Dia on 12/4/2013 at 18:39

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'Left the house' achievement - that one made me snort-giggle. I'd be roflmao right now if it wasn't a serious concern (dare I say fear?) that this is what the game might very well end up looking like. Awcrap. Now I'm depressed all over again.


:(

thiefessa on 13/4/2013 at 00:18

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Not really nervous about anything so far.

SlySpy on 13/4/2013 at 09:18

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I have a few worries and doubts about this game, even though I'm ultimately waiting for some gameplay to be shown at E3 or something.

The obvious one is the exclusion of Stephen Russell, which the bafflingly awful excuse of which was that they wanted a mo-cap actor to do the voice to make the cutscenes "more organic", and that there was no logical reason beyond nostalgia to include SR into the game. I guess they left "consistency" and "character definition" out of their vocabularies. By proxy though, this decision also makes me worry about other things that were present in other games that they might have decided to abandon for equally stupid reasons.

Another thing I worry about, as some have stated already, is the possible inclusion of curse words to the dialogue, which outright stomps on said consistency of the lore and the gameplay by extension. If the narrative can't maintain a certain consistency with its predecessors at least in spirit, then the experience won't be as rich as it should be, which is undoubtably harmful to the game as a whole.

The design of Garrett certainly irks me a bit as well. Not just with his superhero look, but with his described personality. It sounds like not only did they mess with the voice, but they're also now messing with the character's sensibilities. In particular, I'm referring to how devs would talk about Garrett as someone who is motivated by the challenge, and that he takes things that he might not be able to have for himself due to his free-spiritedness. Further, there are also implications that Garrett might keep memento's of some of the stuff he's stolen as sentimental value, even going as far as keeping it in his apartment.

I totally agree that Garrett's character is into the challenge of pulling off a big heist, and takes pride in his independent work as a thief, but holding any of the items he's stolen in any sort of sentimental value at all? That's completely contradictory to Garrett's character. Whether it be The Dark Project, The Metal Age, or Deadly Shadows, Garrett never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give a damn about any of the items he's stolen; it was always a means to an end. He'd pat himself on the back for his personal accomplishment, and then think about how much money he'd get from selling it. Hell, he even stole back an artifact with HIS OWN EYE ATTACHED TO IT. Despite that, he STILL didn't care enough about it to keep it, and only went back to steal it in DS because it was a means to an end. Garrett's affinity for robbing people isn't simply some psychopathic dominance thing where he has to own other people's items to feel good about himself; it was born of a survival mechanism. When the Keepers trained him, he felt that he was so good at it that he'd be willing to lead a life where all he'd need to do was steal something valuable and get paid for it. In fact, Garrett has repeatedly expressed a subtle contempt for the materialism and vanity of the more upper class people of the City. Taking this all into account, I really have to wonder if Stephen Russell could have fixed that fact that Garrett's character might possibly be a different person than the Garrett of the esablished games.

I would say off the top of my head that the last worry I've got has to be the application of focus mode. I won't go too deep here, since I think most of what I think about it has been said, but I just hope that if it stays in the game by the time it releases, it doesn't become a core pillar of the gameplay, like instinct was in Hitman: Absolution.

Okay, I was wrong, a final minor doubt would be how deep the light and shadow system will actually be. We already know that there will be a more deep system than binary l&s, but I don't know how deep beyond that it will actually be in the game. We know of complete light and complete shadow, but what exactly would the gray zone be? I'd hate for there to be a trinary l&s, even though it would be better than what most stealth games are doing these days. Anyway, it's just a small minor doubt that came from nowhere, and maybe it's a little crazy to muster up a worry from nothing being said, but at the same time it was similarly a minor doubt back in 2011 that Skyrim might impliment regenerating health, and it turned out I was absolutely correct in worrying about it.

Captain Spandex on 13/4/2013 at 10:26

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I voted for Stephen Russell, because even with all those changes, his voice can provide a unifying direction and subtlety that the current product we're being shown lacks entirely.

But I'd add 'The Entirety of Focus Mode', as a caveat.

Tomi on 14/4/2013 at 10:20

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Mhmm, my list would look pretty much the same as yours, bartekb81. Except that some of the things that you mentioned I would only see as minor annoyances, so those aren't something that really worry me.

- world reboot (no magic elements, no factions?)
I think there will still be magic in Thief 4 (isn't Garrett's Focus ability some sort of magic too?), perhaps it just won't be as visible as before. I won't miss places like The Maw of Chaos, but the steampunk/magic powered things in the world were pretty cool. Don't know about factions yet, but I hope that the Hammerites at least remain in one way or another!

- main character reboot (absence of Stephen Russell and probably new personality of Garrett...)
- common swears instead of "taff" words.
I don't think that they're going to change Garrett into someone totally different. The absence of SR is the most obvious negative, but I can't even imagine SR in this new F-bomb infested world. It might just sound weird. I will too miss the old "taffer humour" though, and I hope that they won't go too over the top with the swearing, that would be just childish.

- absence of Viktoria (yup, I know she's dead but reboots have their own rules)
If she's dead then she should remain dead (unless this is a prequel or something, of course)?

- 3rd person switched on automatically (especially while hugging to the walls...)
This one's perhaps my biggest worry at the moment. But having recently played DX:HR a bit, this might not be a total gamebreaker - I thought that the 3rd person stuff in it was fairly well done, and not as obtrusive as I initially thought. Still, in a game like Thief, I think that they should keep the 3rd person stuff away as much as possible, especially when you're hiding behind a cover. There has to be some element of danger when you're peeking from behind a corner, and switching to 3rd person view would just be cheating. :p

- focus: multi-tool to make the game more attractive and accessible for new players
Don't know what all the fuss about this is about. Of course it could be some overpowered ability that totally breaks the game balance, but it might be a cool new feature too. Who knows? I can't say that I'm very concerned about this at the moment.

- stealth sections interrupted too frequently by scripted action elements
I remember the devs saying that you can complete the game without killing anyone, so I don't think that they're throwing the player into compulsory fights all the time.

- one-button actions (press "x" to climb/stun, etc.)
This is perhaps my second biggest worry at the moment. Not just the one-button actions though; simple controls isn't a problem at all, restrictive controls on the other hand would be. If the controls are as smooth and flowing as in Mirror's Edge for example, I'll be delighted. But if some of the special actions make the player "move on rails" and it restricts your movement, then that could be a bad thing.

- details and graphics at a cost of missions longevity and complexity...
I think I'd rather see a well-designed game world with lots of details, instead of overly long missions with lots of repetition and not much detail. But then again I won't be too happy at all if T4 turns out to be a game that takes five hours to complete and has no replay value at all. :p So it's important that the devs find the right balance for this, and I'm quite confident that they will.