Thief (4) Features. What we know is in, what we know is out.

Chade on 19/7/2013 at 12:31

Thanks for providing sources Vae. Ouch. I wonder if that's the only reason they're doing this? To get down to one button?

I'd love to get into their heads on this one. I've always felt with other decisions EM has made that I could understand why they were doing things. I might not always have agreed with all of it, but at least it made sense. This doesn't make sense to me. I don't see other mass market games resorting to this level of hand-holding. (Or am I just not playing the right games?)

I'm mostly ok with the drop button. I'm potentially looking forward to the new lean and the swoop command. I might even be ok with an auto-jump button if it was optional. I don't think I'm hard to please here ... but completely removing any sort of manual jump is a bizarre design decision.

My main hope now is that they've got the engine calculating all possible jumps for you. I think that's the best case scenario here: at least I could still look around the level and judge where I can move for myself, without waiting to find out where the holy level designer dictates that I go.

Even in the best case, though, it still beats rope arrows restrictions as the worst thing I've heard. No possibility of failure. No tension when jumping. No jumping over tiles. Hell, my favorite blackjack moment in thief involved jumping as far onto the tiles as I could, sprinting, and leaning forwards at the last moment to catch the guard just after he turned around saw me. Two of those actions are not possible in thief 4.

EDIT:
Damn it guys, stop making me defend thief 4. This doesn't feel like the right moment to defend it. Still, comments like this are silly:

Quote Posted by Esme

So Garrett becomes a simplified puppet I drive around that I'm not invested in and don't really care what happens to, rather than being me in the game

The vast majority of failures in thief comes from letting guards see you. None of this changes any of that. Yeah, yeah, the swoop ability ... hardly an "I win" button.

This is a horrible decision on EM's part. I don't think you have to resort to dodgy arguments to criticise it. Destroying all tension while climbing is bad enough by itself, and that's just the best possible senario. It could easily be much worse.

Renault on 19/7/2013 at 14:14

I'm amazed, the contextual jumping stuff is even swaying the difficult-to-convince Chade. I'm sure it won't last. ;)

Just for reference for all, this was the snipet from Jerion's (EM moderator) report after playing T4 at E3:

Quote:

Jumping and climbing appear restricted to predetermined locations. It is set up fairly comprehensively; if you think you ought to be able to jump or climb somewhere you'll be able to do so. I hope this will change and jumping will become free-form, unrestrained by pre-determined leaping points. Whether or not this approach to things was meant to simplify the control scheme I can't say. It could have been a deliberate choice to slow the pace of gameplay. From my perspective, restricting climbing to certain points makes a degree of sense, as it forms vertical paths adding a tiny sense of puzzle-solving challenge to planning out how to traverse a given space. That said I found myself wanting the freedom found in Mirror's Edge, where the player could clamber on top of reachable things from almost any reasonable point and angle.

Still can't believe I missed that, it's from almost a month ago. It's funny, despite his desperate attempts to remain an EM stooge throughout the writeup, he can't quite mask his disappointment with lack of freeform jumping and the restrictions on freedom of movement. It's just disappointing that none of the other EM puppets who played the demo at E3 didn't even mention this.

Quote Posted by legoman

I have well and truly fallen off that fence, lack of free jumping is a joke!

I'm sorry, it's not that easy. You're going to need to press X first.

Springheel on 19/7/2013 at 15:25

Quote:

That said I found myself wanting the freedom found in Mirror’s Edge, where the player could clamber on top of reachable things from almost any reasonable point and angle.

Mirror's Edge? Uh, how about finding yourself wanting the freedom found in every other Thief game??

Renault on 19/7/2013 at 15:48

See, that's the thing. I made the argument last week that all the EM mods who played the demo at E3 weren't really even Thief fans. They're mods, and they've posted in the official DXHR, Hitman, or Tomb Raider forums, but hardly at all in the Thief forum. I don't think most of these guys (besides Master Taffer) even played Thief very much prior to E3. This statement (about ME) kind of backs that up.

In short, he's comparing Thief to ME, and it should be the other way around.

Esme on 19/7/2013 at 16:16

Quote Posted by Brethren

...I'm sorry, it's not that easy. You're going to need to press X first.

Only if it was a *really high fence

If it turns out that the player can't jump at will then that's one of the tools of the trade out of the window.

I have on occasion pulled AI out of position by finding a noisy surface and jumping a few times to deliberately make noise, then either sneaking round them or BJing them while they're searching.

Someone didn't do their research if they are making it contextual, noise is a tool in a stealth game and not being able to make noise when you want to is a drawback, you may not be able to find a handy throwable and jumping is all you have after all.

Would this mean you also can't jump off ropes and ladders except at predetermined points where you are guaranteed a safe landing ?

* - roughly whatever height would take more than 80% of Garrett's health were he to be stupid enough to fall off

Specter on 19/7/2013 at 17:11

The jumping (or lack thereof) is indeed beyond ridiculous.

I noticed that B1skit was quite active in a few threads on the EM boards, and in one of them, people were again talking about Focus. He again said its option. Old news. I asked him if choosing to play without Focus is also choosing to leave some objectives incomplete, or choosing to leave some loot undiscovered. I received no answer. Has this been asked or answered anywhere else?

Springheel on 19/7/2013 at 17:48

I'm still having a hard time figuring out how this statement:

Quote:

Originally Posted by b1skit
There is only an "unglue" button, as you call it, at extreme heights - your normal exploration abilities are just as they were in the classic games.

can be true, if what we're hearing about jumping is also true.

Renault on 19/7/2013 at 18:17

Sad thing too is, this pretty much seals the deal on any kind of swimmable water in Thief. If they're not even going to let you jump and freely move around vertically in open land-based areas, there's no way they're going to let you swim around freely in all 6 degrees anywhere. Granted, this hasn't been officially announced, and I could be wrong, but we'll see.

Melan on 19/7/2013 at 18:18

Don't worry, guys! It's going to turn out all right! They have created IRL replicas of Garrett's compound mechanical bow and leather outfit! :joke:

Vojtechsonik on 19/7/2013 at 18:23

I think I see where this is going and where games are going - or at least in example of Splinter Cell Conviction and Assassin's Creed. I call it "cinematic smoothness" - smooth transitions from 3rd to 1st person (in case of Thief), smooth animations, not getting stuck by obstacles, always knowing where to go/what to do. I mean, look at those games and games that came before. Compare movement and tactical possibilities in Chaos Theory to Conviction, compare jumping/climbing and difficulty in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within to automatic parkour in Assassin's Creed. Older ones gave you more options/room for mistakes and (subjectively speaking) more fun. So these features in Thief are really not surprising if you want to achieve this "smoothness" - give player less room for mistakes/getting stuck and they will be in for the ride...predetermined one (or three:bored:). Do you guys think this is the way Thief is heading? I am so convinced of this, because of the videos and PR talk. They think this is what makes games immersive.

Btw. I am so satisfied with how TDM is looking out right now with latest FM Old Habits Rebuild (has to be downloaded seperately) and its AI - they notice opened doors, comment everything, talk to each other - makes game so much more immersive and ghosting satisfying. Next-gen Thief right there:cool: