What about the atmosphere? Did they get the "Thief" ambience right ? - by Poetic thief
Pyrian on 7/2/2014 at 00:26
I don't think I was ever as unimpressed and unimpressable as my early teens, actually. More "attitude" than "experience", of course.
DadaFish on 7/2/2014 at 01:25
The ambiance looks very well done, if you ask me. I don't understand how anyone can pass pretend to not be taken aback by the detail and the quality of the environments here. Looking at the exteriors, between the very well done fog and particle rain effects and the dark, washed out style, I felt cold. If you watch the videos without commentary, you can notice when Garrett ducks into a house, you can faintly hear the patter of the rain against the roof, coming from above, and very distantly, crows. And then the contrast with the interiors, particularly in the House of Blossoms with its pastel reds bathed in candlelight, almost provides another motive for trespassing just to get indoors where its warm.
The sound backing it is also well done. There are long moments of silence, punctuated by touches of unintrusively suspenseful ambient music. It all sounds properly Eric Brosiusy. The Looking Glass titles had background sounds that really worked with their environments, like the water dripping in caves, or the sound of machinery or distant hammering for Mechanists or Hammerites. I like that that they set the tone of the House of Blossoms with an NPC idly picking a lute. I suppose they had to have alert music+sound, meh. Although I guess it makes you want to not get noticed so it won't screw with the vibe. Even, I know, the focus has some nice touches where you can hear your blood pumping in your ears, although the "you're using focus now" sound is way too prominent.
A lot of it will come down to level design. I guess we'll see when it comes out.
Quote Posted by R Soul
I like the detail but some colour would be nice.
Actually, if Eidos had just randomly thought fit to ask me, they didn't, what they should use as a reference for an art style of an upcoming Thief game, I would have suggested this...
Inline Image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/El_Aquelarre.jpgFatSpy on 7/2/2014 at 01:30
That reminds me of signal ops. Not so much the colors, just the paint strokes. Signal ops was a game where the world felt like you where in a painting.
Starker on 7/2/2014 at 02:02
Quote Posted by FatSpy
That reminds me of signal ops. Not so much the colors, just the paint strokes. Signal ops was a game where the world felt like you where in a painting.
It would've fit right in as one of Thief's paintings. The first games had several classic paintings in them, Leonardo Da Vinci and whatnot. Goya would've been in good company.
Anyway, nothing about the reboot's art style impresses me. Thief 1 and 2 actually had a very interesting mishmash of different styles -- romanesque, classicistic and victorian architecture mixed with industrial steel. It was steampunk with an uniquely medieval flavour. Deadly Shadows was a stark departure with its mostly high medieval style.
Detail can actually make the rooms too crowded and if a lot of the things are baked into the scenery, it detracts from the immersive sim aspect, as there will be more window-dressing and less interaction. Thief benefited from the bleak environments as it was very minimalist in its design. More detail does not necessarily translate to better art.
From the little I've heard in the videos, I would not describe the background music Eric Brosiusy. It lacks the dark ambient quality of Brosius, the haunting melodies with sudden twists.
For me, the reboot definitely lacks the certain
je ne sais quoi of the first games. Even TDS was quite a departure already.
Goldmoon Dawn on 9/2/2014 at 13:42
Quote Posted by Brethren
Yeah, I just can't picture any AAA game coming out these days with levels remotely resembling something like The Bonehoard. Or The Haunted Cathedral. Or even Trail of Blood or Life of the Party.
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Then you haven't played any AAA games coming out these days.
Quote Posted by Brethren
Like what though? Granted, I haven't played a lot of AAA stuff in the past 5 years, but the few I have played haven't measured up.
Im still waiting to hear the answer to this one...
june gloom on 9/2/2014 at 20:02
Please don't reply to me or communicate with me in any way. Thanks.
Darkness_Falls on 9/2/2014 at 22:03
You can hear snippets of the official soundtrack if you go to the UK version of Amazon's site. Be careful, the song titles are spoilery. I viewed the page at like 30% zoom so I wouldn't accidentally read the song titles.
Search for "Thief director's cut soundtrack".
There's about 11m45s of audio snippets there! A long list of songs. The "Play Sample" buttons were blank boxes for me, but they were still functional.
EDIT: You can also hear the snippets on the soundtrack label's site -- (
http://www.sumthing.com/p/thief/) (again, be careful of spoilery song titles. Don't scroll down the page too quickly and accidentally view a bunch of song titles). I assume they're the same snippets as on Amazon, but I'm not patient enough or into the soundtrack enough at the moment to listen again and verify. This site seems to auto-play from one track to the next, so this may be a better one to preview the tracks with. Just slowly scroll down to the first song title and click the audio snippet (bright red button under the "Preview" column to the right) and it will automatically run through the playlist in the background. Song titles are listed on the left, so try to avoid that side of the page if you don't want spoilers.
TriangleTooth on 9/2/2014 at 22:20
One or two sounds in those do actually sound similar to the originals. But it's a lot more dramatic.
I can hear a couple of sounds from Haunted Cathedral in the final song.
Ceamonks890 on 9/2/2014 at 22:32
Had a listen to the soundtrack previews via the link you gave Darkness_Falls and none of the tracks really stand out as being memorable unfortunately, much like what the Tomb Raider reboot did in my case:( All it is essentially to me, is nothing but generic cinematic white noise. *sighs* I miss the days when titles like Tomb Raider and Thief used to be known for their immersive atmospheric soundtracks. Now, they're just as by the numbers as every other title coming out nowadays.
Vae on 9/2/2014 at 22:38
Thank you, DF...It's a shame there is nothing from Paul Weir, who is a deeper and superior composer...I will not make final judgement until I hear these works in their totality, yet from the twenty samples provided, I am unimpressed.
