. No one uses the term for anything other than the "paw". It isn't a paw, it's a full humanoid hand, with long nails, and I want to know the name of the texture used for the hand so I can see better the source. If it's fur, I dunno what to make of it, but if it's scales, then I'll stick with Gruliac, and if it's just dead pruny skin, well, who knows what it went through from when it was cut off, capped, and was moved around. It's also possible that The Jacknall is another character, the guy who capped the "paw" he'd found, and people think it's his possession. If Jacknall was a Keeper, he'd be the Soul in the Soul Stone (odd name for something no longer a stone, making me look to that metal cap, again). It's also odd that the Pagans wouldn't call it Gruliac's Paw, or the Kurshok Paw, unless they were somehow ketp from that knowledge, or forgot where the term came from, if it was Gruliac's. While Pagans have used the terms jackal and Jacksberry, Jacknall doesn't seem to fit their idiom, but then, neither does the heavy frikkin' use of "bes" in TDS. :laff:
I think the Sentients require a blood sacrifice to get them to go along with someone's wishes for them. Blood is associated literally and symbolically with each of them, in various ways. We also have The Eye being present during the Cataclysm and doing necromantic things with the Hammerites there, and Garrett's flesheye bleeding on The Eye. The Crown led to Gruliac getting vainglorious and losing his hand and being stuck down in the "dungeon" of earth with the dying race (the model of the Crown is for a head much larger than the Kurshok we see, but if it were accurate, then the Kurshok could grow much larger int he past--yet, look at those eggs in the hatchery!). The Paw was part of someone or something and the Pagans take it for use through a ritual involving blood, and when they use it, it's at least sometimes used for war and necromancy. The Heart kills its victims, slowly, wastingly. The Chalice can kill one or many in a fiery death.
Viktoria shed Garrett's and her own blood onto a rock and made an oath she said the earth would hold them to (for real or as a psychological lever, we don't know).
Before the Hammerites got ahold of The Eye somehow, it had been "used" by the Pagans against them. And what was up with the Golden Bones and that particular exalted Hammerite?
The Mystic's Heart was the most valuable gemstone Garrett ever picked up (1000!), and without seeing a confirmed value for the Horn of Quintus (which he used to buy his first lockpicks, and a remnant in the gamefiles suggests a time when there was a set of fancy lockpicks going for 4000!), it may be the most monetarily valuable item ever! But I bring up the Heart and Soul because, if they weren't related at all to the golden bones, there's a lot of specific magic and technological world-building going on in the Bonehoard seen nowhere else. And another set of magic and tech in Con's mansion seen nowhere else. And again, in the sealed Old Quarter. I'm much more interested in all the backstory and what the devs were drawing from, or started to do but abandoned, than a new game that ignores over 90% of it.
Nuth on 1/5/2013 at 12:11
Yeah, with all the weirdness, it seems very difficult to believe that Garrett would willingly stick his lost flesh eye back into his head after its association with The Eye. The Eye creeped me out about as much as anything in Thief. I don't see Garrett as being that reckless. But who knows what EM has in mind.
Dia on 1/5/2013 at 12:18
Quote:
"It's 'Thief' because we want to restart it, to reinvent it," says Stéphane Roy, producer on the game. "We want it to be part of the future, the next generation, and not part of the past. It's not a sequel. It's something new."In other words, change everything that gave Thief its charm and turn it into a modern action game with stealth thrown in. Perhaps EM should've just named their game and main character something else entirely, instead of assuming that just by using 'Thief' as the game title it would be an automatic guarantee that Thief fans would buy it. They shouldn't have started trying to fix things that weren't broken. In my opinion.
jtr7 on 1/5/2013 at 12:22
I don't recognize much. They haven't even kept all the basic mechanics, regardless of how they explain it or dress it up.
Nuth on 1/5/2013 at 12:38
I still wish EM would go with some kind of alternate Thief universe scheme for their version. It would be easier for me to accept.
Dia on 1/5/2013 at 12:53
I agree, Nuth. Like I've said countless times already (ok, maybe two or three), I wanted to love this game, but it sounds (to me) as though EM is doing everything in their power to make sure I don't.
What EM is doing to Thief reminds me of what Baz Luhrmann did to Romeo and Juliet. And before anyone gets their jockeys in a wad, yeah, I know the '96 version won a bunch of Oscars, but afaic it was a travesty, a bastardized farce. Luhrmann modernized it and 'reinvented' it, and it lost the charm and mystique that was Romeo and Juliet. (Franco Zeffirelli's '68 version is and will always be, in my mind, the true cinematic interpretation of that play, as well as a classic work of art.)
Sometimes newer is not better.
:(
Springheel on 1/5/2013 at 16:13
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I'd have to ask what the point in giving him such an eye would be if he won't have a "eye zoom" feature (
Seems likely the eye is tied to his "focus" ability.
There's also a few hints spread around various interviews that the eye replacement might be part of the story. In other words, Garrett will begin the game with both eyes intact. Hasn't been said clearly though, so it's just speculation.
Considering they're going with a low-magic world, I highly doubt they'll stick to the original version of how he lost his eye.
Tomi on 1/5/2013 at 16:34
Quote Posted by Springheel
There's also a few hints spread around various interviews that the eye replacement might be part of the story. In other words, Garrett will begin the game with both eyes intact. Hasn't been said clearly though, so it's just speculation.
Eye replacement... or eye
enhancement? Perhaps Garrett will begin the game with the same old mechanical eye, but at some point something happens that gives him/it the new abilities. Eye Upgrade! :p
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Considering they're going with a low-magic world, I highly doubt they'll stick to the original version of how he lost his eye.
Do they have to stick to any version of how he lost his eye though? Garrett could just have the mechanical eye or a blind eye in the beginning, is there any need to explain the whole story behind it for the player? If they want to do this reboot thing and get rid of most of the magical things, but still remain somewhat faithful to original Thief, they might want to leave these parts of the story open for each player to make up for themselves.
Springheel on 1/5/2013 at 16:39
You're quite right; they may just leave it unexplained. That would be my preferred option.
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Perhaps Garrett will begin the game with the same old mechanical eye, but at some point something happens that gives him/it the new abilities
That seems just as likely as any other option. :p
