EM Teaser & Site Updates - Official Trailer Up & Latest PREVIEWS & Blog Fan Kit - by thiefessa
SubJeff on 12/6/2013 at 06:29
What he's saying it's more interesting.
He's saying exactly what I've said a new Thief should be - playable as a hardcore stealth Thief or with a spectrum of play styles all the way to ninja assassin.
Seems you'll be able to turn off a lot of stuff. I like.
Renzatic on 12/6/2013 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Seems you'll be able to turn off a lot of stuff. I like.
This is the way I see it.
Besides the automatic takedowns, which may or may not make the game too easy depending on how they're implemented, it looks like EM has left the core gameplay mechanics of Thief about the same. As in the way people did things in Thief 1 & 2 can be roughly applied here. The difference is they've tweaked the combat a little bit, supposedly made the AI a little more aware, and added a ton of new assist features on top of all of it to help out the slightly less hardcore and/or hoplessly noob among us.
The assist features are what most people here are worried about, and for good reason. If you had no other choice but to see "suspicious" floating over a guard's head all the time, or were able to see through walls with a single click of a button, it would kill a lot of the tension that made T 1 & 2 so good.
But since the core gameplay has been left relatively unmolested, and most, if not all, of those assist features can be turned off, then it still has the potential to live up to its namesake. It's only dumbed down if you want it to be.
Beleg Cúthalion on 12/6/2013 at 07:03
I wonder whether or not the whole ridiculous XP/one-button-take-downs/floating symbols stuff can be switched off as well. From what I've seen DWS is still one of the most likable devs and he sounded confident about getting rid of most of the "helpful" mechanics. Someone should ask them to show this minimalist mode.
GUFF on 2/7/2013 at 14:13
I really think he doesn't "get" why Thief 1-3 were so dark. (well, you could turn the gamma up but it was way less immersive) It wasn't because of hardware limitations. What hardware limitations enacted at the time of Thief 1/2/DS was mostly the amount of polygons, the resolution of textures, the amount of color depth, and in Thief: DS it made them have to break missions up into 2 areas with loads in between.
As I said, you could turn the gamma up in the original series, but then your immersion sunk quite a bit. While you may have had to stumble around in the dark like in real life in the pitch black to find your way, to find loot etc., it was just so much more believable when you were in the pitch black shadows that you were essentially invisible to things unless they literally walked up right besides you or bumped into you as compared to turning the gamma up and playing fullbright where you can sure tell where the shadows are but it looks almost like the sun is still up and it's not very believable that no one can see you-- it reminds me of how pro competitive FPS players tweak their game settings so that the maps have basically no light/darkness and the player models, weapon, ammo, and powerups stick out like sore thumbs.
He seems to think the shroud thing with essentially a fullbright game world where you can see some areas are clearly a bit darker than others, which makes for a very arcade gamey way of things, is more immersive, somehow. I don't think he gets it. The reason the first Metal Gear Solid games for example fell on their face in the immersion department despite being excellent in many ways is because the gameplay segments weren't very immersive--they had some cool toys to play with but the gameplay segment was very much not immersive for what you were being presented, you being a soldier dressed in a special "sneaking suit" who is supposed to hide from enemies and be a master of solo infiltration and covert operations. Metal Gear Solid 3 on the other hand had low visibility jungle areas, and camoflauge that had to be used effectively to sneak. It was a much better game in terms of immersion.
He seems to think it was just a black and white kind of contrast thing where it was this place is light, this place is pitch black, nothing in between. But the light gem had, what, around 10-12 different images used as shades depending on how dark a shadow you were in? There was a lot of contrast there and it was easy to tell by both the light gem and if you had the blackjack out and looked at how the lighting on it was, how much darkness you were standing in and by extension how hidden you were. In lesser darkness you knew you were only good if the enemy was further away and you weren't moving, otherwise they may start to notice you.
I mean this is pretty elementary stuff. These are observations someone could make playing Thief 1 or 2 for a couple hours. I have to doubt his team really knows its source material that well.
That said the good things as I see it are
parts of the focus system and some no brainer game immersion improvements that anyone could have thought up.
How pickpocketing works now where it takes some time is a solid improvement. Along that line, guards having patrol routes where they may stop for a while is a good thing. In the original games a lot of guards just never stopped moving ever which was admittedly kind of weird. The focus ability allowing you to pickpocket multiple items at a time is neat.
The focus dash a short distance from shadow to shadow, again, pretty cool assumung it's very limited and you can't spam the hell out of it. The focus "aiming mode" for XXXXXXtreme headshots, not so cool. Being able to highlight loot and pathways with focus is a mixed bag to me. I liked how Thief: DS had a low visibility shimmer on loot items every now and then. That was a gamey thing that I could live with even if it did dip immersion a bit, because loot hunting in some of the Dark engine games could get frustrating at times.
I'm not sure how I feel about no ability to freeform explore in the game like you could in Thief 1/2 by jumping, mantling, and firing rope arrows into any surface that will accept them, and so on. I think on the designer end, having to put context triggers everywhere to get a similar effect will be hell for the level designers, when in Thief 1/2 the level designer just had a little mindfulness as to placement of climbable things and surfaces that rope arrows can be shot into if they didn't want players to break their levels due to scripted events or whatever.
The animations and art direction, something they've talked about a lot, are by far the best parts. Being able to knock out a guard and drag a body looks to be very smoothly implemented and Garrett's movement and how he works with his hands in first person is mostly really slick, except the way he closed the door; that was weird.. Garrett's new suit very much resembles John P's "masked Garrett" from his Thief 3 texture packs, so no real complaints about how he looks.
On the story/characterization end it seems to be a disaster. Garrett's new voice actor can't do the Garrett character. His new personality seems to he a self-righteous do-gooder who has random bouts of rage rather than the sarcastic realist that Stephen Russell portrayed who was in it for himself. He wouldn't hoard loot to look at in his hideout. He would fence it off so he can look forward to early retirement by taking from the rich and giving to... himself.
I don't have high hopes for this game and all as a new installation to the Thief series, but it may or may not be an alright game of the stealth genre. We'll see.
