Thi4f

What went wrong?

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I want to know why everyone hates this game.

Like most modern reboots, it tried that fucking bullshit of "We want to keep the original fans, but also appeal to newer players" so it ended up satisfying nobody.

>We want you to play as a thief, but we don’t want to force you to play as a thief. Stephane Roy, producer of Thief

Old Thief games are pretty much anti-thesis to modern game design and we got a modern game. That's what went wrong. Project was also rebooted like, four teams with different director each time.

>mfw it took them literally a month before game went gold to realize that scoring the player based on kills does, in fact, detract from a stealing-centric game

That alone should tell you just how fucked up the development was when making the game be focused on thieving was decided in the 11th hour following the fan outcry when they saw that xHEADSHOT BONUS video.

I wouldn't expect any less incompetence from Eidos and Square Enix.

And what about the gameplay and level design?

Shyte.

>breaking and entering
>finding out the butchers meat that everyone is clamoring for is spiders

I watched the trailers, and then I bought it. I'm finishing Homefront: The Revolution before I play it, though. Looks genuinely good.

I like reboots.

Bad, they implemented a minimap so they didn't put as much thought into the level designs. On top of this there's far too many no going back parts.

This especially.

>maze = good
>linear = bad

It's really not a maze, though. It's just a believable location and not a game level.

Nothing

>poorly drawn map = maze
>level designed as an actual mansion = maze

oh i guess you gotta, i dunno, learn the layout, but that might be too hard for your little baby mind

story
everything else was decent enough with proper difficulty settings, sequel to deadly shadows with big levels

Don't forget that they turned Garrett into some pussy bitch as opposed to a cool misanthropic thief he was before.

That stupid swoop ability which is akin to a superpower destroyed the gameplay.

Linearity and context-sensitive movements/actions in an Immersive Sim, that's like putting limited and bad party mechanics in a party-based RPG.

That and technical problems (AI, sounds, etc.)

I always liked how, unless you got your hands on a legit map, your actual map for levels in Thief was a sketch of whoever cased cased the joint so it was obviously drawn from memory.

why don't you compare actual first level? or city hubs?

DO NOT FUCKING PRESS IT
is anyone threatens to kill your family if you don't use it? game is perfectly playable without it, if it wasn't playable it would be another story but you can ignore this ability completely

>maze

It's not a maze at all. The shipyard makes sense as a real place. You're also given a map of the area, so you can find your weay around pretty easily.

>linear=bad

In a game with maybe a great combat system or a good story, linearity isn't bad, but Thief is a stealth game about avoiding combat and finding loot. A linear map doesn't work so well for that kind of game.

It's the Hitman: Absolution of Thief games.
"We want to let you play as Geralt, Master Thief. But you don't have to do anything Thief stuff if you don't want to."
Instead of improving combat or level design, they gave you a press-x-to-takedown system and built around it. Not to mention it's really REALLY unfulfilling to loot stuff. Everything is spread so fucking thin. In the original thief games you had like, say, 1200 gold of shit in a level, this was built around like, a big ass painting, the jewel of money, and a fancy bust all being a total of 600 bux, and then a bunch of candlesticks and loose coins for like 20 a pop. In Thie4f, you have a level with 1200 bux, but it's one big jeweled mask thing, and a ruby, for like 350 cash, and then a fuckload of knickknacks and stupid bullshit in drawers and on tables for like 4 gold a pop. It's incredibly tedious and super unrewarding to have a backpack literally filled with bronze forks.

It forced story into thief, while it has been there who gave a fuck, it was a taffer simulator, not cinematics and cutscenes
It made exploring feel boring, the levels were smaller and even split into segments, it's like thief 3, but much harsher since you cant go back to older segments of the level
It felt like there were only 1 or 2 ways to progress, and many locations that looked like it would progress just went to a wall and gave you a mirror +5 gold
Speaking of that, you werent a thief in this, sure, you stole shit, but you were more like a vaccum cleaner, sucking up everything in sight, and i mean everything, i better liked it when you stole more valuable stuff, it felt rewarding, and the hidden things felt harder to unlock, requiring a bit of exploration and some creative solving

It just felt like thief 4 lacked all of that

>this whole post

The level design, lighting, and guard patrols are both built around you being able to swoop, and takedown. Even if I don't use either they stain the game and it bleeds into other portions.

>j-j-j-just dont use it!
>you have to gimp yourself to have f-f-f-f-fun!

fuck off

I haven't played Thi4f, but from what I've seen it looks like the loot is spread more evenly throughout levels. Would you say that's right?

because I don't get it when people complain about optional things
if game gives you a choice it's not wroth mentioning, game has other problems that you can't avoid like collectible rings that mean NOTHING

I finished it with all,except ironman, options on in difficulty menu without ever using swoop.

Thief 1 & 2 had pretty cohesive and complex plots dude, you had 2-3 minute cutscenes before every mission.

The difference was Thief 1 & 2 had good plots.

No, not really. The levels are much smaller which is probably why people say that. It feels like they placed the important lootables, i.e. mission goals, the sub objective etc in specific spots and then used some kind of sprinkle tool and ran it over the map of the level to cover it in forks and mirrors and stupid bullshit. The amount of times I've parkoured up a fucking wall into the rafters just to find a fucking 5 gold mirror or something is painful.

kind of, but it has worthless loot
in previous games you needed loot to progress, or get better gear here it's meaningless

Nothing, Spoon Stealing Simulator 2014 was great.

You really don't get this do you? Lemme draw you a mental picture completely ignoring the game.

A bunch of guards are in a swimming pool, they're in the pool swimming because you're a scuba diving secret agent. It's a proverbial minefield of guards. The game was designed with you swimming through this pool in mind because that's what you do. Turns out you can just walk along the edge of the pool and completely avoid everything, and there isn't any loot in the pool or anything you just walk past them all. That's you. Walking past the pool in your scuba gear going "I didn't even have to swim lmao"

When you build your levels and such around a core concept that players ignore, your game is then either unplayable, or immensely boring.

Empty houses in the city with no inhabitants, ABSOLUTELY SHIT sounds, I still remember entering that meet factory or whatever and i didn't hear anything, no water dripping, no planks creaking, a fucking silence.

Other Than that, it was fine I guess. I got nostalgia googles since i still replay DS and MA but I kinda liked it otherwise

The focus ability. The story. The fact that you don't even have a sword. No noise arrows. The fact that you don't have to sell loot anymore to get gold. Shitty unneeded RPG elements. Spoon stealing.

It goes on.

I'll just go back to playing the Dark Mod.

>It forced story into thief, while it has been there who gave a fuck
Worst post of the year.

>if game gives you a choice it's not wroth mentioning

That's a retarded argument. As well as what said, if a design decision is bad it should be called out. The onus shouldn't be on the player to work their way around it.

Of course, whether or not the swoop is bad is a subjective point. However, the first three thief games managed to be just as good or better than thi4f without having the swoop, so at the very least it's an unnecessary inclusion.

what? sound like you didn't even try not to use swoop
if you stop using it you just have to be more patient and progress slowly, game is playable alright without it
how hard is it to understand? how new are you to stealth games? did you play thief2 in 2009 or something?

thats like saying you shouldn't use blink in dishonored because its too good.

there were loading screens everywhere. Walk 10 meters and spam A to lift thid bar up, while we load al lyour textures cus we're a shit game

oh that's funny, you gonna mash A for 10 seconds so that we can load all the textures on the other side!

also the minimap was cancer and the I cant even remember if it was a free-roam game or a linear mission game

yes you shouldn't if you want to play a better stealth game
perfect example of design that gives you proper options

>do all the missions for that faggot to build his robot over the course of the game
>finally give him the last part
>says thanks
>thats it
>no little cutscene plays of the robot coming to life

how hard concept of choice is for you?
game let's you play how you want - good
game doesn't - bad
what else is there?

Shitty sound design. In Thief you listen for guards to hear where they are. In Thi4f you activate x-ray vision to see visualizations of their footsteps through walls, because the sound is so fucked up that guards several rooms away sound like they're right next to you (or vice versa).

youtube.com/watch?v=VY1KnQrKnOs

didn't it move by the end?

Remember that time one of the devs said something along the lines of
>You can play as a thief, but we don't want to force you to play as a thief
in a game called Thief, in a series with 3 prior games that were about thieving.

>a better stealth game
>instant takedowns
>no noise arrows
>the sounds are fucked because whoop-de-doo we have x-ray vision

Did you even play a proper stealth game? Even if you pretend swoop didn't exist, Thi4f is as much of a "better" stealth game as SeusEx: Squeenix Revolution.

Eh, i dont remember them for the story, i mostly enjoyed the exploration and fun taffering around, while i know it has story of machine vs nature and all that, the setting, exploration and dialogue between random characters is what i remember it for, plus it never felt forced in the older ones, while in thief 4 it is really forced upon you
It felt like there was story and that is cool, but it was not like you had to give a fuck, you could just enjoy fun gameplay instead

I went back to the shop two times afterwards, so if it did my game must have glitched.

I tried to play it a few weeks ago, I expected nothing of it, and still I was disappointed.

Same as with Human Revolution vs X, only magnified, there's that isseu of everything being pre-scripted instead of being systemic.

But here it's a lot worse.

There is no jump. Al the places you can jump over are pre-scripted options.

Which bring ridiculous cases where you find what seems an entry point, but cannot jump over the small fence barely half your side, but if you go the other way, where the designer wants you to go, you can jump over a fence twice the size of the first one.

That's how bad it is.

And the worst thing is, the desigers pretend that you cna play without all the modern automated script-prompts and mini map and the like, but then if you remove them the game is unplayable - you never know when you can jump or not at a glance, it becomes pure trial and error...

never forget

As much as I like to praise Thief's story and setting, this post is actually pretty accurate.

You could easily just skip all the cutscenes and play, although I think you'd be missing out.

I think Thief 3 story was pretty decent too.

did you miss what the reply was about?

also
>focus doesn't work if you disable it
>blunt arrows work as noise arrows
>instant takedowns were in original games blackjack was OP let's not kid ourselves

I don't know what was wrong with your sound I could hear everything what was going on in nearby rooms.

>You could easily just skip all the cutscenes and play
you can do that with 95% of videogames

Have you consider to visit shopping mall and do the layout ? Its fucking same
>Muh maze
You know it building level user

Look, if you had fun with the game because you avoided using swoop, then I'm happy for you. We can still criticise it though.

>instant takedowns were in original games blackjack was OP let's not kid ourselves
>instant takedowns were in original games blackjack
>instant takedowns were blackjack
>The blackjack is equivilent to an instant takedown

I don't want to live in a future with people who think like this. Get the helium tank.

The same thing that went wrong with Splinter Cell: Conviction and Hitman: Absolution.

So far only Hitman has managed to redeem itself.

>sneak to a guard from behind
>hit guard
>guard is out


did I miss something?

too bad theres no such thing as a 'good' stealth game anymore, because the entire genre ran out of material like 10 years ago.

there is nothing new to add to stealth games, it will forever been light bars, noise AOEs and vision cones. Forever waiting for guards to pass by or cameras to pan the other way. This shit was stagnant by the time thief 2 released.

>focus doesn't work if you disable it
And then you can't figure out jack shit because you can't hear where the guards are moving.

>I don't know what was wrong with your sound I could hear everything what was going on in nearby rooms.
"worksforme" is a shitty argument, because obviously the sound is a common issue.
See
>blunt arrows work as noise arrows
You mean they work as a massive clusterfuck.

>>instant takedowns were in original games blackjack was OP let's not kid ourselves
Ah, you haven't played the original games I see, good to know it's pointless to even argue with you.

The difference is the amount of plot put into actual gameplay that might require input from cutscenes.

A base verb of the game is not a choice. Or if it is there's a problem.

Thiaf's sound engine was noticeably buggy. Certainly infeior to the original games. I remember a bug where you could hear a guard like he was in next room while he was at the other side of the house - pretty messy. Worse thing is the interactions of volume levels between scripted conversation and environmental noise. Could bring some incredible fuck ups. With two conversations going on at once of people that in hearing vicinity anymore with pops of footsteps going both ways over and way below them in turns.

Everybody knows Thiaf is shit, I'd rather talk about good games and fan missions.

>Thiaf's sound engine was noticeably buggy.
well maybe I was lucky, I usually am about these things
i'd make terrible QA

I blame this stupid idea of adding stealth elements to otherwise non-stealth games.

By the end of it all, everyone was way too tired of stealth games.

That's like saying there's never going to be a good platform game because everything has been done already.

Certainly the base of the game is now defined, but even without changing it certainly a good team of developers could make great levels that fit it and conjoin them into a cohesive whole.

That would be enough for most. People are not asking for a reinvention of the genre. Just decent new entries that follow the mold. With maybe a gimmick or two to spice things up as long as it doesn't detract.

>A base verb of the game is not a choice. Or if it is there's a problem.

What does that mean?

come on, alien isolation was good
even though it had all of the mentioned flaws

no really, what was the last stealth game that actually did something new?

>no really, what was the last stealth game

Fixed. All games nowadays are action games with stealth elements. There are no true "stealth games" outside of super obscure titles or indieshit.

Ok, let me rephrase it: if you think it makes the game too easy compared to Megaman, just don't dash in Megaman X. See the problem?

Hell, let's go one further, if you think it makes the game too easy, just don't jump in Super Mario.

Swoop is built up to be a base verb, you know it because how painstakingly the intro level tries to show you the effect of swooping over different surfaces, and the ridicule number of birds as a deterrent to it. The game tries to build variation of spaces in which you must swoop and others you mustn't.

You *can* play without it, but that's mostly a testament to how poorly the game was designed.

How would it be relevant to me saying people *don't* want something new?

Does anyone have that image of worthwhile fan missions

Context-based jumping in a game about an agile thief is enough.

...

...

Thanks pal

Square enix should let eidos come up with an original IP they want to make and give them complete creative freedom.

>Speaking of that, you weren't a thief in this, sure, you stole shit, but you were more like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything in sight, and i mean everything

Fucking this. They made Garrett a fucking destitute bum where he literally steal EVERYTHING from forks, spoons, and scissors.

So much for "Master Thief".

Also, they fucked this game from the start when they decided to take down Stephen Russell who gave Garrett it's character, and not hiring Eric Brosius for the soundtrack.

youtube.com/watch?v=m-XbCG53uNA

How could company get so many things wrong..?

master thief steals spoons that are worth 3gold

>That mission with the mansion in Thi3f
>robbing a blind lady blind
>find the gold stash
>pick it up
>read that she won't be able to survive without it
>can't drop it
>mfw

God, that mission.

First time you actually felt bad about casing a joint. Nice how you can give her a bottle of wine.

>game let's you play how you want - good
>game doesn't - bad
>what else is there?

actual design.

good design is about creating a rich probability space where interesting choices occur. it's not adding random shit and letting players ignore the shitty half of the game. "do i skip the bad part?" is not an interesting choice.

Whenever people took to the forums and gave feedback on all the glaring issues about the game leading up to release, they either had shills damage control or flat out deleted and censored entire threads like children plugging their ears and shouting "NUH-UH! LALALALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALA"
Seriously.

Funny how Bethesda had more respect for Thief as an iconic series that they had Stephen Russell voice one of the members of the Thieves Guild in Skyrim.

Eidos decided to take him out of the game entirely.

Stephen Russell works with Bethesda a lot though.

Reminder that a good portion of Thiaf's marketing was based on the premise that the previous games were "bad"
youtu.be/IrcFKLwhfbI

They made a huge mistake giving away steam keys of Gold for free because everybody probably liked that game more than the new one.

>game obviously hints to this guy being a shady untrustworthy faggot, and a complete psycho if you read all the letters and shit in the missions
>iirc garrett even says something like "this guys up to something but ill play along for now"
>nothing fucking happens
i guess i shouldnt have expected much from this game. but this went below even those expectations.

>the entire genre ran out of material like 10 years ago.

i think hitman has always been hinting at something great with disguise-based "social" stealth but all the actual hitman games are extremely half-assed and fail to explore the idea properly. someone could still refine that concept into something amazing.

>if you actually leave her stash, she later sends you a letter thanking you and calls you a gentleman thief
although you likely will have to play on a lower difficulty level to pull it off due to the loot objectives