Shinrazero on 4/10/2013 at 21:20
Quote Posted by Hamadriyad
Hey, good to see another Tolkien fan! :cheeky: I agree. I enjoyed the first Hobbit very much. I am looking forward for the second part. (Smaug looks a bit weird though.)
Woot! Freeman's delivery was pretty powerful in the new trailer. Can't wait to see Smaug in all his glory.
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Hamadriyad on 4/10/2013 at 21:40
Yeah, the new trailer was indeed good. Voice of Smaug is awesome. I am really excited.
TheDorkProject on 4/10/2013 at 21:45
Freeman was inspired casting for Bilbo, great choice.
Unfortunately, the first Hobbit film just did not measure up to the LOTR films (which weren't perfect by any means, but which were very, very good and some of my favorite movies.)
It felt like it was LOTR's 13 year old brother after he just chugged 6 cans of Mountain Dew.
It was embarrassing to see sequences like the rabbit sleigh chase and the escape from Goblin Town. It felt like a bad console video game. Nothing had any sense of real weight or peril. The "fellowship" kept falling and having these miraculous lucky survival moments as they were on those crumbling bridges... it honestly felt like a bad platformer or like a physics demo for a graphics card. Again, nothing had any weight. No sense of real danger... felt like a blatant sequence to just show off the 3D and such. Were the crumbling steps in Moria somewhat the same? Sort of... but I felt it was about 100x less egregious.
One of my favorite things about The Hobbit as a book, was the charm and eccentricity. The detailed feeling... the calm moments. I realize it's hard to capture that in a shorter movie, but they didn't have to make it into
eXtreme Hobbitz 3D: Maximum Edition
either.
SeriousCallersOnly on 4/10/2013 at 22:14
You just don't learn
TheDorkProject on 5/10/2013 at 02:34
Quote Posted by SeriousCallersOnly
You just don't learn
Can you expound on that?
Dia on 5/10/2013 at 14:34
Quote Posted by Briareos H
I don't agree with the "world has changed, be happy we have something" attitude. We didn't need a new Thief. Looking Glass Studios' works were characterized by strong player empowerment, pretty much the opposite of what Eidos Montreal are doing with Thief. If it doesn't play like Garrett, doesn't look like Garrett and doesn't sound like Garrett, why should we accept it as a game in the Thief series? Seeing it as a new "franchise" alleviates some of the concerns but even then, as a consolised modern title, it will have to be really damn good to beat Dishonored and other stealth games. Right now it just appears to be a (not very appealing visually) mess filled with agency-restricting mechanics and DRAMA.
I think this is what I've been trying to say from the first; I don't
want to 'settle for'! I am so damned tired of reading, 'But it's a THIEF GAME!', when in my opinion it really isn't. Each to their own, right? Why should I have to settle for something I already believe to be 'mess filled with agency-restricting mechanics and DRAMA' (btw, well said Briareos); why do I get the feeling that EM wants me to be thankful for the few 'crumbs' they're throwing my way in regards to any references they make to the original games in order to justify calling T4 'Thief'? No thank you.
Quote Posted by Esme
Basically, be happy for what you have no matter how crappy it is and don't complain because it can always be made worse.
Sorry, I want excellence, I will not put my hand in my pocket and reward mediocrity.
I heartily agree.
Quote Posted by King No One
No matter the quality of the finished game the greatest good NuThief will do is raising the profile of Thief as a property. Many seasoned gamers are familiar with Thief but will not have made the time to play any of the core titles. A reboot (and the likely fan backlash) could be just the thing to entice people into seeing what all the fuss is about, why the Fans are so incensed.
Yeah, right. T4 and its ensuing 'fuss' may cause a few of the players who've never played the originals to try TDP, TMA, and maybe even TDS; but I'm willing to bet that those players will walk away within the first five minutes of trying to play the originals. Why? Because none of the originals are anything like T4 and they'll be disappointed by that fact alone.
Quote Posted by King No One
EMs effort may not revitalise the Thief Brand as a commercial success (though that would be nice) but I think it will certainly bring fresh blood into the Fan Community. I've seen many posters who came to Thief via Deadly Shadows and this in and of itself should give critical fans pause.
I think you're being overly optimistic. And of those 'many posters who came to Thief via Deadly Shadows', just how many do you think actually went back and tried to play TDP and TMA, let alone even pretended to enjoy the originals? Not many. I've read posts (long past) wherein a new member joined because of TDS, but admitted that they just couldn't 'get into' the originals because they were nothing like TDS. Those were very short conversations, btw. Hard to have an intelligent discussion about the finer points of TDP & TMA when the other person's never even played them.
Quote Posted by King No One
Better that a lesser instalment keep the Thief series alive in the minds of gamers than the community be denied fresh talent and innovation by Thief sinking without a trace because no new entries are being made.
And there's that 'be happy we have something' and 'be happy for what you have no matter how crappy it is and don't complain' mentality again. Yeah, so let's all encourage EM to continue to produce second-rate games by buying into their PR bullshit that T4 is a Thief game and it's all we're likely to get. Again, no thanks. I'll just go back to playing the FMs.
candystriper on 5/10/2013 at 15:10
DorkProject, I agree with much of what you've said, so I think we're in the same boat.
However, I have come to complete acceptance with how the PC market is committing virtual suicide and the consoles have become the dominant force for video games.
Back in the day, I relished walking into a Best Buy and losing myself in aisle after aisle of PC games, and being able to enjoy that PC game I bought for at least, a bare minimum, of a 20 hour campaign. Back in the day, there was no 5 minute cutscene followed by 5 minutes of gameplay followed by another 5 minute cutscene. Back in the day there was no, "Find all 50 flags" or "Run through all 25 checkpoints in 2 minutes" to flesh out a game. Games are so padded today that it's sickening. But I have accepted this.
It's true what you say, a game like TDP or TMA, or even TDS cannot happen again. But I will take it a step further and say games like those, not only cannot happen again, but from a developer standpoint, will not and should not happen again. Whoa! Don't rip me to shreds just yet.
From a developer standpoint, a game like the first 3 would bankrupt them. I like the analogy that you used with the Hobbit Part 1. I give it a grade of C- just because, as you said, it was a, "CGI-packed, frantic mess." But CGI-heavy movies cost millions and millions less that "old school" movies. Imagine what it would cost Disney if they hand-built every single element in the upcoming Star Wars film like they did back in '77, '80, '83. The movie would cost a billion dollars to produce. And so it is with video games............
Thief 4 will be but a shadow of the first 3 games. It will be loaded with cutscenes (cutscenes are cheaper. Think of a cutscene as a 3 minute CGI scene of an AT-AT walker walking across Hoth, and then think of the gameplay being a 3 minute scene of a few guys stop-motion animating a real-life model (that took months to make) for 3 weeks over a 25 foot long piece of plywood covered with flour.) Thief 4 will also have many sidequests to flesh out its short single-player campaign.
I'm a pseudo purist. I want that physical copy. But I also realize that I am a dying breed. Physical copies are abhorred by developers. It costs money to create, press, burn, package, ship, etc. You'd think we'd get a huge discount for buying digital. We purists scratch our head and wonder why a Kindle version of a book sometimes cost more than a physical book. After all, it's just a 200 kb file zipping over the airwaves for our book...compared to the cost of printing, binding, shipping, etc. Why do they do it? Because they can. The profit margin on a digital download is HUGE, but it never gets passed on to us. Until a download is 50% less than a physical copy, I'm not buying new.
I do expect Thief 4 to be a decent game...when looked at on its own. It won't even compare to the first 3. This is a sign of the times. It cannot be changed anymore than us demanding that LP vinyl records become the industry standard for music recordings. Those days are gone.
Hit Deity on 5/10/2013 at 19:03
Quote Posted by TheDorkProject
Anyone else find themselves in a similar boat to me?
Yes, I think so. Sure, I want my cake and be able to eat it too (except for being diabetic now :rolleyes: ) but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. I could go on and on about what I want Thief (2014) to be, but since I didn't have that many millions of dollars to devote to its creation, I will have to live with what Eidos Montreal has crafted for me.
I have seen some impressive gameplay footage that makes me think they're heading in the right direction with Thief's development. Yeah, there has been some scary stuff as well, but there usually is with most games and certainly with games held dear to heart like Thief is. We'll just have to wait and see, of course, and I'd like to see more information, more details, before I click that pre-order button. Which I am likely to do, but EM is going to have to do some more convincing. They're getting closer though, but I want to be wowed :wot: before I buy into their pre-order revenue scheme. Right now I'm just kind of "reservedly interested". Oh..and hopeful. I haven't give up quite yet.... ;)
TheDorkProject on 5/10/2013 at 20:16
I guess the much better fate for the Thief series would have been if Kickstarter had been around back around the time LGS was going under.
If a group of the core LGS people had been able to form a new, small development team and get a kickstarter going, particularly if they'd been able to get the Thief IP from Eidos, they could have made exactly the game we wanted, and afforded Stephen Russell, etc.
I would have preferred that to the flashy Thief 4 with a new voice actor, and none of the same developers. That's for sure.
It would be nice to see some LGS people show up on Kickstarter even now, though they'd have to call the game something other than Thief. But how amazing would it be if they made a System Shock 3 (by another name) and a Thief 4 (by another name) ? I'd sorely miss some of the elements from the actual IPs, but they could probably still have Russell voice the Thief character :) Just name him something else, or never say his name.
candystriper on 5/10/2013 at 20:24
I've boycotted the pre-order gimmick ever since it burst on the scene. Basically, all the marketers/PR people sat down in a room and said, "How can we stop the customer from buying used? Every time Gamestop sells one of our games, we don't see a cut. Those poor developers. All that hard work. Their game changes hand 5 times in a year and they don't see a penny."
When you buy new, the publisher/developer, all the way down to janitor, sees some of that money. When you buy used, Gamestop Inc. or Joe Blow from Ebay gets the money. Pre-ordering, by offering "stuff" that should have been included in the final game, is the only legal way (presently) that the publisher can employ to increase their profits.
With Microsoft's failed bid to institute anti-used-game software, we get a 7 or 8 year reprieve. I'm 95% confident that Sony will jump on board with MS when the next-next gens come out. Then, be prepared for a shock. Fingerprint scans, retinal scans, credit card readers built into the console are all tactics already in place to make the game you buy playable by only YOU.
