Thief - Play these games you camel mannered tunic wearing mollycoddle!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Thief - Play these games you camel mannered tunic wearing mollycoddle!

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Thief 3 is worth it for the Shalebridge Cradle. Other than that, its a relatively uninteresting addition to the series that could safely be ignored.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2012 00:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:13

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Fortuitous Bumble posted:

I gave Thief a try and I'm not sure if it's better to just play through on the higher difficulty levels, I did the first mission on normal but I was kind of pissed that it ended before I could even make an escape. It look like it's kind of like Perfect Dark where higher difficulties have more objectives.

Ohhhh yeah. You'd better believe it.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2012 01:59

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Sniper Party posted:

There's a difference between you, as a character, being weak in combat, and the combat being such an un-fun slog that you'd rather just savescum than attempt to defend yourself.

Alright, so make it so punishingly hard that you'll need some pretty awesome thief skills to survive in a fight against one guy, not where you effortlessly shoot a statue with your bow so hard it falls and kills 2 dudes, and then manage to break an armed and armored guard's arm and knee faster than he or any of his companions can react.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 23:30

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Did the entire design team forget that flashbombs were a thing in Thief1/2? Getting caught meant tossing a flash and running like hell, not reloading.

edit: Also, while I liked Dishonored for giving you huge amounts of combat options in case you got caught, it was, in a lot of ways, not as fun as having to constantly run from enemies better than you, and it isn't what I want to see from Thief.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 6, 2013

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 00:12

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

I liked the concept of the City in Thief3 and wouldn't mind seeing it again if it were a much bigger, more interesting hub between interesting missions. I also greatly preferred the level design in T2, where they apparently built the locations and then designed the game stuff around that level, which I think made for a much more interesting game. It wouldn't be a thief game without that awesome voice-over narrating the prologue to each mission, though.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 00:44

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

The Mechanist/upper class stuff had a lot of it, as I recall.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 02:48

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Fintilgin posted:

Using the blackjack is baby mode for babies. Real men ghost.

No, real men blow up statues, kill men, and do sick-nasty jumps out of windows.

"Killing is the mark of an amateur." - Text from one of the mission objectives that, depending on the difficulty, fails you if you kill a bystander or kill anyone.

quote:

he statue thing requires luck and perception to work (unless that's a scripted combat event, in which case the combat mechanics are nowhere near the worst problem the game has), and the takedown thing really depends on how the Focus mechanics end up working. From the article it sounds like a debilitating move like that would drain a ton of focus, making it a one-time thing before you get out of combat and can recharge the resource. I'd be fine with Garrett being able to take down a single guard in melee but having to run or resort to better tactics against more enemies.

It might be okay, might, if its hard for the player to do (Not "load up VATS, maim dude") and the resource cost is very significant over the course of the mission, unlike DXHR's takedowns. And, the maimed dude is still functional. Oh, you broke his leg? Yeah, he's...not going to shut up for a long time. You killed him when he's down? Yeah, you failed (clearly, Garrett has no problems blowing up statues and killing people in this iteration of the game, so I'm not exactly hopeful).

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 17:12

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Well, they say that you won't be good enough in combat to clear rooms, and then promptly describe a section where Garrett pretty effortlessly kills or maims three armed guards without any repercussions.

edit: ^^^^^ Not for all missions. On...Eavesdropping? I think, on hard you only fail if you kill bystanders, you're still allowed to kill guards. Its only on expert that you fail if you kill anyone. Eventually, yes, on hard you fail if you kill everyone, but its a long way into the game.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Mar 6, 2013

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 18:44

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Giggily posted:

He knocks a guard down in a move that also breaks his leg and then runs away from the other two. Nowhere does it describe him beating three guards in melee combat.

I never said anything about melee combat. He kills two guards with the falling statue and maims another, all while there are more guards around who do nothing.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 18:55

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

DatonKallandor posted:

If he has one superpower it's his freakishly good ability to draw basic maps on demand and know, more or less, where on his map he roughly is at the moment.

Well, and be really, really good at hiding in the shadows. Seriously.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 14:53

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Ddraig posted:

You only need to take one look at Dishonored to know that's pretty bullshit. There's entire sections of levels I've never even discovered thanks to how they're designed. It's pretty rad to go through a mission and when you think you've been everywhere you discover you missed about 40% of the loot on the map because you didn't actually explore everything.

The only part of Dishonored I really felt like this was when you go after the Regent. There's a whole section of the map you have no reason to go to unless you somehow botch the assassination so that he sees you and somehow manages to get away. Its a pretty sweet rooftop too.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2013 19:56

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Honestly, I didn't see that much variety in Dishonored. There were many times when I went to an area and went "oh, this would be the place for me to do the non-lethal path."

# ¿ Mar 15, 2013 20:19

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

I don't know, he IS pretty athletic. He does a lot of climbing in the old games, with a lot of poo poo on his back. That said, he isn't a ninja.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2013 01:10

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

New voice actor, new look, new digs, totally different motivations, different abilities.

What possible reason is there to call this new character Garrett? Is it just to piss off old-timey fans like me?

Hasn't the dev team been switched up a lot over the last few years? Maybe the original team wanted to actually keep it "Garrett" and the newcomers wanted to change the character to the new one without looking at why that really doesn't make sense. They just took the name and ran with it.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2013 15:39

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Yeah, that preview didn't excite me for this game at all.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2013 00:55

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

At least the world design apparently isn't terri- :wtc:

Those are some phenomenally bad design decisions.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2013 06:45

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Rime posted:

The thing is, the first two games had AMAZING scripted sequences, but they were entirely optional. Everyone remembers "You comin' to da bear pits tomorrah?" or "YOU...YOU'VE GONE TO FAR THIS TIME YOU CAMEL MANNERED TUNIC WEARING MOLLYCODDKE!", but you weren't forced to experience them. The games were chock full of stuff like that which you could decide to pass on by if you didn't have the time to waste on it.

This was a pretty clutch piece of what made the games immersive, too, the freedom to make that choice. To say "I have no time to waste on listening to idle chatter tonight" in your head and just go for your objective (but possibly miss out on a clue or optional goal). It was awesome.

And those scripted sequences, critically, didn't take my character control away from me so I could watch a totally sick cinematic or whatever, it was just dudes I ran across doing something while I did whatever. The only downside to the rooftop archer duel is that they didn't program it so that a guard involved in the fight killed by an arrow fired by Garrett wouldn't trigger alarms. I can only imagine the same sequence playing out in Thief 4 would run a cinematic, have most of it play out, opening a route that formerly Garrett would have said "I can't get through that" and then have Garrett monologue for a while about how this was a great distraction and let him into the formerly closed off area as if the player couldn't loving see that for themselves.

How hard is it to design decent mechanics and a bunch of levels that are just there?

# ¿ Jun 25, 2013 16:37

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Personally, if instead of Focus they added an interface for suitably thiefy escape tools like throwing dirt in his eyes or kicking him in the balls or just a counter where you basically destabilize the guy just enough that he's not facing you so you can run fast, well, I'd be ecstatic. I get that's the kind of feel that they wanted Focus to be, but that doesn't look like what we got at all.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 01:36

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Shibawanko posted:

I really dislike steampunk for the reason that it's a reactionary fantasy of progress without modernity, this idea that you can have technology and globalization without radical contingency, like having Edison and Rockefeller but not the (from a reactionary perspective) "troublesome" van Gogh and Malevich. Usually, they are worlds perpetually stuck in the world just before the advent of modernity without actually arriving there, maintaining an ancien regime-type society indefinitely.

I like that in Thief, at least this fantasy isn't entirely present, or is to some degree subverted. The "pagans" are not the good guys, as they would be in the worst kind of postmodern fashion: they are holistic and "in touch with nature" but this amounts to brutality and barbarism. Karras and the mechanists are a kind of futurists or fascists, drawing the (correct) conclusion that if all the world is to be mediated by technology and capital, mankind itself should disappear (Karras of course excludes himself from this conclusion): the "builder's paradise" is like those concept drawings of Fascist buildings with no people present in them. If Fascism is the index of a failed revolution, then we may assume that the Mechanists are a response to the City's failure to provide social justice to its poor, and, correctly, the Fascist Mechanists are revealed to be bed partners to the law and vested interests at the expense of the poor.

Garrett is a kind of fantasy of an unalienated precarian, which is a basically correct insight: the only way to avoid alienation of one's production today, and tumbling from one job into another fruitlessly, is by breaking the law and stealing one's share. The only problem is that it elevates this response to the solution itself. There is no change in the order of things, Garrett only prevents them from getting worse, even though he himself realizes that his own cynicism is itself at times untenable, this doesn't really lead to any kind of change.

So you could say that this new game will introduce a new layer of alienation: you are not even allowed to directly produce in your fantasies anymore (meaning you cannot simply steal things according to your own judgment even in a videogame) but rather the game will offer you your share of the loot, like a boss in a corporate office, whenever and only if it sees fit, guiding your actions along the way. This is, I think, why this kind of game really pisses people off.

Shut up nerd, I'm trying to watch this sweet-rear end cinematic takedown Garrett just did.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2013 13:37

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Random Stranger posted:

The changes to The Lost City bothered me too. But now I'm on the second haunted cathedral stage which I think is the best of the monster missions in Thief. Nicely structured, suitably atmospheric, and skippable if you're smart (though it doesn't seem to work anymore in Thief Gold...).

Skip method: What, where you put an object between the doors so they can't close on you? I felt so loving smart when I did that as a kid, but I also missed one of the most fun levels ever. Going back and doing it right was worthwhile.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 16:36

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Thief invented mantling as a way to increase your jump height in a ver believable way, in addition to giving you rope/vine arrows to go basically everywhere. This sequel won't even let you jump. How anyone expects this game to work well I don't know.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2013 15:16

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

Seems to me they are still running with the ending of Thief 3. The chick in the new game could easily be the girl from the end of Thief 3.

That girl was like 10 years old, this one is a former prostitute. I mean, they could be the same thing, but putting child prostitution front and center in their game that they're desperately trying to make appeal to everyone doesn't seem like a great idea.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2013 21:05

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Brainamp posted:

Same reason any wanted criminal does? What's so confusing about that?

Ideally, literally no-one ever sees Garrett or even knows his name.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 17:34

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Brainamp posted:

I was about to argue that both the Hammers and the Pagans knew about him but oops.

Exactly.

Also, even in that case, the Pagans know who he is because they're magic and were actively spying on him in a way the City cannot. Ramirez tries to kill him, but only because they think he's a worthless sneakthief who hasn't paid his pittance of a tax. Garrett's actions directly draw Viktoria's attention to him. Garrett later tells the Hammerites what's up.

So yeah, I guess people would know who Garrett is, but most people (that is, pretty much everyone but the Keepers and Viktoria) think he's a lovely thief who lives in a lovely apartment somewhere. He's so far below the view of the Watch that they just don't give a poo poo.

edit;

Dave Angel posted:

He can't work in isolation, he needs fences and people to sell him gear to operate. Even in the original games people knew of him, Ramirez sends assassins after him in Dark Project and Truart had a whole section of the city swarming with the watch out to get him in Ambush! in Metal Age.

Yeah, true, but posting wanted posters like he's the most wanted thief in the City is a little odd. Ramirez obviously wasn't too worried about picking on him, and the Watch only came after him in Ambush! after someone (his fence?) rats him out. He's not a huge figure on their radar at any point. He's a master thief masquerading as a minor thief, and most people seem to believe that.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Sep 25, 2013

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 17:53

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Star Trek also had a much broader social significance than Thief. What do they really gain from the name Garrett and the title "Thief". They're not using anything else associated with the franchise, since most people don't know about it and the people who do are likely to hate the changes. The same doesn't apply to Star Trek.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2013 21:14

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Mortal Sword posted:

As it stands, there's no way in hell I'll buy Thief 4, but I find it difficult to believe I won't get the next Dishonored at launch. Dishonored had its flaws, but it had more in common with Thief than Thief 4 will.

While also being a fairly decent murder-sim if you want it to be too!

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 04:25

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Hank Morgan posted:

and all you ever wanted to know about Garrett's origins.

http://community.eidosmontreal.com/blogs/Wanted-Garrett?theme=thief

I'm loving how there is nothing about the Keepers in this at all. The only connection to the old game is literally the main character's name and his mechanical eye.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2013 04:05

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

big mean giraffe posted:

Catwalks where you have to hit the left and right to keep your balance are some of my least favorite things in games and I wouldn't mind if they went away forever.

By contrast, catwalks where you can't fall off are also lovely. What is so hard about making a very thin platform to walk on that requires you to walk pretty much dead center down it without falling off?

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 12, 2013

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 03:05

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

So since I figure here is the best place to ask for Darkmod stuff, I downloaded the installer and unzipped the file to a folder I created in C:\games called darkmod. When I run the installer, I download about 46kb worth of stuff and absolutely nothing that looks like an application pops up for me to actually run the game. What am I missing? I fee like its something very obvious. And all the stuff on their wiki still deals with when you had to have Doom3 installed, so its no help.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2013 03:34

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Ramagamma posted:

A fair point but a moot one given there are specific ways to complete assassination missions without killing your targets and killing generic guards is no more a requirement in Dishonored than it is in Thief.

Actually a pretty stupid point given the Thief games had you fighting dinosaurs, humanoid praying mantises and dog sized spiders never mind sticking an arrow in the occasional patrolling lookout. Last I heard, Garret didn't sign up to be a pest control officer.

I always ran away from those spiders, thank you very much.

Talking about Tears of St Lucia Darkmod mission: So I laughed for a long while when I thought the whole "enter the sewers" possible entry turned out to be a lie. You can find clue in the beginning alleyway area that the "old sewers" are open and usable now, and another clue tells you where the key is. Once I got in, I missed the area to dive and swim through, so I kept walking, which takes you pretty much right back to where you started. I thought that was a great little joke that I just assumed entering the sewers would get me to the abbey, and then laughed even harder when I found the way forward and it was just me being a dumbass.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 13:47

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Random Stranger posted:

I'm sure all of the grunts on the Thief 4 team are just waiting for this disaster to be over with so they can move on. Someone said earlier that they were all idiots and that is being really unfair to them. Thief 4 stinks of managerial incompetence and there's very little that the people doing the nuts and bolts of the game can do about that.

Yeah, when the people involved are going "ghosting, what's that?" I think this pretty clearly isn't some incompetent effort by a group of people who actually want to do well. Its a game being made by people who were hired on after the first two groups left, who have never played Thief, don't care to play Thief, don't have time to thoroughly play Thief to figure out what they're supposed to be doing, and just are trying to make a game by ticking off marks that some manager decided the game needed to have and are cobbling together stuff left over by two different groups of people.

Which kind of makes you sad all around, but then you remember that you can always blame execs.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 15:41

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Seventh Arrow posted:

I think I prefer shadow-based stealth to cover-based stealth, though...although I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe shadows give you an obvious visual cue of where you can and can't hide.

Shadow-based also gives you more options. If you're hidden behind something, you're still hidden, even in a shadow-based system, and you're not left wondering whether the object you're hiding behind is big enough or not. Plus its a little more tense when someone is walking towards you and you're hiding in the shadows really hoping they don't get close enough to see you while you freeze solid.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 17:38

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

big mean giraffe posted:

Tried this dark mod thing out, and the training mission is nice, but what the gently caress those arrow physics are all wrong.

? The bow is super weak, if that's what you mean, but otherwise I didn't have a problem with it.

edit: vvvvv Oh. Then yeah. I just figured it was because Garrett had some tiny-rear end 10 lb drawweight bow because the City never came up with compound or recurve technology and so the only thing they could do was bigger=stronger. Since a bigass bow sucks for a thief, well, Garrett is left with basically a tiny toy bow. :v:

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Oct 17, 2013

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 19:56

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

PiCroft posted:

The bow in TDM really needs some kind of sight. I tried Glenham tower and I wasted a couple arrows because I couldn't tell where the arrow was going to land.

You can turn one on in the game options, but you'll still have to figure out the drop yourself. The training map actually has a pretty nice archery range just for that.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2013 20:27

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

If you're willing to look past some of the flaws, DS is a pretty good game and honestly not a terrible sequel to the Thief games. Its the worst of the first three, but they did try some new things that sometimes work and sometimes don't. They did a good job with the engine constraints they unfortunately had, and sometimes made some choices that don't quite work out. But its not something I'd skip over, either, especially at the current cost. I say go for it. I don't regret playing it, unlike Invisible War. I wish it was better, sure, but I still remember a few of the levels as much as any of the Thief 2 levels, and better than some of the Thief 1 dungeoncrawls.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2013 03:37

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Garrett's nickname is "Taffer" now?

edit: vvv Pretty much! :v:

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 17:58

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

big mean giraffe posted:

Except the unique setting and story is what made the first two thief games.

Mostly the setting, though. The story was interesting, but it didn't help make the series the way the setting did. In my opinion, of course.

bloodysabbath posted:

Waaaaaait a loving second....

You can't *jump* in this game?

What the gently caress?

You can jump in scripted locations. You also can't fall off things, unless I'm misremembering.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2014 21:43

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Mr. Fortitude posted:

I almost wish the game had gone with the universe reboot but in a modern setting that was suggested years ago. At least then if it still sucked it wouldn't be tied so closely to the first three games.

Me too, goddamn. It also would have, by necessity, forced some innovation.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2014 18:03

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

I actually have a huge problem with that map: its really, really hard to tell the scale difference between the two. Shipping and Recieving is huge compared to what I saw of the T4 one and has a ton of stuff to do.

quote:

I would rather have a more narrow map with more stuff to do than a huge sprawling map with a lot of filler

How, exactly, do you differentiate between "more stuff to do" and "a lot of filler"?

# ¿ Feb 22, 2014 01:21

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:13

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Wafflecopper posted:

Return to the Haunted Cathedal is the best goddamn level in the whole series and I'll not hear otherwise. Someone's just a scardey-pants.

I'm sad as hell they patched out the ability to just keep the door open with a skull. I was so proud of myself for figuring that out and skipping the whole level back when I first played it, so naturally, I had to go back and re-do it right later.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2014 06:35

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