Shayde on 29/7/2013 at 08:24
Ugh. I hate what I have become from this. Bitter and suspicious and negative. And the community as a whole all comes off this way, which damages our credibility and provides justification for the devs to ignore our concerns as rabid ranting. And the awful truth is that it's Eidos that made us this way, with their long silence interpreted as disinterest and disrespect. And when they finally broke that silence it was to confirm our suspicions that we were not being listened to and in fact the game was not being made for us at all.
Eidos is not suddenly going to start listening to our wishes or addressing our concerns. I think if we all try to accept that then we will stop being disappointed and angry and maybe we can break the cycle.
Dia on 29/7/2013 at 13:50
Unfortunately, it seems that when our disappointment starts to fade into dismal acceptance of the fact that EM has mangled and trashed what could have been a real Thief game, EM releases another tidbit of info that makes our collective jaws drop with incredulousness. And I think that most of us hope that if we shout loudly enough, then perhaps EM will listen, or at the very least know our displeasure. Afterall, EM has stated time and again that it's 'listening' to the hard-core Thief fans, so we can only hope, right? Well, we can hope, regardless of the fact that it seems to be a serious lesson in futility.
I rather doubt that acceptance of the fact that EM stopped listening to us long ago is going to cause less disappointment. We've already accepted that fact, but the more info EM releases on T4, the more intense the disappointment grows. It's not something one can turn off like a light-switch; I mean face it, TTLG Taffers seem to be very proprietary when it comes to the world/saga of Thief - especially since some of us have devoted over a decade to the original games and FMs. So yeah, it's hard to keep quiet when you see EM creating a trainwreck they claim is just like the original Thief games. It also seems to me that a lot of the negative posts here lately are in rebuttal to posts made by die-hard EM fanboys who continue to tell us things like 'it's no big deal' when referring to the changes EM is making to the core elements of the original Thief saga/world.
Chade on 29/7/2013 at 14:12
Quote Posted by Shayde
And the awful truth is that it's Eidos that made us this way, with their long silence interpreted as disinterest and disrespect.
EM do not control the way we respond to news. All they can do is change which responses which are justified.
This "disrespect" rubbish is just completely absurd. They're a professional games company handling an IP worth millions of dollars. They are
not making PR strategy on the basis of whether they feel like insulting us or not. For crying out loud!
TTK12G3 on 29/7/2013 at 14:43
Quote Posted by Chade
They're a professional games company handling an IP worth millions of dollars.
This does not negate the fact that they have been absolutely sloppy with their approach.
Chade on 29/7/2013 at 20:15
Sure, but that's a different topic.
Azaran on 29/7/2013 at 22:06
Their reason for a reboot, that the original story was too restrictive doesn't fly either. They could have done a million different things without reinventing everything. Countless fan missions are plain evidence that it can be done.
Chade on 29/7/2013 at 22:50
FMs are different, though. Their audience already understands the context.
Not saying that I agree with EMs decision to remove* a lot of the original content, because I do think it should be possible to work with. However, it's worth noting that EM do have a genuine issue to overcome here.
The original three factions, although built from familiar elements, are assembled in somewhat unusual ways. Christianity crossed with a blacksmiths guild. A hippy commune crossed with things that go bump in the night. Archivists who occasionally save the world. A mechanical eye because Garrett lost his original eye in a fight with a god and got given a replacement by his enemies. Depending on how you interpret things, a key-shaped mark on his hand. These things take time and effort to explain. Go back and play the originals again and look at how so much of the content: cutscenes, readables, conversations, entire missions, is built around explaining the factions to you. Then EM have the eye story and possible key mark to explain on top of that!
So now EM is faced with introducing all this history ... and their story doesn't even have anything to do with it! (Which I fully support.) It's just an insane amount of wasted time and effort to introduce these factions when there is absolutely no payoff to the story. So I sympathize with EM's decision to some extent.
That said, I do think they should have included them. There's ways to give them screen time, or make them easier to understand. You could emphasize one element of the factions to start with, and then bring in other elements slowly as the game progressed. The factions could be part of the resistance to the Baron. They could be mostly decimated at the start of the game and hence introduced slowly. I'm sure there's lots of things you could do if you really wanted to. It's a bit of a shame EM didn't go there.
* remove in the sense of not having it front and center at any rate
New Horizon on 29/7/2013 at 23:36
So, an alternate timeline / reality.
Like I said awhile back on one of the forums, Thief 2014 = Star Trek 2009.
TriangleTooth on 30/7/2013 at 00:11
Quote Posted by New Horizon
So, an alternate timeline / reality.
Like I said awhile back on one of the forums, Thief 2014 = Star Trek 2009.
So old Garrett will arrive to reveal the Keepers seriously screwed something up at the end of TDS, creating new thief?
Llama on 30/7/2013 at 01:37
Quote Posted by Chade
So now EM is faced with introducing all this history ... and their story doesn't even have anything to do with it! (Which I fully support.) It's just an insane amount of wasted time and effort to introduce these factions when there is absolutely no payoff to the story. So I sympathize with EM's decision to some extent.
Ok. Then don't call it thief.
