**EM in interview : 'It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to please everyone

jay pettitt on 12/4/2013 at 18:34

Don't modern day controllers have accelerometers - tilt L/R to lean.

Quote:

I would think this will be automatic for new Thief.

DUMBING DOWN:mad::mad::mad:

Dia on 12/4/2013 at 18:44

Dumbing down is right. Aaarrrrggghhh! You would've thought they'd have learned from the TDS flop. But I guess DX:HR's success must've made them feel like gods. EM is now not only omnipotent, but have become omniscient as well. At least in their reality.

:(

Tomi on 12/4/2013 at 18:44

dumbing down for the masses

Vivian on 12/4/2013 at 18:45

I prefer it when they mass up for the dumb

Renault on 12/4/2013 at 18:52

It's the way of things. LGS was what, a couple of dozen people? EM is over 300. They can't afford to make a niche game that only appeals to the hardcore gamer, they need a huge hit that everyone can and will want to play and will sell 5-10 million copies, just so they can cover their expenses.

henke on 12/4/2013 at 18:53

Quote Posted by Renzatic

As for the rest, you are one eloquent bastard, Beleg. Everything you've said beyond the TDM quip is spot on.

Seconded. Well said Beleg!

demagogue on 12/4/2013 at 18:55

I thought the original games controls were flawed too. Vivian mentioned some of them, and I'd agree.
But that doesn't make me a fan of what I read for T4; they're "fixing" the flaws in the opposite direction than I would.
Edit: It seems I'm repeating & ninja'd here some, but that's ok.

I like that Dark Mod fixed some of T2's control flaws... It separated the "use" and "frob" buttons (no accidental healing-potion drinking when you want to open a door); it has a mantle button & 'crouch to release a rope' which are actually pretty useful (no accidental jumping); and it kept other things like the 3-way leaning. It's better than T2's controls. I don't assume it's perfect either though.

What I understand from T4 is auto-leaning, wall hugging, swooping, parkour moves, and single-button QTE takedowns. Looking at each one of those individually, it's not a paradigm of gameplay that I like playing... I don't like the gameplay associated with any one of them (except I like parkour in a parkour game; not an sneaker or FPS though). I liked most of Dishonored except the QTE takedowns were only ok (the one toss to gameplay they gave is that it takes time, so you have to do it quickly. But it's at the cost of a dumb pop-up saying "Hold C to takedown!" the whole time). I liked the FPS parts of DX:HR, but I only tolerated the wall crouching & swooping parts. I mean for those other games, I thought of them as necessary evils I tolerated to play what I like about the game. (Edit: Wall hugging & swoop were good for Hitman though, since the gameplay paradigm is almost like a FP platformer of needling through guard paths. I guess my observation here is that mechanics are better or worse fits for different gameplay paradigms, if you were looking at them semi-objectively.)

But I'm also very conscious its the paradigm of almost the entire gaming market, so I'm not surprised by it. I don't feel it's any kind of betrayal. They're just making a game with the currently undisputed dominant gameplay paradigm, that just happens to not do much for me, and I'll tolerate it to see the parts I like. I don't think of it as really part of the Thief franchise except in name, which is fine... It's just the fiction, but not much connection to the gameplay paradigm the original developed ... and I liked the original gameplay over the fiction.

I have no doubt I'll like T4 in the same way I liked Dishonored & DX:HR, which BTW I liked both of those a lot, enough that the parts I didn't like didn't really bother me & I rolled with them (the ones I mentioned above).

As far as the kind of gameplay I do like to play, if I could put together my perfect game, it's minimalist & simulationist ... little hud, no pop-ups, WYSIWYG, you interact with the world more than any overlay or meta-gui thing (that's another thing I liked about TDM over the original T2, since T2 still had things like objectives, maps, & books that were special menu things out of the world, and its lockpicking was effectively a QTE... so I was fine to see those things taken out.)

That's just my personal taste in gameplay. I understand it's a niche taste that's been all but beaten out of the market by pure-force of a generation of coddling... But so has a lot of things. It's the inevitable movement of all practices, unless you have some authority that holds the line like instructors in martial arts (who refuse to water down standards for a blackbelt) or artist schools or something... Maybe it sounds stupid that gaming should ever be like martial arts, where it's about honing the best controls & gameplay for a "school" of gameplay, and improving the model every iteration, at least from a commercial perspective because you're only losing sales... But I think it sounds pretty good from a gamer's perspective, and what I guess indie game deving should strive for. Commercial games can still be around as some decent inspiration, especially for things like the art direction (architecture, modeling, character design, etc), where they still strive for excellence too.

Renzatic on 12/4/2013 at 19:08

Quote Posted by Dia

I think all they're trying to do is make a good game, Dia.

Why is it that some of you seem to think EM has been overly arrogant and hateful towards you all? What are you all seeing that I'm not?

I've gone through some of the videos. Read through some of the interviews. Most of it is marketing hype, with the occasional overexcited developer quipping in to say something, but that's pretty much par for the course. I have yet to see one guy say anything like "we intend to piss on the corpse of Looking Glass Studios" or anything like that.

So what's with the actual, honest to God hate around here?

Aja on 12/4/2013 at 19:26

From this interview I gather that the devs think Dishonored is cool but too arcadey
and that for them the most important aspect of Thief is it's capability to immerse the player. From the sound of it, they're going to let you disable contextual menus and direction markers. Given that Dishonored is the closest big-budget title to Thief in years (and that it was pretty customizable itself), this seems promising to me!

demagogue on 12/4/2013 at 19:35

@Renz, What's going on is an old saw about the Culture Industry.
Culture is about making the best of something to the highest standards, whatever it is.
Commerce is about making the most sales.

When you combine the two, you get a situation where the makers feel market pressure a lot more strongly than "standards" pressure. So of course they don't have any hate and are very sincere in what they're doing. Nobody questions that their motives are good, they want to make a good product to make their hapless market happy (that only knows what they like), & they're great people (they're "practically boy scouts, they're such good people"; I think is how the professional complainers like to put it with real contempt in their voices). The criticism is that they have blinders on as far as standards goes, so are either oblivious to them or shrug them off as the ninnying of a minority sect that must just seethe with hate, since who hates boy scouts?? They're good people -- is the knee-jerk response. That and tacitly: What's the big deal; games are about as juvenile and cheap as comic books. This isn't opera watching here.

Then people that do think the standards are important feel slighted, or held in contempt for it, and get indignant. I think they don't feel hate but either contempt, but probably also with a touch of shame or embarrassment that they can't really prove standards are important when it's clear the vast part of the market doesn't think they're important, but only confirm what the devs are saying. And of course when you add shame to contempt, you get seething with that much more edge, which only confuses and bewilders the boy scouts more and makes them see the ninnyers as that much more bewildering hateful seething small people that should get out more or something...

And thus the cycle continues. All as was written over a century ago. The familiar sting. It's such a familiar back-and-forth reaction, it's almost a wonder people don't see it as such a predictable trope playing itself out.