Goldmoon Dawn on 15/2/2014 at 21:05
I cant even see the thread, because I guess NuEff started the thread? Well, I cant see his stuff! :p
CrumblingMap on 15/2/2014 at 21:10
Yikes. No ambient music :(
Well, they got 50% right :D (maybe). I'll gladly wait a year or two until this is in the $5 bin. Doesn't look like I'll be missing much.
GUFF on 16/2/2014 at 03:28
This actually doesn't look too bad. Seems they took some of the criticism and worked with it.
The UI/HUD has been minimized and is even less obtrusive than in the original games. The hands (and also other body parts when applicable) don't take up massive amounts of screen space and are only visible when it would actually make sense for them to be. The "Shroud" doesn't seem as obnoxious as it was in earlier trailers. A lot of the stealth mechanics are more modernized but the "focus" abilities like the quick dash seem like they'd be super overpowered if you could use them very often. Then again they said they put a crazy amount of customization in and you can limit/turn off that stuff if you want.
It's too bad though that most of the actions (climbing, rope arrows) are still contextual. Also bad is that readables are not art flavored with scroll/book art, handwriting styles, etc. Ambient music doesn't seem to be as present but is still there. I assume also that there's going to be horrible forced "you got caught! escape sequence" type things when no one should be realistically expecting you even and especially if you've been literally ghosting the mission so far rather than there being multiple outcomes for those types of things which should be easy for a professional studio with that kind of budget to implement.
This may be an alright game that will ultimately not measure up to what a lot of existing Thief fans really want, but it seems they may have actually listened to some of us some and salvaged what they'd already mostly had completed by the time they were showcasing it last year. It's always a tragedy to see the kind of game you can tell the art asset artists really put a lot of good work into turn out bad/mediocre because of poor gameplay design decisions. I still think they're really dumb for not getting Stephen Russell just so they could use some new mouth mocap technology that almost no one will care about, but whatever. As it is a stealth game and most of them don't do well on the market, I don't know if we'll ever see a sequel that builds on the strengths of this game and eliminates the bad.
Minion21g on 16/2/2014 at 05:55
Okay. First of all, wtf is with the needless banter. I didn't step into ThiefGen very often, man, I don't remember it being it this bad. Now back to the point.
As a game, it looks pretty mediocre. The graphics are nice, sure, but the gameplay (as already been described) seems a bit linear. I kept trying to compare the game to Dishonored instead of the old Thief games and it seemed to hold up pretty well with that comparison, but I don't think that's the point. Mainly, whatever story they're trying to tell already smells of bullshit. They copied "the plague" straight from Dishonored and couldn't have a stupider name "The GLOOM". So it seems to me, that they're trying to capture the Dishonored market and also the Thief market? It just sounds like a recipe for disaster considering the two are at odds in terms of gameplay and narrative. But at least it looks good right?
FatSpy on 16/2/2014 at 06:49
Quote Posted by Minion21g
So it seems to me, that they're trying to capture the Dishonored market and also the Thief market?
That's the conclusion i came to going off of what's been said.
cyrosis on 16/2/2014 at 09:55
Quote Posted by GUFF
A lot of the stealth mechanics are more modernized but the "focus" abilities like the quick dash seem like they'd be super overpowered if you could use them very often.
"Swoop" is not part of focus, so it has no limitations aside from a short cool down. Of course if I ever end up playing Thief, I'll be unbinding the key for it.
TriangleTooth on 16/2/2014 at 10:41
Quote Posted by Minion21g
As a game, it looks pretty mediocre. The graphics are nice, sure, but the gameplay (as already been described) seems a bit linear. I kept trying to compare the game to Dishonored instead of the old Thief games and it seemed to hold up pretty well with that comparison, but I don't think that's the point. Mainly, whatever story they're trying to tell already smells of bullshit. They copied "the plague" straight from Dishonored and couldn't have a stupider name "The GLOOM". So it seems to me, that they're trying to capture the Dishonored market and also the Thief market? It just sounds like a recipe for disaster considering the two are at odds in terms of gameplay and narrative. But at least it looks good right?
I find it hard to believe they copied it from dishonored given the long dev cycle, it seems like it was a very unfortunate choice to do both. I think this mostly because being too much like another game is almost always a bad thing and an AAA dev would know this, so them keeping their plotline after Dishonored came out is the weird thing. Unless it's crucial in some way.
Platinumoxicity on 16/2/2014 at 11:38
I also noticed that due to the restrictiveness of movement sequences such as climbing ropes, the player has no control over for example how they detach from ropes. In the video, the player climbed down a rope, and apparently automatically detached and jumped down onto a wooden ledge. There were enemies close by, but landing on that platform didn't alert them. So because there's so little control in these things, they have been made safe. If the player would have exact control, there would be an excuse to create challenges out of these situations. Players would need to figure out where to land safely, because they would have all the abilities to accomplish that or fail, all based on their own skill.
Compromises caused by other compromises caused by incorrect priorities. That's basically Thief 4 in a nutshell.
Neb on 16/2/2014 at 12:04
Quote Posted by Minion21g
They copied "the plague" straight from Dishonored [...]
Both games are set in a fantasy city modelled after London - a city with plague outbreaks being some of its most recognisable historical events. I can see how both would end up referencing that.
SubJeff on 16/2/2014 at 12:11
Quote Posted by Platinumoxicity
and apparently automatically detached and jumped down onto a wooden ledge.
Your entire post is premised on this. And you don't actually know this. That's a little unreasonable, no?
