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I'll confess that I'm a Thief fan-boy and that I got pretty Angry At Computer Games with Thief 2014. It's just... I love the original Thief trilogy. Love it - especially the first two, of course. Right from the beginning, when I saw the 'Thief: The Dark Project' playable demo on a PC gaming magazine's cover disc, and thought "this sounds interes- holy poo poo this is amazing". Love it. I could rattle off a laundry list of problems I have with Thief 2014, but I'll let the LP get there first (and Bobbin will probably cover them anyway). This is what I said in conclusion to some friends right after I'd finished the game, though: Angry past me posted:Basically, pretty much all the things I was afraid of during development turned out to be true; Thief (2014) is a massive disappointment for me. It's Thief in name only. During development, the requisite talking heads from the studio/publisher kept saying that they wanted it to be a re-imagining rather than a sequel, and it really is; to the point where it may as well not even be the same IP. Definitely Thief in name only.
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Nov 11, 2014 05:11
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Something that might interest people here is this RPS 'game and a chat' interview with some of the developers of the original Thief trilogy. It took place right when Thief 2014 was coming out so they talk about it a bit, though from memory none of them had played it at that point. Something I found interesting was one of the devs mentioning how Thief started out as the fantasy sword-fighting game 'Better Red than Undead/Dark Camelot', and saying something along the lines of how that mixed history may have made it a better/more interesting game, but perhaps one less focussed on stealth than later games were (especially Thief 3 and Thief 2014). That the later ones had the benefit of the earlier games virtually creating the first-person stealth genre, and giving something to build on. (I could be mildly mixing up who said what there.) Anyway, like a few people here, I'm considering going back and marathoning Bobbin's Thief trilogy LP too. Although... okay, it's basically an example of a flawless LP, like the Deus Ex LP; showing everything, including an 'ideal' path through the game, with a clear, bright picture so you can see what's going on. It was very different to how I experienced the games myself, though. The way I've always played the games would make for a lousy LP, of course. Playing with the lights in the room switched off, and the gamma adjusted so that dark is actually dark (pitch-black, often). Surround sound speakers... can't imagine playing without those, given the games' amazing sound design. With the sound like that and the visuals like that - so you can't see the edges of the environments - it felt like the game world was much bigger and more convincing than it actually was. Also, since I didn't realise until Bobbin's LP that you could simply round up a gaggle of hostile guards, drop a flash-bomb in front of them and then just knock them all out with the blackjack (I thought they had to be not-alerted), it made for a more dangerous world too. Watching the LP made the games seem much 'smaller' than they'd been in my memory; so I dunno... maybe I'll just play them again instead.  I think the last time was four or five years ago.
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Nov 12, 2014 02:48
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I actually didn't like the early Splinter Cell games all that much (mainly talking about 1 and maybe 2 here) because they felt more like puzzle games dressed up as stealth games when compared to the more open, immersive-sim type approach of the Thief games. They were good at what they did, but it wasn't really my thing. This may seem a bit out of left field, but a game where I found myself thinking "this reminds me a bit of Thief" was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It's first-person, a stealth game by necessity since you have no means of self-defence, and also terrifying - as some parts of the Thief trilogy could be.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:56
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Hey, this is a great idea (the double feature). It really does underline the massive difference in approach between the originals and the reboot. When playing Thief 2014 I really, really missed that freedom of movement. I've been meaning to try the Dark Mod for ages - especially since it became standalone. Maybe this will give me the push I need to finally do it.
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Nov 14, 2014 00:49
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Ghostwoods posted:Forgive me derailing the arachnochat... I just got a chance to watch thru the Dark Mod video, and the difference between the two games is actively shocking. To be fair, what we've seen of Thief 2014 so far is all rail-roaded intro tutorialising stuff; it's not quite as bad as this all the time. It introduces new ways to be bad as it goes on, though. Edit: Actually, while I'm here, Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation video on Thief 2014 was mentioned earlier I think, but there's a link to it. It's a good summary. Some minor spoilers there, but nothing that wasn't detailed in trailers for the game, or that you couldn't easily predict based on the tired tropes trotted out in said trailers or in what we've seen of the game so far. Antistar01 fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Nov 15, 2014 |
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Nov 15, 2014 23:35
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We saw a lot of the 'picking up loot' animation in this video, so here it is; I'm going to try to say something nice about this game. I love that your body exists in first-person - it's something that I think should be standard in all first-person games (unless you're playing a literal ghost or a literal floating robotic gun platform or something) - and I like that you see your arm go out and grab the loot or what-have-you. This is Thief 2014 though, so every silver lining has a cloud. The problem is that they did a poor job of this feature; you need to be in a fairly small area for the animation to match up, and if you're not in that exact spot, the game removes control and moves you into it. There's been times where I can see the obvious trapped pressure plate - and I stand off to the side of the desk or whatever to grab the loot on it, in a conscious effort to avoid to the trap - but the game then shifts me over onto the trap so that the 'picking stuff up' animation can play out. The game makes you step on traps. And It's just one aspect of a greater problem in the game; one I usually associate with console games, where the attitude seems to be "things have to look good all the time and who cares if the gameplay suffers". ... Well I did try. 
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Nov 18, 2014 01:36
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supermikhail posted:So, guard personalities. If I recall correctly, like half the guards in the original two games were voiced by the same guy who did Garrett, making some rather painful noises with his throat. So by not hiring the original actor, the developers also lost part of the city's overall charisma, embodied by the guards. Yeah, Stephen Russell. And not only that, he also voiced Karras, who has a very distinctive voice. You can hear both Karras and Garrett in the (amazing) final cutscene for Thief 2. (Ending spoilers for Thief 2 there, obviously.) So with the exception of that Keeper at the end, all the voices there are Stephen Russell. He's a great voice actor, and I was gutted when I heard he wasn't voicing Garrett in Thief 2014.
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Nov 18, 2014 08:30
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Thief 2014 does have some definite 'this is a puzzle' puzzles in it, which manage to feel as out of place as puzzles always do in a game not about puzzles. There's one I had a particularly bad time with, because - without going into detail - it was a puzzle of the type where it's easy to see what the solution is at a glance, but working through it to 'solve' it is a tedious slog. That wasn't the (whole) problem though; did anyone else encounter that bug where you couldn't progress in the game on April Fool's Day? You'd finish whatever level you were on and the game would just send you back to the start of the level again in Groundhog Day fashion. (Cue lots of paranoia that it was a prank.) Guess which level I was stuck on. 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:21
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Those difficulty levels definitely had different names - from the previous Dark Mod mission and from Thief 1 and 2. It was Normal, Hard, Expert there (I always liked how there was no 'Easy' difficulty level; it started at Normal and only got harder). Anyway, it's so good to see rope arrows back to their full glory. We haven't seen them yet in Thief 2014, but... what they did with them there is possibly worse than not including them at all (in my opinion). Also; oof, it sounded like Lady Ludmilla took a tumble down the stairs after she was dropped. 
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Nov 21, 2014 01:15
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FinalGamer posted:Aaaaaaaah see that makes sense, she's experienced and done voicework before, first a band now this. Definitely not gone to waste with how memorable SHODAN is, I wonder what they're up to now. Terri and Eric Brosius and Greg LoPiccolo apparently went on to be founding members of Harmonix and make Guitar Hero, so I think things turned out well for them. I'll echo how amazing the sound design is in the original Thief trilogy; it's a huge part of the games' effectiveness. There's a whole bunch of it here (music, at least), if anyone wants to check it out. (Incidentally I swear that site looks the same now as it did over a decade ago.)
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Nov 23, 2014 00:28
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Rope arrows only working in specific places - ugh. I think everyone loves the rope arrows in Thief 1 and 2, and you can see how they worked there from Bobbin's recent Dark Mod video; they stick into any wooden surface, and can be reclaimed for later use. Any wooden surface. They made movement and navigation even more fun, interesting, emergent and player-driven. In Thief 2014 they can only be used in specifically defined places, and only once. If you see a beam with a rope wrapped around it (there was one with a rope arrow already in it at the start of the Foundry area), then get your rope arrows out; 'cause you're gonna need them. Basically they included rope arrows, but took away the actual reason people loved them in the first place. Now it's a case of "Got one of X resource? Okay, you can go through this 'locked door'." Jenivere... demoted from Basso's fiance in the original trilogy - a human character, with lines even - to a bird. Gives new meaning to the term "boid", given the odd choice of Basso's accent in Thief 2014. Gotta love the "nefarious deeds" guy - and all his identical brothers - hamming it up every time you go to buy something. Or not love, I guess; he's certainly no "whaddaya buyin'?" merchant. You know I don't think I ever donated money to get focus points; I just got them through the other means mentioned. I didn't use the focus abilities very much anyway, and I preferred to use the money on the gear upgrades. I didn't get any of the DLC that gives you more money (I don't like DLC that does that sort of thing), so money was somewhat tighter. I hate those grates that you use the wrench on; you can't just open one and then go through it as and when you want to. Activating one opens it, forces you to go through to the other side, and then closes it again. The game made me literally bump into and alert people multiple times with that. Overriding movement controls is awful and I hate it when games do it... and Thief 2014 does it a lot. I'd be really interested to hear the reasoning behind the third-person climbing sequences. They feel so out of place and disconnected from everything else, even in this game. They don't really add anything to the gameplay, either; as I recall there's no challenge from having to find your way, or getting timing right, or maintaining stealth, or anything, really. It's the standard AAA game 'follow the indicated path' routine. A whole lot of extra work on the devs' part, to basically no effect. It almost seems like there's cut content there somewhere and that's why it's so basic, but I don't really know why they'd try for something like that in a Thief game to begin with. I guess it could just be to mask streaming in content, like Bobbin said, but it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for that, when they're content to half-arse it everywhere else in the game. Re: the guard looking right at you but not seeing you - another thing ripped off from Dishonored (okay lots of games do this, but still): 'You can't see me 'cuz I'm leaning'. Of course, Dishonored - like the original Thief trilogy - had the courtesy of giving you dedicated leaning (and jumping) buttons. Thief 2014's context sensitive approach had me leaning when I didn't want to, and not able to lean when I did want to. Guess how I feel about how they handled surface noise levels in this game! (I don't like it.) In the original Thief trilogy it was something you had to think about all the time, and different surface types were used in interesting combinations. In Thief 2014 it's limited to small localised areas of water or broken glass, shining like christmas lights in the dark.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:12
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PlaceholderPigeon posted:Dropping people too hard could probably kill them though - I'm not sure how much the games take account for the body's hp after incapacitating, but it should matter. Thief 1 and 2 tracked what happened to people after they were knocked out; they could drown, and could fall too far, I think. I can't remember for sure with Thief 3 and 4. Dishonoured definitely tracks it. Here's something I said back when playing the game for the first time: Past me posted:At the start of the mission I'm on now, I had a bit of an accident with the very first guy I knocked out. I was stashing him somewhere out of the way, and managed to drop him just a bit too far... onto his head... which exploded. (whooooops.) I felt pretty bad - though maybe I shouldn't have, considering who it was. And right at the start of the mission! But no, I said no reloading unless I died, so I carried on, feeling sort of dumb/guilty.
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Nov 25, 2014 23:36
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I've actually always found it a little frustrating that limitations like 'don't kill anyone' or 'don't knock anyone out' are tied to the difficulty levels in the original trilogy and now in the Dark Mod. I really like having the extra objectives that the higher difficulty levels give you ('now you need to find these things too', 'now you need to get back out again', etc), but the idea that Garrett just gives up, goes home - except wait now he can't because he can't pay the rent - because he got cornered and had to kill a guard in self defence? ~MY IMMERSION~  So I actually liked that Thief 2014 separated that sort of thing out into a series of optional limitations you could set for yourself when starting a new game; that's a really good way to do it, I think. Of course I totally ignored all of them because you've always been able to choose to limit yourself if you want, but it's good that the options are there and - more importantly - that they're not enforced. (Doesn't save the rest of the game from being mediocre to awful, though.) Also on the topic of immersion and how I interpreted Garrett's character, I was a little disappointed when they dropped the sword in favour of a dagger for Thief 3. It didn't make a lot of sense to me on the pragmatic "I don't want to die" side of things, especially after the first two games. That swords were physics objects that noisily clattered to the ground when you knocked a guard out - but you couldn't then pick them up and use them - was like salt in the wound, for me. Understand that I never wanted to run around with a naked sword slaughtering every living thing on the map; it just made sense to have one as a last resort. Out of interest actually, do you have a sword in the Dark Mod? Or just a dagger, like in Thief 3? (I doubt it's neither, as in Thief 2014.)
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Nov 28, 2014 02:05
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I suppose you don't know, then, but if you actually fulfill an optional condition the game awards you with a cash bonus. Where does this money come from? Who's paying it? It's never even addressed, let alone explained. Sorry to once again ruin ~YOUR IMMERSION~. You mean the per-mission optional objectives like 'pick 10 pockets', 'get 5 headshots', etc? I didn't pay much attention to those either because I was just doing what made the most sense to me at any given moment, but now that you mention it I do remember getting magic money for some of them. It was weird. I had forgotten those for the moment; I was talking about the over-arching ones like ironman mode, take no damage, remain undetected, etc. The ones you can choose to take at the start of the game (I think it's only at the start). You don't get money for those too, do you? I'd assumed it was just achievements. Because who doesn't love achievements, right?!  supermikhail posted:I don't understand the difficulty objection. The no-kill requirement does make the game harder, which is what the game promised. And I don't quite see how else you would enforce it except for auto-failing. Unless you switch to the stars (or other) grading system instead of difficulties. It's not a major objection; I love the early Thief games! It's an immersion thing. I joke about it, but it is something I value fairly highly. I like things to make sense and feel as believable as is reasonably possible, you know? As for 'enforcing' something like a no kills limitation; Dishonoured took an interesting approach in that it didn't stop you from killing... pretty much anyone you wanted, from memory, but it did have consequences for killing a lot of people. The main one I remember is that it made the final mission more difficult. As another example, some(?) of the Hitman games simply docked your pay relative to how much collateral damage you did on a mission. (To pay for 'cleaners', bribes, etc.) Less money meant less gear and more difficulty, all in a fairly organic way. It's been a while, but I think your notoriety also increased if you'd killed a lot of people; authorities looking out for someone of your description, that sort of thing. So I think there's room for enforcing/encouraging 'no kills' and whatnot without it being a binary, instant-game-over sort of thing. 
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Nov 28, 2014 10:18
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(Speaking of the original and the Mod, of course.) Additionally, (and per Bobbin's comment) there weren't any ways for the first 2 games to reward the player for non-lethal runs. No achievements, for example.
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Yeah, I don't really know either. Maybe something like word getting around the 'community' about your messy kill count and your fences giving you less money for your loot as a result because they're afraid of the heat. That might work nicely in combination with a system where you physically go around and fence stuff in between missions, as in Thief 3.
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Nov 28, 2014 13:24
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Prenton posted:Regarding your death: you're seemingly more vulnerable from behind, as according to a loading tip "Don't turn your back to the guards, they'll run you through!" Maybe they're expecting you to do this? Anyway I think this was the point in the game where I really started to notice how bad the writing is. I mean, 'he shoots his own men; that's how you know he's a bad guy' - really? It was like I was watching a dumb action movie from the Eighties.  All the times the game gets you killed or discovered or pierced by traps or whatever via taking over the controls - and it happens a lot - had the same effect on me as on Bobbin in this video; after a while I just didn't care about stealth anymore and instead resorted to whatever would get me to the next section the fastest. I've seen it said that if Thief 2014 is a sequel to anything, it's to Thief 3 - rather than Thief 1 and 2. Thief 3 had some similar problems with removing control, though much less severe and sort of inverted (at least with knock-outs). When going to blackjack someone, you'd be frozen in place, but the target would then stop whatever they were doing to shuffle over slightly into the perfect spot for the animation to play out. It felt clunky back then and - ten years later - they did a worse job in Thief 2014.
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Dec 2, 2014 00:36
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Ah, that was something I missed in Thief 2014; the hand-drawn and imprecise maps of the early Thief games. In the Dark Mod, can you make your own notes on the maps too? I remember doing that a bit in Thief 2 in particular, what with its combination locks for example. In comparison, the map in Thief 2014 is very precise, clinical and game-like (~my immersion~ again) - though not very helpful a lot of the time, even for all that. Anyway, that was some nice attention to detail with that guard out in the snow; his breath was clouding. This whole mission looks really well-done; the writing combines nicely with the environmental storytelling to create a convincing sense of place.
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Dec 5, 2014 01:32
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GyverMac posted:Speaking of The Through The Looking Glass crew; Heres a podcast playlist where some guy interviews several of the TTLG people. From earlier in the thread: I just wanted to say thanks for linking this; I've been listening to them and they are really interesting. I was a bit confused by your post at first though, wondering why there would be a series of interviews with TTLG people ('TTLG' being Through The Looking Glass, the community website devoted to games by Looking Glass studios). Anyway; if Looking Glass itself wasn't enough, right from the start of the first interview there with Austin Grossman, he rattles off a list of games he worked on that could be right from a list of my 'cult' favourites: Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Clive Barker's Undying, Deus Ex, and of course Thief (Deadly Shadows, but still).
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Dec 8, 2014 01:51
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I... had no idea about the cameras being candle-powered. I never even thought to check, because really; why would you? I didn't have the wire-cutters when I did this mission; not being able to disable those traps made it a fair bit more difficult. Especially when combined with all the cameras still being active because I didn't realise you could disable them with water arrows (see above). I mean, I can imagine how the designers might have joined the dots on that: "We've got these static hazard entities; what tools/resources does the player have for dealing with entities like that? Water arrows, okay." Some sanity-checking after that may have helped, though. But yeah, no wire-cutters for me on this one. Even if I had known ahead of time that I would need them, I wouldn't have gone back to replay that mission - or any mission - to grind up enough gold to buy it. Once was definitely enough. (Also ~my immersion~, etc.) As for this mission in general; it is better than a lot of the rest of the game... but that's all relative, of course. I did it early on though - basically the same point that Bobbin did it here - so it was also when I was really starting to bump up against the control issues that (I think) plague the game, leaving me with a poor impression of the mission overall. Trapped pressure plates I could see but not jump over because there's no jump button and they don't count in the game's godawful context-sensitive movement system as something you can jump over. Pressure plates I could see but was made to step on when the game removed control and walked me over onto them in the process of picking up some loot. Those little vent grates that again remove control and walk you over into a patrolling NPC when you activate them. Etc, etc...
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Dec 9, 2014 05:26
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Internet Janitor posted:
That's... quite the thing.  WFGuy posted:Honestly, if they're going to allow cameras to be disabled individually on-the-spot rather than as a group by finding the right lever, that should be a job for moss arrows, not water arrows. Clog up the workings and cover the eye all at once. Then the cameras don't have to be fed by a dinky little candle right there, and water arrows don't get devalued like they are in Thief 4 ("Yeah I guess I'll carry twenty around, why not?"). Moss arrows probably would make more sense, yeah; however there are no moss arrows in Thief 2014, unfortunately.
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Dec 9, 2014 12:49
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I didn't know about paper-bag Garrett until this thread; that's pretty great. He does have an actual model in Thief 2 at least, as you can see yourself if you throw down a scouting orb nearby (I don't know to what extent that model is used, though). He also has a model in Thief 3 and Thief 2014 of course, as you can look down and see your body in first-person (and Thief 3 infamously had an optional third-person camera mode).
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Dec 10, 2014 06:15
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Wow, that 'In The North' mission is really good. On par with some of the original Thief trilogy, even. I think I might have to start with that one and any others by the same author when I get around to trying the Dark Mod. Haunts in Thief 1 and 2 were terrifying. We didn't get that up close and personal with the Revenants in the video (which is maybe for the best  ), but they didn't sound as scary as the Haunts - it'd be hard to top Eric Brosius' sound work, I'm sure.I wonder if you can back-stab them? I remember that being the best way to deal with Haunts, if you couldn't avoid them. Still nerve-wracking though; it was hard to get into position unnoticed since they were so fast, and since they were so fast, if they caught you, you were probably dead. anilEhilated posted:I'd really love to link a Trespasser screenshot here but can't seem to find any that'd show off that model's... peculiar feature. All hail the new flesh! psivamp posted:This is actually the standard way of doing first-person games. The internal view is called "rigging" if I recall. Well 'rigging' usually refers to assigning vertex weighting to the simplified 'bones' that make up a character's skeleton. The skeleton is what is animated, and in turn the vertices of the polygons that make up the visible part of the model are moved around. But yeah, most first-person games do something like Skyrim (and Fallout, Oblivion and possibly Morrowind); Skyrim uses the same models and textures for first- and third-person, but in first-person everything but the arms and weapons is hidden, and different animations are used. In Thief 3 and 2014, the whole body is there in first-person (except the head maybe - I couldn't say), and there's just one set of animations. The camera is attached to around where the character's eyes would be. Mods that add this sort of thing to Skyrim, Fallout, etc do it the same way, which can be sort of  if special care isn't taken as the camera can end up lurching and bobbing around crazily with the animations intended for third-person.
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Dec 12, 2014 01:32
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Re: a comment in the video; It's true that Dishonoured is a good game that you should draw inspiration from - but you might also say that the original Thief games were good and that a new Thief game should draw inspiration from those. 
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Dec 16, 2014 00:53
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Ghostwoods posted:Which is exactly what Dishonoured did, I thought! It is sort of amusing to picture Thief 2014 as the result of a telephone game; taking inspiration from Dishonoured, which took inspiration from the original Thief games - rather than simply relying more on the IP they had at their disposal. Basically I think both Dishonoured and (especially) Thief 2014 could have benefited from being more like the original Thief games (but then I am a fanboy).
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Dec 16, 2014 03:24
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Thief 2014's story starts out clichéd, garbled and inept, and stays that way for the duration.resurgam40 posted:*This assumes, of course, that we have seen a "best moment" thus far. Have we? Bobbin Threadbare posted:I believe I'd say that Chapter 4 is simultaneously the best part and the stupidest waste of potential of the entire game. insanityv2 posted:^^I'd argue the the first half of Chapter 6 is good as well. Also I'm going to defend the first half of the brothel level when we get to it, that is to say, the part of hte level where you are actually stealing stuff. Not much of chapters 4 and 6 really stuck with me (I had to do a bit of googling just now to jog my memory), but chapter 5 was probably the most memorable and effective part of the game for me. Quite gimmicky and derivative by nature, though.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:25
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Last week's 'In The North' mission is certainly a tough act to follow, but yeah... this bank mission doesn't seem very good. There are some interesting ideas in there - and what looks like some decent scripting to execute them - but it wasn't put together in an effective way overall, and some of the design decisions were a little silly. I'd agree with the criticisms Bobbin and everyone else made. That sure was a hell of a haul, though.  I know it probably isn't, but it feels like more money than you could make in the entirety of Thief 1 or 2. This is something that's always been at the back of my mind, bothering me, when thinking about the Dark Mod (I'm still yet to try it myself); the missions being stand-alone, so that loot, equipment and story don't carry over.In Thief 1 and 2 the money you got during a mission could only be spent on equipment for the next mission (any leftover money - or indeed equipment from the previous mission - just 'vanished'), which made it easier to tailor the equipment available to a particular mission. In Thief 3 and 2014, both money and equipment is persistent, which makes more sense but would maybe make it more difficult to closely incorporate equipment available into the level/mission design. In the Dark Mod you unfortunately don't get either, from what I've seen. I know it can't really be helped, but it is the reason I'll probably gravitate towards trying any multi-mission campaigns available for it first, like I used to with fan missions for Thief 1 and 2.
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Dec 19, 2014 01:34
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Looks like the map creator found my latest video. I figured I'd post the reply I got for the sake of their defense and of furthering discussion (and also for my own defense; turns out the map got updated since I downloaded it and now the manager's office hint specifically calls out the painting): That does explain some things - especially the tech demo part. Earlier I was almost going to say that the mission reminded me of some of my early level design stuff (I'm talking late nineties, early 2000s); too focussed on trying to do something interesting/different to do something 'good'. Having said that this mission is certainly better that early stuff of mine. I can see myself maybe thinking better of it with some tweaks and as part of a larger campaign.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:37
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I had no idea about the opium lever clashing with higher difficulty settings like that; that's... wow. I also didn't know about that wire-cutter mechanism behind it... I was wondering why nothing seemed to change when I pulled the lever.  With that sound propagation issue; I don't use subtitles (immersion again), so I had to lean right up to my computer speakers for real to hear what was being said.
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Dec 23, 2014 05:02
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It doesn't help that some of the references seem sort of sneering. For example there's a conversation you can overhear that goes something like: Gruff Guard A: "... and then he called a Taffer!" Gruff Guard B: "'Taffer'? What the gently caress does that mean?" Gruff Guard A: "No loving idea." As far as I know, that's the only time 'Taffer' is used in Thief 2014.
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Dec 24, 2014 12:40
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I guess it was good that I didn't pay much attention to the ghost/predator/opportunist stuff; it saved me the kind of frustration Bobbin had at the end there. I sort of perked up a bit at this point in the game, because it was a little reminiscent of the Keepers stuff in the earlier games, and I was hoping they'd do something interesting with exploring the mysterious ruins of a lost civilisation... but of course it didn't really go anywhere, unfortunately. FinalGamer posted:So...it's KIND of a sequel but also trying to be a remake at the same time in a really lazy fashion? It's always possible that I missed something, but I never read Thief 2014 as being a sequel in any sense. The devs/publishers were keen to explicitly say during development that it was a "re-imagining" and not a sequel, too.
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Dec 30, 2014 01:02
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FinalGamer posted:Reimagining, then they add the whole "oh the original trilogy happened this many years ago" yeah no that's a loving sequel, this isn't Zelda you don't have the legacy to get away with that poo poo yet buster. I feel like this game really is trying to have their cake and eat it to please everyone but nobody seems to be pleased. Does it say that, though? I mean, like I said it's possible that I missed something; but I don't remember the game saying that. I assumed that those ruins somewhat resembling Keeper architecture was like other references in the game; just meta references to the earlier games. Like they were saying in the video I think, it'd be a pretty strange coincidence for it to be set hundreds of years later in the same continuity, but for new Garretts, Bassos, etc to spontaneously develop in similar roles/relationships.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:19
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I was almost going to say this earlier - with the video on the brothel area - but the cutscene with the Thief-taker General reminded me. So yeah... Garrett's hiding place was revealed because the nameless prostitute was struck to the ground. You stay classy, Thief 2014. The brothel chapter is not the only part of this game that's sort of problematic along these lines; it kicks off right from the start, with Erin getting fridged. The other things I'm thinking of in particular are spoilers for now though, so that can wait.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:50
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That Dark Mod mission seemed a nice little combination of the breaking Basso out of Cragscleft Prison mission in Thief 1 and the 'Framed' mission in Thief 2 where you need to sneak into Shoalsgate City Watch Station. I did like the limit on knockouts in Framed; it made sense given the circumstances and it did make for a nice challenge. The stuff about a "realm of heaven and hell" under the station in that Dark Mod mission had me hoping for something a little stranger, though; the description made me think of the Maw of Chaos in Thief 1. Do many of the Dark Mod missions have the more supernatural stuff in them? So far they seem to focus on the 'sneaking around guards in expensive manors' missions - which is nice, but I do like the variety Thief 1 (and 2, in places) had. J.theYellow posted:Yahtzee Croshaw named Th14f the worst game of 2014. He makes a good point about all the time, money and expertise at their disposal. On a technical level Thief 2014 is well - or at least adequately - made, for the most part. It's just that (in my opinion) it's well made according to a cavalcade of truly lovely design decisions. Not to mention the muddled and clichéd writing, the uninspired sound work, the art direction that only really approaches anything new or interesting in the margins, etc.
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Jan 2, 2015 01:20
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Not even female characters that have already been changed into a bird can escape being fridged. It's true that Thief 1 began as a project where they wanted an immersive first-person sword-fighting game and then switched focus when they weren't perfectly happy with the sword-fighting mechanics they came up with, but apparently the stealth focus had its origin (at least partially) in a desire to have more AI states than just 'aware of the player' or 'not aware of the player'. The idea was floated that maybe the AI could also be in states like 'maybe I saw something' and 'I'm pretty sure I saw something and now I'm looking for it'. I remember that bit with the impromptu killing spree being difficult and time-consuming to sneak through; I guess I can see why you did that. I actually didn't kill any guards when I played Thief 2014, so I didn't know that they did the arrow-cam thing. I think that mysterious lever in the garden opened a window above you (possibly even the one you climbed through), but I can't remember for sure. Er... but yeah, it doesn't really matter.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:18
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Yep, and before that it was apparently 'Better Red Than Undead', with commie zombies (or something) that couldn't be killed by bullets, only blades - hence the sword-fighting. From what I've heard that idea wasn't around for too long, as it was deemed, well... a bit too out there and contrived.
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Jan 6, 2015 11:54
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What is he hiding? Well, it's gotta be some pretentious facial hair to go with the rest of his ensemble. Maybe a pretentious hipster beard which doubles as a place to stash all those pens and butter knives? 
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Jan 7, 2015 05:07
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It's chin wraps all the way down.Bobbin Threadbare posted:I'm also a bit surprised that no one's mentioned how they blew like a third of the advertising budget on building that collapsing bow thing. I should at least say that doing so probably didn't make the game any worse because advertising and development budgets are typically separate, but they try to pass it off as a commitment to verisimilitude when it's pretty clearly a PR stunt given that 99% of players would neither notice nor care if New!Garrett's bow were impossible in real life. Oh yeah, I remember that; that was a pretty weird thing to do. Ugh, marketing... usually it's just depressing; sometimes it's also stupidity with a budget.
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Jan 8, 2015 00:28
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The missions in the early Thief games where you explore lost, abandoned and possibly haunted places were a nice change of pace. I was always quite partial to those. This Dark Mod mission looks pretty good so far.Mikl posted:Hydrofluoric acid was discovered in the 1700s and is often discussed in the PYF Dangerous Chemicals thread since, besides being hideously corrosive, it's also hilariously toxic. I'll quote straight from the previously-mentioned PYF thread to provide with a nice video regarding this fun chemical: "It was a nice experiment because it went well [and] it didn't explode." Science is pretty great.
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Jan 8, 2015 23:35
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Yeah, that's... do you have the links for this stuff? Because like I said before, while I could be wrong, I don't recall Thief 2014 indicating anywhere that it was supposed to be in the same continuity as the original trilogy. (And it sort of contradicts what the devs/publishers were saying during development.)
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Jan 9, 2015 13:10
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I've just been going through my Chapter 5 footage for images, and there's some pretty conclusive evidence that Thief 3 is supposed to have occurred at least 383 years before Thi4f's present. I'll try to remember to point it out when I get to recording commentary. Yeah, that would be interesting. Whatever it is, I obviously just missed it or didn't make the connection. I was having a bit of a look around too, and it seems like I was wrong. They did repeatedly say "this is a re-imagining, not a sequel" elsewhere, though. (Spoiler warning if you watch much beyond that point; it shows a level we haven't seen in the LP yet.) I mean, I certainly noticed the resemblance to the Keeper Library in the brothel level, but I assumed that it was a simple meta reference. Welp. I guess it just didn't occur to me that they would make a reboot with principle characters with the same names, roles and relationships as in the earlier games, but then also say that those earlier Garretts and Bassos also existed in the same continuity, doing all those broadly similar things, only a few hundred years ago. Because that just seems nuts to me. 
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Jan 10, 2015 01:17
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