Deus Ex & Thief IPs + Eidos Montreal are about to be sold to Embracer Group

Jason Moyer on 24/8/2022 at 03:37

Thiaf and the DX prequels were good games, but there are tons of good games. What I want more than a new game that says Thief or Deus Ex on the box, is a game that knocks me over the way Thief and Deus Ex did when they came out. I worry that it's a function of getting old, but there's still stuff like Clockwork Mansion or Crack In The Slab that destroy my preconceptions of what a videogame can do. Maybe it's something other people in my age range feel too, where the first half of your life there was constantly new media coming out that felt like it was pushing boundaries, and the second half felt like the main boundary being pushed was how to monetize creativity. I mean, that's always been a driving force, but the answer used to be "come up with something new and do it better than anyone else" and not "surveys say people like X, Y, and Z"

Tomi on 24/8/2022 at 20:59

Quote Posted by Starker

The reboot's levels are more linear in the sense that you get funneled through them and spit out in the other end, without a lot of side areas to explore.

Hmm, I gotta disagree with this. I can't compare the original levels to the reboot ones because it's been way too long since I played the original games, but the reboot's levels certainly can't be called linear or small. There are so many places in many/most missions that you don't have to explore (Moira's Asylum for example has a whole section that is entirely optional), some that I never discovered on my first play through. Most if not all missions have multiple entry points too, and multiple ways of accessing certain areas. I would even go as far as saying that some of the reboot levels are a bit too large and have too much "filler" (unnecessary areas with random loot lying around), and in a way that was often the problem with the missions in the original game too. I love to explore everything, but I'm a bit obsessive about it and always try to find all pieces of loot and all the secrets, and so on. So instead of concentrating on the main objective(s) and things that really matter, I spend the majority of time thinking of how to sneak into the kitchen unnoticed to snatch a couple of golden spoons, or into the bathroom to steal a fancy hairbrush.

I don't find the notorious "points of no return" of Thi4f as bad as people make them to be, either. Sure, I encountered maybe two or three wtf moments in the game, where Garrett discovers a hidden switch on the wall or in a bookshelf, pulls it, and suddenly Garrett is on the other side of a secret door, leaving behind a bunch of treasures that he can't return to anymore (not without hitting the quickload button, that is). Okay, those are annoying indeed. There are other points of no return too, but most of them are quite logical. If I jump down into a hole in the ground for example, I will have to accept that there may be no returning from there. Can't complain about those.

Quote:

Maybe think about it this way: none of the guards in the reboot's missions have long patrol routes, they either pace back and forth or circle a very small area.

I'm not sure if I understand the idea behind this. Short patrol routes --> small linear missions? Nah. I can see no reason why the guards could not have long(er) patrol routes, but that would affect the difficulty and mission design quite a bit. Besides, why should there be long patrol routes in a place that is swarming with guards (like most missions in all Thief games) anyway?

EvaUnit02 on 24/8/2022 at 21:04

Quote Posted by Jason Moyer

As long as Arkane still has two studios making great games, I don't really care what happens to any of these old IPs. Thief and Deus Ex weren't great because of the title on the box.

Redfall is an open world co-op looter shooter, that's a super mainstream AAA concept, conforming to marketing trends of the past decade. "Immersive Sims" have niche appeal, they don't bring in the big dosh. I dunno if MS giving their studios freedom will change things, but the path that they were put on in the wake of Dishonoured 2/Prey flopping by Zenimax was to pivot or be closed. My point is, don't expect them to do interesting things that set themselves apart from the rest of the AAA market going forward. That being said, MS are looking for library variety to drive Game Pass subs, so there is a chance you might see future immersive sims from them.

Jason Moyer on 24/8/2022 at 22:42

Yeah, they really sold the farm with Deathloop. And Redfall is just another 4-player co-operative game where you hunt vampires in enormous yet highly-detailed maps, like I haven't played hundreds of those already.

Starker on 25/8/2022 at 07:03

Quote Posted by Tomi

This is because the reboot's missions are built like obstacle courses, linear paths that funnel you from arena to arena, with chokepoints and no points of return in between them. The little side paths that the game has are closed off very quickly and there are no real multiple paths that connect the different arenas to each other. Yes, you might sometimes have a choice to either go left or right when the path forks, as you are going from point A to B to C to D, but it's not open ended like the original missions were, where you could go from A to either B, C, or D, in any order, and then return back to A. Even the more open ended parts of the reboot, namely the first part of the Asylum and the first part of the Baron's mansion, don't really hold up to the original games' more linear levels, let alone the more open-ended ones.

As for why there should be long patrol routes, it's to keep you on your toes and make the level more of a simulation where you might have to rethink your plans on the fly. The game pushing you out of your comfort zone until you can get back to safety through the use of you skills and tools is a big part of Thief's design in general. In the original games, you could very well get surprised by a patrol that you overlooked when you returned to an area. In the reboot, you will hardly ever return to an area. This means there are no reasons to, say, make an effort to hide bodies after you cleared an area, because they will never be found anyway.

Even on replays, I sometimes could get lost in Dark Project's levels like Bonehoard or Sword and go on a nice little journey of discovery. It certainly would also have happened in Thief 2's bigger levels, like Soulforge and Bank, if they didn't have a more detailed map to rely on. I never once got lost in the reboot even without a map or even thought there would be a possibility of getting lost.

ZylonBane on 25/8/2022 at 19:22

I've played the original Deus Ex more times than I can remember. I've even replayed Invisible War a few times. Human Revolution though, I've played it... maybe one and a half times.

There's nothing objectively bad about HR. There's just a lot of little ways in which it falls short. I found the mission control guy, Pritchard, to be greasy and obnoxious. My boss Mr. Sarif? A high-strung control freak. The color palette, even in the Director's Cut, still came across as monochromatic and cloying. Fun fact: Out of all the colors, (https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/33091/do-certain-colors-fatigue-eyes-faster) yellow is the most fatiguing to look at. In HR, yellow is everywhere.

In HR I never felt like I was free to fuck around, which I think was a core appeal of the original DX. HR feels like it always has you by the scruff of the neck, directing you to go here, then do this, then do that to progress. It feels like a very authored experience, which Warren Spector has stated multiple times is antithetical to immersive sims.

Now, maybe the amount of actual freedom is both DX and HR is the same. But again, it's the feeling, the illusion of freedom that's important. And I think a part of this diminished feeling of freedom is that HR sectioned off so many formerly simulated interactions into discrete idiot-proof "modes". In HR you don't just run up behind someone and whack them with a stick, instead you enter "takedown mode". You don't just hop on a ladder and climb it, you enter "ladder mode". You don't just lean around a corner, you enter "cover mode".

Jason Moyer on 25/8/2022 at 19:45

The Ross's Game Dungeon reviews of the DX series nail a lot of the issues I have with the follow up games.

[video=youtube;vYLEuQrvND0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLEuQrvND0[/video]

weylfar on 29/8/2022 at 22:35

How would you imagine the story, plot and characters would progress in new Thief ?
Would it be new protagonist different than Garret, would it be reboot, if yes how, if no what do you have in mind?

demagogue on 30/8/2022 at 01:32

I don't really want it to be re-X'd. I'm still alienated by Thief 4's treatment. But if it were to be revived, and I had a forced choice of how it should be treated, then I'd opt for a remake of The Dark Project.

I think if they stay faithful to the story and gameplay it'll be good. Well, I want to see how the remake of System Shock 1 looks and plays, and that might be a good sign. But I think medieval games are going to look really good on new engines like UE5, even more so than a scifi corridor game.

Actually if they had a game that looked even as good as Thief 4 but played like The Dark Project, I think that would have been a winner.

I'm still not 100% sure about it, but that'd be my vote.

Thirith on 30/8/2022 at 05:59

Considering how old the two original Thief games are and how much you could do with a modern-day engine, that's not the worst idea. There's enough you can do to remake the maps in interesting ways that make use of something like UE5.

Honestly, I think the same about Deus Ex. The original game's maps were cool for the time, but the same overall environments could be great if brought up to present-day standards.