Mofleaker on 12/7/2013 at 09:10

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Thievery in Skyrim is shallow, just like the rest of the game. Yes, the number of things you can steal in Skyrim is far greater than it is in Thief, as is the number of places you can rob.

But going simply by numbers, Diablo 3 would the greatest Thief game ever made. We all know that isn't true, and it all comes down to the gameplay revolving around the procurement of loot. In Skyrim you can rob any house you see, but is it really fun or unique in any way? You wait until night time, lock pick one of the doors and take stuff. I'm not even omitting any elements of gameplay; if you stay crouched you will never be detected. There is no risk or challenge, even at lower levels. If you do by some miracle get detected, the owner of the building simply walks up to you and requests you leave. So you oblige them, wait 5 minutes and waltz right back in. Don't worry - they'll have gone back to bed despite the fact their belongings have all up and vanished.

Even sneaking around in bandit areas with active enemies doesn't give a genuine thieving experience, you're just using stealth to insta-kill the bad guys so you can grab their loot. Does any game with a sneak attack multiplier and loot qualify as a thief game? Each and every heist is the exact same, only exception being the loot you find. You're given a choice between "FORT LOCATION", "CAVE LOCATION", and, uh...I can't even think of other locations you encounter bandits. Skyrim offers very forgettable and bland level design.

Thievery isn't just about the amount of crap you can steal, it's also about the act of stealing it. Theft gameplay in Skyrim is a very shallow experience, at least if you compare it to Thief. Every element of the Thief games compliment the thieving gameplay - the mystery, the atmosphere, the fog of war...I could go on for days.

Mofleaker on 12/7/2013 at 09:21

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I'm referring to the lack of indication provided to the player describing their environment. Games like Skyrim provide this info using the cheating eye-meter-thingie. In Thief you really lack situational awareness because you are restricted to your eyes and ears, just like in real life. The only way around these limitations is patience again like in real life.

svs on 12/7/2013 at 12:24

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Hi guys,

Decided to finally throw in my two cents. I've been playing Thief since The Dark Project around 98/99 and have been frequenting this site since dual-core cpus started to be distributed more widely - and Thief stopped running on my PC.

I'm somewhere between being stoked about a new Thief game and being cautiously optimistic about it.

My opinion is that the community here and over at Eidos forums seem to be freaking out pretty badly at times over the most minute of issues.

Re: Thief

Gameplay

Overall, it's definitely there. It's Thief and nothing else. Biggest let-down for me at the moment is limitations in movement, namely jumping. I hope they change it.

Potentially a HUGE departure will be the experience points. There should be some novel way to implement experience points, which wouldn't affect the character's basic skillset. The character shouldn't at any point progress to being an overpowerd, unstoppable looting machine. I think feeling overwhelmed is one key factor in Thief experience - that's one of the glaring differences between Thief and being a thief in Skyrim, for instance. That said, it all boils down to how they will implement XP, and hopefully it'll work out just fine. I will decide when there's more information to work with.

Rope arrows are a slight let-down, but I can see that tackled pretty easily by placing the spots intuitively and comprehensively. If there's a spot I think I should be able to shoot a Rope Arrow, the game should let me do so.

I would also get rid of any forced (3rd person) camera/view changes.

And finally, Focus...
... which is optional! However, I really like the potential it has regarding escaping, for example. I will keep it enabled at least during my first play through in hopes of it replacing the quicksave/quickload routine. Probably using it only in a tight spot, though.

HUD (The Hands Up Display...)

I don't like how the Head-Up Display looks, I hope they will change it to be more in line with the general art style. Not also a fan of the indicators, but it's a non-issue since they can be turned off.

I really, really like the hands, but I feel there's a lot of missed potential regarding integrating HUD to the hands. I just hope that the animations don't take priority over the player's control.

Garrett

Truth be told, I was expecting Russell to reprise his role. Not too fussy about that, it was more important for me to have Garrett back. I will definitely be giving Orzari a chance.

Lore

Like with Russell, not too fussy about this one either. I think it's fair enough to the new developer team to have their own take on Thief. Previous trilogy already wrapped up pretty nicely, and having more of the same might be redundant artistically. It also leaves the existing lore untouched, not taking a chance ruining it by explaining things further. Besides, the world is clearly the same, just with the emphasis shifted to new things. It might actually give the devs more room to work with, since this community has worked with the existing one over a decade - which is a long time.

Key factor here, is in my opinion the presentation. That needs to be along the lines what LGS did with presenting the lore. They must not push their points too hard and leave much of the world open to interpretation. That said, I feel already that they actually are pushing some of the points too hard; by having the plague and utter misery around, contrasting it with tawdry ribaldry among the City's elite. That's similar over-underlining the point Dishonored did with its world.

I mean, sure, while that might be realistic and something that actually happens, it could be done with much more subtle ways than by explicitly showing the player. It should merely be hinted about in the conversations and readables scattered around the missions, like the original instalments did. Imagination is sadly pushed way too much to the background when the visual fidelity starts allowing more accurate representations of things.

TL;DR. That's about it. Not going to make a TLDR of this, because it's too long for me to read again and see what the general points were I tried to make. :cheeky: Anywhoo, I'm sure I forgot to mention about a myriad of things, but I'll guess I have time to fill in later...

See you around!

Dia on 12/7/2013 at 22:34

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I had a blast doing stuff like that in Skyrim. Don't think I'm the Lone Ranger in that respect, either. ;)

demagogue on 14/7/2013 at 02:09

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Re: that Skyrim trick, I remember us going to some lengths to keep that kind of thing from being an exploit in TDM. It's actually not an easy problem to solve. At least you can't touch our AI because they'll still go on alert from a touch stim IIRC.