FatSpy on 11/10/2013 at 23:24

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This might be a pretty long rant, and you might notice I'm brand new to this forum (not that I haven't lurked here before I made this account), but video games in general have become pretty disgusting lately and Thief 4 is a prime example why. This isn't really thief 4 specifically but thief 4 is what instigated this rant so I'm sorry in the future if this is in the wrong forum.

I didn't really have another place I could vent because most people today think that the abomination that is AAA gaming is what the standard of video games is and often get mad at whatever I say. Actually whenever I talk to said people I actually get pretty angry just at how the whole gaming industry is now, especially whenever I look at the youtube comments for Thief 4 the stuff people comment on their is so ubelievably stupid it blows my minds. No I'm not talking about "lel dishonored clone" because that's just ignorance of not knowing thief came first. Virtually any game related video or forum or whatever is going to be full of retards who think their AAA rushed out pos is the best game ever invented with the deepest story and best gameplay, and literally get mad just reading it. It might be considered being closed minded, but no, I don't even care at this point because of the bland generic shit that gets rediculous amounts of praise now. Its a lot like how hollywood works really...


So a lot of fans are upset about the new thief game, mainly because on the surface it looks like a dishonored clone. I actually only played thief 1 + 2 (not 3 it gave me a migrane) about a few months ago for the first time and I have to say it has everything video games should have that modern games lack:


* It is artistic in numerious ways
[INDENT][-]Extremely deep story with lots of lore and complexety in the background. On the surface you just follow garrett and his story alone is simple, but thats what makes it so great because he interacts with this epic world that has all sorts of types of magic going on in it in a way that any normal person would
[-]Epic soundtrack, it was haunting and atmospheric and even if the score would sometimes be simple loops it did way more for me than any modern soundtrack I can think of.
[-]Numerous other things that would take forever to touch down upon.[/INDENT]
* Gameplay with a depth of skill and could be played numerious ways, not this casual handholding shit
* Real freedom, not just open world bullshit that fakes freedom
* Completely unique, at its time nothing was like it (this is more of a gigantic massive bonus than a requirement though, for games like silent hill and resident evil are similar but both are very good)
You guys could probably find numerous other things ontop of that

I think my two favorite game genres Stealth and Horror rely on these the most, since those are all about pacing and atmosphere.

Things thief 4 is showing various signs of having that ruin modern games (for me at least).

* Lazy attempt to make money off of a fanbase, while also trying to appeal to cancer causal gamers. Raping of a franchise.
* DLC
* Restrictive and Simplistic gameplay usually with linear maps
* Mediocre unoriginal story
And as I said earlier you guys could probably find a 100 other things, and this didn't even mention the problems this game has as a Thief game.

Really this is all stuff modern games and game franchises have all done pretty much (dumbing down, and appealing to casual gamers) and is the main reason I don't even buy modern games anymore unless it's part of a steam sale that makes it >$10 or I can get it used for >$10.



Raping of a franchise.
Thief might not be a franchise... yet, but any old school franchise like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Splinter Cell, hell I hear even call of duty has been raped by wanting to appeal to casual gamers.

Theres a bunch of youtube comments that bring a pretty important fact to light:
Dishonored was a success
Thief 4 all the sudden comes to light
Thief 4 looks like a dishonored clone

Do you think this game is really being made because they give a flying f*** about the fans, or making a good game, or for anything not cash cow related? Probably not. I know publishers and game developers are there to make money but theres still a thing called quality control and not wanting to squeeze out as much cash as you possibly can.

I think the first stealth game I played was Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and thats what made stealth one of my favorite genres, but even that game pales in comparison to thief. I even replayed splinter cell and forgot how horribly linear it was. Now I look at modern splinter cell games and found this.
(http://hugelolcdn.com/i/107279.gif)

Now that might be a bit exaggerated, but from fans of the series and looking at gameplay footage I can tell easily it's come a long way from where it use to be, in the direction of action cod bullshit.

You know what the main thing they said about splinter cell conviction was? "You can choose to be stealthy or take a more direct approach." I remember these words from watching the early developer interviews about it as sam put a piece of broken glass under a window saw 4 enemies and kicked the door down and lit the place up with a shotgun. Nice.

The same thing happened to Resident Evil. The old resident evils had akward camera angles and such which obscured your vision and made it harder to fight but heres the thing: IT WAS A HORROR GAME. It made the game more difficult to know whats around the corner and brought out the atmosphere with its angles. Like look at this shit (https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/images/4/4a/Resident_Evil_Archives-Resident_Evil_Zero_Lights_Bug_Proper.jpg)

Everything in resident evil was limited, so you had to use your brain to determine how to use your supplies and ontop of that if you where low on supplies the tension just amplified, then RE4 came along and did away with the camera angles and enemies dropped ammo, medicine, and money to buy weapon upgrades with.... Why the f*** is it even called Resident Evil? RE4 was a fun game, but it was a horrible resident evil game. Then 5 came along and that was probably one of the worst game I have ever played, but then again I don't play a lot of newer games.

I wouldn't doubt at all this same shit will happen to thief 4. It'll probably be a shadow of itself, and get high praise from people, hell it might even be fun (doubtful) but it'll never be anywhere near as good as the old thief games wehre.



DLC is probably the #1 thing I hate about games right now:
Yeah so preorder dlc ensures people buy the game new (not used keeping money fromt he developers) and also is a way to add more to the game with some incentive to do it, and theres no evidence that thief 4 wont add more DLC later if it's succesful.

Well guess what, that's all fine and dandy but there are 2 major problems:
1: It's used to nickle and dime the consumer base with lazily made games with stuff that should have been on the original disk:
It is truely disgusting that people let this shit fly by, and the worst is when it happens in multiplayer games (and is not limited to skins) because then you're giving someone an unfair advantage for a few extra dollars. Ontop of that you got dlc that just access stuff that is ALREADY ON THE DISC. Like how the f*** do people let this fly are consumers just generally that f***ing stupid?

2: It's an incentive to slack off on making the game:
So now publishers can force development groups to rush a game out faster because they can release a bunch of other stuff as DLC and now your $60 game became a $75 game that probably sucks. Nice one.

3: It ruins the games ability to be "classic"
Imagine if thief gold was DLC for the dark project. So all the adjustments they made, and levels they added couldn't have been accessed unless you where there when they where still selling DLC. Ontop of that come 12 years or so forward to when I played it. All the sudden I can't access pretty big parts of this epic classic peice of art in video game history because the dlc servers are long gone. And the whole concept of dlc just cheapens the game in general, now expansion packs existed back then but that was pretty much what most people would consider a sequel today.


This whole "The biggest vault.... is in the biggest bank" shit that contains things that aren't going to be anywhere in the game, probably is going to hurt the game massively because those things that weren't going to be anywhere else in the game probably would have made the game better as a whole if they actually where in the f***ing rest of the game. Ontop of that can I still play that level in 10 years? Probably if I have the exact same harddrive thief is installed on and not deleted over 10 years, because 10 years isn't long at all in the computer world. How f***ing short and linear is this game going to be because of all the stuff they hacked off and put in the dlc?



Restrictive and Simplistic gameplay

* Restrictive:
[INDENT][-]Level specific jumping and wall leaning
[-]Rope arrow "spots"
[-]Linear maps[/INDENT]
* Simplistic:
[INDENT][-]Killing guards is "optional"
[-]Silent quick movement
[-]Seeing enemies through walls[/INDENT]


They clearly only call this a sequel so they can use the name of the genre to rake in fans and people who heard of how legendary thief was.

So far this looks like a dishonored clone, and this has been said time and time again. Now I've played dishonored and found it lacking. I pretty much quit after the first assassination mission because I literally just teleported all the way to the end, I blinked past a few guards then onto a ledge on the roof and ran all the way around into the room where the target was and beat it there. Infact the before I tried that (this is on the hardest difficulty btw) i snuck through the whole level only knocking out 2 guards that where pretty much required to be, and then got caught at the end in which EVERY GUARED IN THE LEVEL showed up to me and I cleared them all out with like 4 pistol shots because they 1 shot kill and penentrate bodies. Hardest difficulty.

Now this adds freedom but totally desimates any skill or tactic which stealth games rely on ESPECIALLY THIEF! and then they go and add quick silent movement, seeing through walls, Xp systems and what have you. The same thing happens in horror but they add action and destroy any pacing at all. The resident evil series got killed by this.

Games are so f***ing easy and shallow today that I usually get bored out of my f***ing mind playing them, and even if they're difficult its usually because of numbers not because there is a depth of skill at all to the game, or any reliance on using your actual brain for once. Its shit like this that makes me pretty much hate anyone who calls themselves a "gamer" because that just translates to "yeah I just suck on the tripple A cash cows utters and rip myself off and make my life about being manipulated and scammed like a corporate whore.

You can tell from that whole trailer he was pandering to the old audience by saying "Oh yeah this is option, yeah optional, yeah, options look cool." You know what that translates to me? "Our games going to be shallow and easy as f*** and so even a 10 year old who only plays call of duty can like it" so the guards will probably be boarderline retarded to the point where it doesn't even f***ing matter if you don't try to kill them. And what about stuff that isn't effected by stealth like puzzles and such? How dumbed down and retarded are those going to be?



Mediocre unoriginal story
A lot of games do this thing where they try to fake a complex story, and add a bunch of barely interesting characters and forced cliff hangers to make their story look better and attempts to tug on peoples heart strings. These things just make me loath the game even more

Lets be honest Thief 4's story so far is just emo robin hood, with the "Rich are evil and think the poor are scum".

In thief 1 it was obvious the rich where egoistic and evil but that was just a thing in the background, that wasn't even close to the main story it was one of the numorous background details. It wasn't even clear in the first two thief games who the real enemy was until way later into the game. Like seirously how long did it take to come up with that?

Another game series full of depth is the elder scroll series and anyone who played morrorwind will tell you that the game has been WAAAAYYYY dumbed down in several aspects. Infact skyrim is probably has the most complex lore out of any AAA game today and most of that just comes from the older elders. Also horror games which have a decent dependancy on story are usually unoriginal, predictable as f***, and generally shit, see dead space.


Closing my rant
When I first started typing this I was pretty much venting but I think I managed to cut it down into a legible format. I really despise games and anyone who call themselves "gamers" but only play casual bullshit because of all of this.

I was thinking about preordering thief 4 for a while but the more I think about it the more I see just another massive title that is made to make a quick buck.

FatSpy on 11/10/2013 at 23:41

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It might come off as elitist, but this sort of spitefulness grew when pretty much all my favorite genres took a turn for dumbed down action games.

I don't care about people who just play games whenever and not have as a hardcore hobby, but what I do get pissed about is when virtually every game that isn't indie pretty much tries wants it to be playable by everyone, and in turn becomes shallow and unoriginal yet gets retarded amounts of praise ontop of it, and pays off reviewers to give good ratings. Like the game industry just seems like a marketing industry now.

And no I don't hate action games because as you can see action games are victim to it to: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw)

LoucMachine on 12/10/2013 at 00:01

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I think the best example of what you are saying is all the ''Tom Clancy's'' games.
Take just Rainbow six, splinter cell and ghost recon.

At the beginning they were 3 very different games with different goals and gameplay.
Rainbow six was kind of a swat sim where you had to take care of many teams, the way they will take through the level, the timings with other teams to open doors from many sides at the same time and many strategic features.

You had Ghost recon witch was more of a sniper sim where you had to stay hidden and far to spot enemies and then approach with caution.

You had splinter cell witch was infiltration sim where you needed to hide and be silent otherwise you were done.

Today, those 3 games are incredibly closer... difference between lasts Rainbow six and latest splinter cell? in SC you are alone and in RS sometime you have teamates... thats about is... there is a bit of time since last ghost recon but it still came down to be as any fps around.. nothing more, nothing different ...

LoucMachine on 12/10/2013 at 00:27

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''I actually mentioned splinter cell in my tl;dr rant.''

Yes I know, I just wanted to point out how all Tom Clancy s games converged to be almost the same game with different names.

demagogue on 12/10/2013 at 01:22

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I think I can agree with you and Renz at the same time. The gaming culture is polarized. There's a mainstream culture and an indie culture, that itself is influenced by the mainstream culture though.

Some dominating things in the mainstream culture have left me cold & I can't ever really get into them... popups and achievements (and the design that goes around "achievements" thinking) being two big things, and handholding design. It reminds me of one of the crimes against mimesis on problems vs puzzles: great games use problems where the player finds their own ways to deal with, not puzzles to read the dev's minds of what "should" be fun, least of all when what should be fun is a caricature of what's expected.

All that said, Dishonored was pretty good in a lot of ways that I tolerated some of the these things... Mirror's Edge, Stalker... Recent games that had mainstream appeal but still did a lot of things right. (Skyrim is a wildcard pandora's box I'm not going to open now.)

But I also agree with Renz that indie gaming is having a golden age right now... because it's so easy to make a well-designed game & distribute it, it opens the field to different perspectives and ideas. We've never had such a stream of indie devs making interesting games. There's a flip side here too in that indie games can gravitate towards fluff or empty pretension, or there's more fluff to fluff through to get to the gems.

One thing that I wish too is that more people from outside the gaming world started making games so they can really push the indie scene in new directions, I mean like the way cinema got experimental in the 1920s or 1950s. I think even too many indie people are coming from inside the mainstream gaming culture even when they're trying to do something new, or their worried about alienating gamers. And on the other hand people outside gaming have a prejudiced view that turns them off entering the scene. I wish that would change.