Briareos H on 16/6/2013 at 12:50
Either focus testers kept breaking levels which were built too focused and controlled (entry points, view distance, looking bad from above) or the devs couldn't get the system working properly (roping too close to blocking surfaces).
Chade on 16/6/2013 at 13:03
Lots of interesting things in the eidos forum fan impression Q&A, and I've only read the first page:
These are some of the points that lept out at me. Again, this is just the (
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=138032) first page (I need to get some sleep!).
Good:
* Burning building sequence not an escape from a manor, from another part of the game entirely. That sort of thing supposedly very rare.
* Simple blackjacking does not require a takedown button (not sure if this was actually confirmed before?)
* unconscious guards can be woken up
* xp rewards heavily favour stealth
* their paths through the E3 level we have seen were very different to the dev playthrough shown several times at E3. In other words, the E3 demonstration we saw was not scripted, but heavily rehearsed.
* they thought Garrett's one liners were well written (e.g. "So, the Baron does have a heart after all..." in reference to the heart of the lion), and in their opinion his personality was "very much the same"
* sounds is still very important
* in their opinion, the atmosphere was fantastic
* an action heavy approach would be very difficult
* they found the guards to be very observant, and mentioned that "if they suspect something is there they actually will change how they patrol the environment to include the area they saw something"
Bad:
* seems like devs are pretty keen on the hands staying, even when they are not doing anything
* as noted above, rope arrows are indeed limited to hot spots. I wonder if they've been shoe-horned in after popular outcry ...
* they weren't able to change actions "mid-animation"
EDIT: added link to the first page I readbukary on 16/6/2013 at 13:37
Quote Posted by Judith
The rope arrows thing looks like a feature copypasted from TR reboot. Not sure why they did it, even TDS had ArrowsStickIn feature tied directly to the surface definition, not to some particular class of static meshes.
I don't think it's the result of engine limitation or body awareness implementation problem. It might be tied to some kind of level design and gameplay philosophy:
Yes, we are giving you multiple entrance points, but we need to have control over each one of them. We encourage you to explore the enviroment, but we decided to guide you during this exploration.I really dislike the rope arrows implementation. Perhaps we should express our discontent loudly at EM forums. There's a slight chance that it will be improved.
Renault on 16/6/2013 at 14:23
One of the mods on the official T4 forums says that per Stephane D'astous, Manual Saving is in (as well as checkpoints, of course). Sweet.
demagogue on 16/6/2013 at 14:23
I wouldn't be surprised if the rope arrow lock-on idea came from focus groups (remember there was also that mention of beam-run lock-on, and maybe there's other parkour related lock-ons too; that's another way to look at the contextual QTE events). There's a culture of gameplay mechanics being clearly "game-ified" so there's no ambiguity how and where a mechanic works. I think it's part of the spiel one of their devs mentioned somewhere (on focus) that the environments are so much more dense with stuff that they wanted to clarify where gameplay happens more. So I think that's the reasoning. I don't like it either though. But if they have focus group demand for it, it's tough to argue.
I'm relieved to hear blackjacking is as normal, since IMO that's the bread and butter of Thief gameplay, next to threading guard paths and running for the shadows.
Starker on 16/6/2013 at 15:30
Quote Posted by Chade
unconscious guards can be woken up
Interesting.
Quote Posted by Chade
they thought Garrett's one liners were well written (e.g. "So, the Baron does have a heart after all..." in reference to the heart of the lion), and in their opinion his personality was "very much the same"
I've heard that Garrett has developed romantic notions about his job much like in the trailers and that the world is more grimdark compared to the old Thief world.
Quote Posted by demagogue
But if they have focus group demand for it, it's tough to argue.
(
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7405-Damn-Fine-Coffee)
nickie on 16/6/2013 at 17:09
Quote Posted by Chade
Good and Bad.
Thank you. I read all pages and ended up cross-eyed so I was hoping someone would do this.
Vivian on 16/6/2013 at 17:18
"The word "taffer" is still in the game"
One off the list!
Starker on 16/6/2013 at 17:36
Quote Posted by Vivian
"The word "taffer" is still in the game"
One off the list!
It's one of the many swearwords now. F*cking taffers.
Vivian on 16/6/2013 at 17:49
taff-mongling drokklords. Makes sense anyway, previous games had 'bloody', 'damn' etc. Taffer just stands out because it's, well, made-up. Also, they said it's included as naturalistic dialogue, not just f-bomb littered retard-speak. As in 'what the bloody hell is that', etc. Sounds ok. Sounds English, so I'm in favour of it.
