I...just...what...WHAT have they done to thief?


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Threeshades wrote:
Hama wrote:


They take Thief, and amazing stealth game and TURN IT INTO THIS?

That stuff sounds exactly like the usual "appeal to a wider/modern audience"-dribble that ruined so many games lately. not only for the audience but also for the publisher.

They take a game that was marketed to fans of stealth games, because, you know, it was a stealth game and make being undetected unimportant, and limit the choices on how to complete a given level. Basically removing everything that makes stealth engaging in the first place.

All this will achieve is that no one will be interested in the game. Non-stealth game audiences will not buy it on the basis that it's supposed to be a stealth game, and stealth game audiences will not buy it on the basis that it fails at being a stealth game.

Really the only thing missing is that they port the franchise into a "realistic" modern military setting...

I'm not sure this is an inevitable outcome. Allowing gamers new to the franchise some non-stealth options does not mean that those fully committed to stealth cannot still play it that way. Seems like this broadens the purchasing audience, potentially.


I never played Thief. But the only thing on that link that concerned me was the use of QTEs... QTEs ruined Tomb Raider for me by making it unplayable. Not sure why but I automatically fail at QTEs. So it looks like I will steer clear of this title. Most of what they did sounds like it was done to add a little story and excitement to the game or remove exploits from the old one. If they removed the QTEs I would buy it.


Werthead wrote:
Metacritic scores should be taken with a dash of salt, especially when you were actually arguing on the basis of sales.

Take your pick, Werthead!

We can argue on the basis of sales, in which case Fallout 3 sold incredibly well, or we can argue on the basis of review scores, in which case Fallout 3 was reviewed incredibly well.

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NEW VEGAS outsold FALLOUT 3 and was certainly the better game; the review scores were slightly lower because, for reasons that remain satisfactorily unexplained, reviewers did not mention FALLOUT 3's significant bugs whilst they did mention NEW VEGAS's (and likewise, they would not mention SKYRIM's a year later).

Having played both at release, New Vegas' bugs were significantly more detrimental to the play experience. Ignoring the bugs, however, New Vegas was the better game.

But games are not judged based on what came after them, so I'm not sure why this is important.

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There is also irony here, as FO3 now doesn't work on Windows 7 or 8 (at least not for a lot of people, and not without faffing around), whilst NEW VEGAS works fine.

Fallout 3 played flawlessly on Windows 7 for me. Again, I'm not sure why this is particularly important, though. Windows 7 came out a year after Fallout 3 was released.

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From a creative standpoint, NEW VEGAS was also certainly the better game, and better because it actually adopted so-called older, more 'hardcore' and old-fashioned styles of gameplay, such as having a much more reactive storyline which closed off entire quest lines if you annoyed the faction giving out the quest. So if it's a better game, and it sells better, whilst also being more 'old-fashioned', then that casts doubt on the idea that THIEF 4 will be good (or at least as good as the originals) when it is removing significant elements of the gameplay from THIEF 1-3, and also on the idea it is needed to make a game acceptable to a modern gaming audience.

That's essentially the only conceit to "old-fashioned" gameplay that New Vegas made. And, frankly, it highlighted one of the big reasons that people shy away from that sort of structuring - it made for some incredibly weird combinations of events that players could cause to come about where the plot completely collapsed if events were handled outside a handful of "expected" orders. Reactivity is a n^2 problem.

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The whole situation is more bizarre because HUMAN REVOLUTION (made by the same studio as THIEF 4, though not the same team) also stepped back from the more simplified choices of INVISIBLE WAR and institued some greater design choices and freedom harking back to the original DEUS EX. HR was of course a huge success.

tl;dr - I don't think that 'simplifying' or 'streamlining' a game for a modern audience is always necessary or always results in greater sales. FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS and DE:HR both seem to have benefitted from greater complexity, reactivity and freedom than their predecessors, so the argument that THIEF 4 needs to be dramatically simplified on the scale that Eidos have apparently carried out seems questionable.

I don't see any indications that Thief is being "simplified". I see indications that it is being changed (and, really, it's a little baffling that people are seeing developer quotes like, "We don't want to force you to play through as a traditional thief," and immediately coming to the conclusion that they're curtailing player freedom).


Matt Thomason wrote:
Werthead wrote:
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Metacritic scores that place it in the top 20 games of the last generation count as better than "reasonable", methinks.

Metacritic scores should be taken with a dash of salt, especially when you were actually arguing on the basis of sales.

Metacritic? Ugh!

Metacritic is pretty much pointless, all it does is tell you what the average opinion of a game is, it doesn't tell you the opinion amongst the target audience.

Many games that should have scored a 80-90 for what they actually are get a much lower Metacritic score because of people that simply don't like that genre.

Professional reviewers judge games within the context of their genre. Or, at least, the respected ones do.

If your argument is that Metacritic user ratings are worthless, I agree with you completely. In fact, I believe they're worse than worthless.

Sovereign Court

Aranna wrote:

I never played Thief. But the only thing on that link that concerned me was the use of QTEs... QTEs ruined Tomb Raider for me by making it unplayable. Not sure why but I automatically fail at QTEs. So it looks like I will steer clear of this title. Most of what they did sounds like it was done to add a little story and excitement to the game or remove exploits from the old one. If they removed the QTEs I would buy it.

Thief had a story. It was this one dude in between various organizations with fantasy elements (like undead). What they did is to do away wit all of the organizations and the fantasy elements. Could have just simply called the game "Sneak".


Your link seems to talk about story like it is important. So as long as you don't mind the evil QTEs maybe you would like the new less fantasy story whatever it ends up being? Sometimes we just need to forget the name of something and enjoy it for what it is not what we wanted it to be.


Hama wrote:
Thief had a story. It was this one dude in between various organizations with fantasy elements (like undead). What they did is to do away wit all of the organizations

The game has factions in it, just as the previous games did. The ones we're aware of currently are the Baron and his Watch, and the Raven dissidents.

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and the fantasy elements.

You've already been told that this is the exact opposite of true. The game still features the supernatural.

The brutally ironic part of all of this is that if someone released the game Eidos is planning on making but refused to call it Thief, everyone would be up in arms over how it was just a Thief clone/knock-off.


Scott Betts wrote:


Professional reviewers judge games within the context of their genre. Or, at least, the respected ones do.

If your argument is that Metacritic user ratings are worthless, I agree with you completely. In fact, I believe they're worse than worthless.

Yep, sorry, I meant the user ratings. I'd even forgotten it had real ratings too from all the user ratings messes I've seen ;)


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Scott Betts wrote:
The brutally ironic part of all of this is that if someone released the game Eidos is planning on making but refused to call it Thief, everyone would be up in arms over how it was just a Thief clone/knock-off.

Only so much as any turn based RPG is a Final Fantasy rip and every platformer is Prince of Persia. Which is to say, not that much at all. Better yet, it can be marketed as Eidos, the guys who brought you thief, making a new stealth game and trying to do something new.

That's actually a pretty cynical way to look at it, and I'm sure it wouldn't be everyone. Your higher than that, right?


Werthead wrote:

Metacritic scores should be taken with a dash of salt, especially when you were actually arguing on the basis of sales.

NEW VEGAS outsold FALLOUT 3 and was certainly the better game; the review scores were slightly lower because, for reasons that remain satisfactorily unexplained, reviewers did not mention FALLOUT 3's significant bugs whilst they did mention NEW VEGAS's (and likewise, they would not mention SKYRIM's a year later). There is also irony here, as FO3 now doesn't work on Windows 7 or 8 (at least not for a lot of people, and not without faffing around), whilst NEW VEGAS works fine.

From a creative standpoint, NEW VEGAS was also certainly the better game, and better because it actually adopted so-called older, more 'hardcore' and old-fashioned styles of gameplay, such as having a much more reactive storyline which closed off entire quest lines if you annoyed the faction giving out the quest. So if it's a better game, and it sells better, whilst also being more 'old-fashioned', then that casts doubt on the idea that THIEF 4 will be good (or at least as good as the originals) when it is removing significant elements of the gameplay from THIEF 1-3, and also on the idea it is needed to make a game acceptable to a modern gaming audience.

On the bugs: New Vegas' were significantly more detrimental to the game than FO3's or Skyrim's were. In FO3 or Skyrim you might get the occasional quest glitch or enemy randomly flying off into orbit. In New Vegas you would get crashes every 5 minutes and fairly frequent save wipes for the first month or so after release.

On the "creative standpoint": That's subjective. The mechanics were more streamlined, yes. That is undeniable, it is a mechanically superior game (ignoring the bugs). I personally thought NV was the inferior game as far as atmosphere went, however. FO3 had the perfect mixture of wacky and gritty that made all of its flaws very forgivable. NV had less flaws...but IMO the atmosphere suffered. I always felt that NV took itself a bit too seriously. Still really enjoyed the game, but I was never as super into it as I was into FO3, barring a few of the DLC (Dead Money, while kinda lackluster on a second run through, sucked me right in, and Old World Blues had that great wacky feel back and some very interesting backstory stuff).


MrSin wrote:
Scott Betts wrote:
The brutally ironic part of all of this is that if someone released the game Eidos is planning on making but refused to call it Thief, everyone would be up in arms over how it was just a Thief clone/knock-off.
Only so much as any turn based RPG is a Final Fantasy rip and every platformer is Prince of Persia. Which is to say, not that much at all. Better yet, it can be marketed as Eidos, the guys who brought you thief, making a new stealth game and trying to do something new.

Really? A semi-dystopian, mystical, quasi-medieval city called "The City" inhabited by a corrupt guard and oppressive aristocracy featuring a master thief protagonist who sneaks, pickpockets, bludgeons, and backstabs his way around the city, who uses water arrows and an array of gadgets to accomplish his goals, and you think it would only garner the same amount of comparison to Thief in the gaming community as Mario does to Prince of Persia?

Come the hell on.

There's nothing "cynical" about that. It would invite those comparisons, and they would be deserved, because they're obviously making a Thief game.

Sovereign Court

Scott, I get what you're saying, but I'm still disappointed. The change in fluff i can get, time moves on, they wanna try new villains etc. But what i really cannot forgive are context-sensitive actions. Yes, it requires more work to do, but it is also lazy in a way. It limits player agency. What if i really want to climb this building, but i can't because it is not programmed in?

And your comment that at will jumping is a thing of the past that was taken from platformers and is ridiculous in any other game is downright ridiculous. I mean seriously.


Hama wrote:
Scott, I get what you're saying, but I'm still disappointed. The change in fluff i can get, time moves on, they wanna try new villains etc. But what i really cannot forgive are context-sensitive actions. Yes, it requires more work to do, but it is also lazy in a way. It limits player agency. What if i really want to climb this building, but i can't because it is not programmed in?

It doesn't matter whether the control system is context-sensitive or not.

If the designer is "lazy" (read: not particularly interested in meeting your personal demands for video game "verisimilitude"; and I use "verisimilitude" loosely here, because if one of your primary requirements for making a game believable is being able to jump around like an idiot, you must live a very, very odd life), it doesn't matter what control system he implements. If he doesn't want you going somewhere, you won't be able to go there. Before there were context-sensitive controls, there were invisible walls. Heck, even the Thief series had them! Is that what you want? More importantly, please show me how you could climb every surface in the original Thief games. Go play through Life of the Party and count the number of rooftops you can see that you cannot clamber on top of.

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And your comment that at will jumping is a thing of the past that was taken from platformers and is ridiculous in any other game is downright ridiculous. I mean seriously.

As an experiment, go outside tomorrow, look at the world around you, and ask yourself how much jumping up (as opposed to jumping of gaps, which context-sensitive control systems almost universally allow you to do) is required of you to traverse it. Keep in mind that climbing is an alternative to jumping, and is a more natural way to ascend something.

I don't think you've spent a lot of time thinking about this particular problem.


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Scott Betts wrote:
It doesn't matter whether the control system is context-sensitive or not.

It does to some people! I can do it too.


MrSin wrote:
Scott Betts wrote:
It doesn't matter whether the control system is context-sensitive or not.
It does to some people! I can do it too.

I'm not saying "It doesn't matter to me."

I'm saying that the choice between a traditional control scheme and a context-sensitive control scheme does not necessarily have an impact on the player's ability to "go where you want", and I explained that this is because level designers are going to restrict where you can go regardless, because there's no such thing as an infinite game world (at least, not one that isn't procedurally generated). In the olden days (and still today in some games) this was accomplished with impassible terrain or invisible walls, both of which violate Hama's requirement.

In fact, 3d game worlds are inarguably more open in many modern games (including context-sensitive games) than they were in older games like the Thief series (mostly due to larger development budgets, increased processing power/memory, and the desire to one-up games that came before).

In other words, the idea that context-sensitive controls limits player agency in any meaningful way is a really ignorant one that fails to understand why context-sensitive controls exist in the first place, and what design decisions impact player freedom.

So if someone says, "But it matters to me!" that's a pretty good indication that they don't know what they're talking about, and haven't properly identified the actual issue (sure, they may not like the fact that they can't climb any building, but they're blaming context-sensitive controls and that's not the problem). Taking that a step further and blaming "lazy design" tops ignorance with arrogance.


Personally, I prefer real walls to invisible ones or insurmountable knee high fences, so being able to jump and explore is pretty nice to me and the context sensitive environment can really kill it. While context sensitive in the form of being able to explore and use your environment is nice, the idea that I have to play along the path can create the linear feeling that some of us just hate, especially something adventurous where finding new options is neat. There's a sort of illusion of freedom you create when your allowing people to jump and move around as much as possible. On the other hand, being told to press E to take down, A to jump up this wall, and C to fire an arrow exactly here, does take away the feeling of freedom I would like to have and feel. Also sucks if that ever doesn't function correctly.

So yes, the fact its context sensitive and its implementation does matter. I haven't seen thief to know, the new one or the old one. I'm just stating how it can.

Scott Betts wrote:
So if someone says, "But it matters to me!" that's a pretty good indication that they don't know what they're talking about,

Oh really? Someone who tells me "It doesn't matter!" tells me they don't really care what I have to say.

Sovereign Court

Sorry, i just want thief with much prettier graphics.
I want a HARD game. That i have to really try to finish. Nowdays when i install a game i automatically start it on the hardest setting. And it still isn't almost any challenge.

Older games were hard.


Hama wrote:

Sorry, i just want thief with much prettier graphics.

I want a HARD game. That i have to really try to finish. Nowadays when i install a game i automatically start it on the hardest setting. And it still isn't almost any challenge.

Older games were hard.

Older games were usually hard because you sucked at them, and that's the truth.

There are some ludicrously hard old games (especially on the Nintendo consoles), for sure, but for the most part you just sucked.

Thief came out in '98.

I was never a big player of the NES or SNES (only game I ever really played for SNES besides Super Mario World was Zombies Ate My Neighbors...which WAS a balls hard game), but I played plenty on the N64, around the same time period.

Games for the N64 I had trouble with back then:

Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask

Jet Force Gemini

Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie

Donkey Kong 64

Toy Story 2 (the one where you play as Buzz Lightyear)

F-Zero X

Games for the N64 I can't breeze through now:

Jet Force Gemini (f~$% this GAAAAME it's so good but it's so harrrrdd)

F-Zero X (I suck at racing games and the controls are wonky to me)

There are hard and easy games in every generation. I can do the same thing for the PS2/Gamecube era (didn't own an Xbox for that gen), and point out some modern games that are hard as well if you like.

Sovereign Court

Haven't owned a console since Sega Mega Drive 2(Or genesis for some). I play stuff exclusively on PC.


Hama wrote:
Haven't owned a console since Sega Mega Drive 2(Or genesis for some). I play stuff exclusively on PC.

Point. Missed.

Or more accurately, you used freakin' Deflect Arrows on that point.


MrSin wrote:
Personally, I prefer real walls to invisible ones or insurmountable knee high fences, so being able to jump and explore is pretty nice to me and the context sensitive environment can really kill it. While context sensitive in the form of being able to explore and use your environment is nice, the idea that I have to play along the path can create the linear feeling that some of us just hate, especially something adventurous where finding new options is neat.

Again, context-sensitive controls != playing along the path.

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There's a sort of illusion of freedom you create when your allowing people to jump and move around as much as possible.

It's a very, very thin one, and one that is completely negated by a proper context-sensitive control scheme.

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So yes, the fact its context sensitive and its implementation does matter. I haven't seen thief to know, the new one or the old one. I'm just stating how it can.

It can does not mean it will, just as a traditional control scheme can result in a restrictive game environment caged in countless invisible walls, but doesn't always.

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Oh really? Someone who tells me "It doesn't matter!" tells me they don't really care what I have to say.

Part of being a designer is learning to look past what your audience thinks is the solution to what the actual solution is.

When a client tells you they don't like something, they are right 90% of the time. When a customer tells you what the solution is, they are right 10% of the time.

You don't like the feeling of restrictiveness. I'm sure you don't. You think that the solution is a traditional control scheme. It probably isn't.


Hama wrote:
Sorry, i just want thief with much prettier graphics.

You will never get that. Games have changed, and Thief is too valuable of a property to be left to a niche.

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I want a HARD game. That i have to really try to finish. Nowdays when i install a game i automatically start it on the hardest setting. And it still isn't almost any challenge.

Congratulations, it sounds like you have incredible skill.

Part of modern game design has been the practice of replacing difficult "campaign" gameplay with optional challenge. In the Arkham series of games, the campaign is not particularly challenging (though Hard difficulty is legitimately difficult). The real tests come in the form of Challenge levels that demand total system mastery to hit the highest score tier. This allows people with relatively low system competence to complete the game and feel like they got the full experience (and to remain invested in the franchise) while still providing highly skilled players with a challenge.

This is the same sort of complaint I often heard from WoW players circa Cataclysm. They would whine that the game was being "dumbed down" or that it was no longer a challenge to complete raids (even going so far as to coin the term "welfare epics"). When I would ask them how they were doing on their Hard runs and raid achievements, I typically would just receive silence.


Having games that offer a choosable range of difficulty makes me far more likely to risk my money on a purchase. A game is no fun if it is too hard for a player to master. Seems to me that a stealth game can be made more difficult by developers giving guards sharper hearing at higher difficulties, reducing shadows with brighter light sources, increasing the density of patrols, etc. Hard settings for those who are highly skilled and/or love a tough challenge; something less stringent for the rest of us, who other wise wouldn't support the game with our dollars...


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Scott Betts wrote:
You don't like the feeling of restrictiveness. I'm sure you don't. You think that the solution is a traditional control scheme. It probably isn't.

How dare I want to jump when I want to? Is jumping only when told going to make the game feel less restrictive?

Scott Betts wrote:
Hama wrote:
Sorry, i just want thief with much prettier graphics.
You will never get that. Games have changed, and Thief is too valuable of a property to be left to a niche.

If they change it, its not thief. Its valuable because its thief. Just slapping the name thief on it doesn't make it thief, though it might be a thief for stealing the name thief.

Logic. Sometimes you can have fun with it.


MrSin wrote:
How dare I want to jump when I want to?

It is a pretty silly requirement.

Go take a look upthread, I told Hama to do outside and size up the world around him, and ask himself how much jumping up is going to be necessary for him to move across the environment. You could do the same. The reality is that jumping all over the place is a pretty weird thing to do and makes games (especially games with any kind of behind-the-head third-person perspective, and first-person games to a lesser degree) seem unrealistic.

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Is jumping only when told going to make the game feel less restrictive?

I don't know what you're asking here. This seems like something I would ask you.

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If they change it, its not thief.

Sure it is. We've been over this. The game, as advertised, will be so similar to Thief that if they didn't call it Thief (and it wasn't made by Eidos) people would be accusing them of completely ripping Thief off.

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Its valuable because its thief.

I can't argue with that.

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Just slapping the name thief on it doesn't make it thief, though it might be a thief for stealing the name thief.

Thankfully, they're not simply slapping the name "Thief" on it. You know that, of course, because we've already been over the ways in which it is similar (contrary to some of the misinformation spread by Hama in this thread).

It's like someone looking at the differences between Super Mario World and Super Mario 64, and then saying to you, "If they change it, it's not Mario!" (except, of course, that the changes between Thief 3 and the new Thief are far, far less dramatic than the changes between SNES and N64 Mario). That's some hamfisted thinking.


I will say I know people who swear off all the 3d Mario games (Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, etc.) "because they're not Mario".


Rynjin wrote:
I will say I know people who swear off all the 3d Mario games (Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, etc.) "because they're not Mario".

And that is both a silly observation, and a silly reason to swear something off.


Scott Betts wrote:
Rynjin wrote:
I will say I know people who swear off all the 3d Mario games (Mario 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, etc.) "because they're not Mario".
And that is both a silly observation, and a silly reason to swear something off.

Bah, Mario hasn't been Mario ever since he stopped climbing ladders and jumping barrels thrown by that gorilla... ;)

Liberty's Edge

Dishonored really felt like a 2013 version of Thief to me.


Scott Betts wrote:
Go take a look upthread, I told Hama to do outside and size up the world around him, and ask himself how much jumping up is going to be necessary for him to move across the environment.

Actually, I live in a hilly area with lots of forest. Jumping isn't a bad skill to have. Nor climbing. A lot of the old beaten paths have trees that have fallen into the way. When I went to school in an urban environment some of the kids would jump the gates or walls to take a shortcut in or around something.

Also, as human beings with the ability to jump, we have less to worry about Insurmountable Waist-High Fences. Video game characters tend to have less luck. Also, invisible walls. Those things suck. I have no idea what mime had all the time to erect them, but he needs to cut it out.

Scott Betts wrote:
Sure it is. We've been over this. The game, as advertised, will be so similar to Thief that if they didn't call it Thief (and it wasn't made by Eidos) people would be accusing them of completely ripping Thief off.

That sounds like an opinion to me, but it looks like its stated like a fact...


MrSin wrote:
Actually, I live in a hilly area with lots of forest. Jumping isn't a bad skill to have. Nor climbing. A lot of the old beaten paths have trees that have fallen into the way. When I went to school in an urban environment some of the kids would jump the gates or walls to take a shortcut in or around something.

Like I mentioned earlier, climbing doesn't count (hilariously, almost every climbing system in video game history has been context sensitive). I want you to size up how many obstacles you would need to overcome by jumping up. Not climbing. Not jumping across. Not vaulting. Jumping up.

I'd wager the number is close to zero, because we humans don't really bypass obstacles by jumping up. Jumping up doesn't accomplish much, and climbing or clambering over something is almost always preferable.

I'm asking you to go out and judge this for yourself because I want you to compare how you would deal with obstacles in real life versus how you are requesting that the game allow you to deal with obstacles in a video game, in order to have you demonstrate to yourself that the ability to jump at will doesn't actually impart any realism into the game, but instead just ends up looking silly. And that game designers, who, I will remind you, do this for a living, came to that conclusion quite some time ago and have been slowly shifting control schemes away from having the ability to bunny hop around the map like an idiot to a set of controls that takes into account your character's environmental context to determine the action you are trying to take.

I can tell you "Jumping up at will is silly," until the cows come home, but as long as you're under the impression that jumping up is an important part of movement, you won't believe me. I'd much rather you do your own convincing.

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That sounds like an opinion to me, but it looks like its stated like a fact...

I am 100% confident that if the Thief name and Eidos label were stripped from the upcoming Thief game, it would be widely decried as a total Thief ripoff. 100% confident. Arguing otherwise is absurd.


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Metacritic is, as I understand it, a steaming pile of irrelevant circle-jerk. And, yes, I AM talking about "real" reviews here. Game mags are industry-owned, or at the very least completely dependent on review copies to function. A reviewer who puts down too low a score can kiss his future review copies goodbye. The view from the industry seems to be that "you need to get a 80% score on metacritic". And, true enough, time and time again, there are stories about how some mag has taken bribes or whatever to put in a too high score. The reviews you read today always seem to read the same with expensive games:
"History blah blah. Game 8 is the latest fps from Company. It focuses on open terrain and blah blah. Good points include: Some like the new character model for one of the monsters a bit better than in Game 7. Bad points include: You can't actually hit something in the game without day 1 DLC, you randomly get killed for no reason within two minutes, all the other character models look like a month old pizza, the only sound is random noise that grates on your ears within a minute, seriously, playing this pile of tripe is worse than killing yourself with a spork...

... With Game 8, we see Company take a big leap into the future. It is what we all wanted, but couldn't even imagine. Given this spectacular action game, Company will remain a relevant actor for decades. 96%."

Seriously, referring to metacritic is far worse than referring to wikipedia these days.


Sissyl wrote:
Metacritic is, as I understand it, a steaming pile of irrelevant circle-jerk.

Your understanding is incomplete, then.

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And, yes, I AM talking about "real" reviews here. Game mags are industry-owned,

All three of them.

(And, of course, this is actually false; all three official console magazines are owned by Future plc. None of the console manufacturers own their own mag.)

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or at the very least completely dependent on review copies to function.

In much the same way that movie critics are dependent on review screenings to function. And literary critics are dependent on advance copies to function. This doesn't make them incapable of doing their jobs.

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A reviewer who puts down too low a score can kiss his future review copies goodbye.

Source or retract.

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The view from the industry seems to be that "you need to get a 80% score on metacritic".

That is one view within the industry. Some gaming companies even base employee bonuses on Metacritic aggregates. It is, from what I understand, an increasingly unpopular view.

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And, true enough, time and time again, there are stories about how some mag has taken bribes or whatever to put in a too high score.

These stories are few and far between, and are rarely ever substantiated (far more often, they are the result of misunderstanding or deliberate trolling combined with the typical dysfunctions of the gaming community).

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The reviews you read today always seem to read the same with expensive games:

"History blah blah. Game 8 is the latest fps from Company. It focuses on open terrain and blah blah. Good points include: Some like the new character model for one of the monsters a bit better than in Game 7. Bad points include: You can't actually hit something in the game without day 1 DLC, you randomly get killed for no reason within two minutes, all the other character models look like a month old pizza, the only sound is random noise that grates on your ears within a minute, seriously, playing this pile of tripe is worse than killing yourself with a spork...

... With Game 8, we see Company take a big leap into the future. It is what we all wanted, but couldn't even imagine. Given this spectacular action game, Company will remain a relevant actor for decades. 96%."

So, you haven't actually read any video game reviews, ever, then? Do yourself a favor.

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Seriously, referring to metacritic is far worse than referring to wikipedia these days.

Wikipedia is actually a tremendously useful resource and is nearly always reliable. Malicious editing is short-lived and infrequent.

Metacritic's professional review aggregation is a great way to get a sense of the quality of a given game. Your post is much more easily explained by a mentality of, "I don't like Call of Duty, therefore anyone who likes it must be hilariously corrupt or incompetent. Most reviewers tend to rate Call of Duty highly, therefore they must be hilariously corrupt or incompetent."


Sim City.


Sissyl wrote:
Sim City.

You mean the one with an incredible 64/100 Metacritic aggregate score?

The one that received a 70 from IGN, a 50 from GameSpot, a 65 from Game Informer, and a 40 from Eurogamer?

Thought so.


Eurogamer Sweden apparently liked the game a "bit" more than that 40, weighing in at 100%. Eurogamer Italy gave it 90%, Eurogamer Portugal 60%, Eurogamer Spain 60%, Eurogamer Germany 40%, and Eurogamer 40%. All in all, 390%/6 = 65%. Since they all weigh just as heavily, could it be that Sweden and Italy were set to "balance" the pretty horrible 40%s in tiny markets, to make sure the game wasn't too harshly judged? I mean, the thing DID get 2/10 user reviews on average. Out of 26 positive reviews (more than or equal to 75%), we have Sweden = 2, Denmark = 1, Norway = 1, Netherlands = 1, Finland = 1, Italy = 4, judging merely by the names of the publications, meaning 10/26 positive reviews were from these countries, which is not at all the statistics seen further down in the review lists. But, I guess, there just happens to be something in the Italian and Nordic psyches that resonate with this game, right?

Yeah, I know, I am just paranoid. It's just kind of mind-boggling how a game can be the end-all game of all time in Sweden, and get an aggregate score of 64%...


Scott Betts wrote:
Quote:
That sounds like an opinion to me, but it looks like its stated like a fact...
I am 100% confident that if the Thief name and Eidos label were stripped from the upcoming Thief game, it would be widely decried as a total Thief ripoff. 100% confident. Arguing otherwise is absurd.

Right, but that doesn't make it a fact and its certainly not absurd to say otherwise. We might disagree sure, and I might not change your opinion, but it doesn't make me 'absurd' for thinking differently than you.

Scott Betts wrote:
Quote:
A reviewer who puts down too low a score can kiss his future review copies goodbye.
Source or retract.

Heyo!


*giggles*


MrSin wrote:
Right, but that doesn't make it a fact and its certainly not absurd to say otherwise.

I don't care what you want to call it. It's the truth, and denying it is tantamount to willful ignorance.

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We might disagree sure, and I might not change your opinion, but it doesn't make me 'absurd' for thinking differently than you.

The belief that the upcoming Thief game would not be widely decried as a Thief ripoff if its name and its publisher's name were changed is an absurd belief.

Quote:
Scott Betts wrote:
Quote:
A reviewer who puts down too low a score can kiss his future review copies goodbye.
Source or retract.
Heyo!

So, literally nothing about losing review copies, then.

Got it.

You linked me to an article about the biggest video game review scandal of the decade - a decision by GameSpot management so devastating on their part that it led to mass resignations of journalists who (surprise! surprise!) weren't okay working for a company with compromised integrity, who then went on to form another incredibly popular gaming website and whose careers are now as strong as ever. And this is supposed to be an indictment of the industry as a whole?


Sissyl wrote:

Eurogamer Sweden apparently liked the game a "bit" more than that 40, weighing in at 100%. Eurogamer Italy gave it 90%, Eurogamer Portugal 60%, Eurogamer Spain 60%, Eurogamer Germany 40%, and Eurogamer 40%. All in all, 390%/6 = 65%. Since they all weigh just as heavily, could it be that Sweden and Italy were set to "balance" the pretty horrible 40%s in tiny markets, to make sure the game wasn't too harshly judged? I mean, the thing DID get 2/10 user reviews on average. Out of 26 positive reviews (more than or equal to 75%), we have Sweden = 2, Denmark = 1, Norway = 1, Netherlands = 1, Finland = 1, Italy = 4, judging merely by the names of the publications, meaning 10/26 positive reviews were from these countries, which is not at all the statistics seen further down in the review lists. But, I guess, there just happens to be something in the Italian and Nordic psyches that resonate with this game, right?

Yeah, I know, I am just paranoid. It's just kind of mind-boggling how a game can be the end-all game of all time in Sweden, and get an aggregate score of 64%...

I think it's much more likely that the people handling reviews for tiny outfits like Eurogamer national departments just aren't as capable as the rest. If it helps assuage your concerns, the aggregate Simcity score from the top 10 most publicized reviewers is actually pretty close to the overall aggregate, with a 61%. So while there were a handful of outlets that rated the game far too highly, there are clearly also a number of outlets who gave it a score that is too low.

(In case you were curious, Giant Bomb, which as we now all know was founded by a bunch of ex-GameStop employees who were burned by pressure to give games positive reviews, gave Simcity a 60.)


Scott Betts wrote:
MrSin wrote:
Right, but that doesn't make it a fact and its certainly not absurd to say otherwise.
I don't care what you want to call it. It's the truth, and denying it is tantamount to willful ignorance.

Well what I say is the truth and I say your wrong. Why? Because its the truth and I said it.

But no seriously, so not only is disagreeing with your opinion absurd, its now willfully ignorant? Why should I bother responding to someone who acts like that.

Scott Betts wrote:
So, literally nothing about losing review copies, then.

Splitting hairs usually means your losing the argument. And I'd infer that losing your job reviewing things would mean some sort of loss.

Scott Betts wrote:
I think it's much more likely that the people handling reviews for tiny outfits like Eurogamer national departments just aren't as capable as the rest.

Right... Its a problem with everyone else who you don't agree wtih. That's convenient.

Are we talking about SimCity 2013? That was a pretty big flop if I remember correctly.

Edit: Also! Here are two funny webcomics related to reviewing video games. Link 1 and Link 2. Doesn't have much to do with the conversation, nor reality sometimes.


Scott Betts wrote:
MrSin wrote:
Actually, I live in a hilly area with lots of forest. Jumping isn't a bad skill to have. Nor climbing. A lot of the old beaten paths have trees that have fallen into the way. When I went to school in an urban environment some of the kids would jump the gates or walls to take a shortcut in or around something.

Like I mentioned earlier, climbing doesn't count (hilariously, almost every climbing system in video game history has been context sensitive). I want you to size up how many obstacles you would need to overcome by jumping up. Not climbing. Not jumping across. Not vaulting. Jumping up.

I'd wager the number is close to zero, because we humans don't really bypass obstacles by jumping up. Jumping up doesn't accomplish much, and climbing or clambering over something is almost always preferable.

I'm asking you to go out and judge this for yourself because I want you to compare how you would deal with obstacles in real life versus how you are requesting that the game allow you to deal with obstacles in a video game, in order to have you demonstrate to yourself that the ability to jump at will doesn't actually impart any realism into the game, but instead just ends up looking silly. And that game designers, who, I will remind you, do this for a living, came to that conclusion quite some time ago and have been slowly shifting control schemes away from having the ability to bunny hop around the map like an idiot to a set of controls that takes into account your character's environmental context to determine the action you are trying to take.

I can tell you "Jumping up at will is silly," until the cows come home, but as long as you're under the impression that jumping up is an important part of movement, you won't believe me. I'd much rather you do your own convincing.

Who cares about the realism factor? I don't think anyone mentioned that.

Being able to jump whenever you want is a nice feature. Is it silly? Yes. Is it fun? Often so.

I can't be the only one who sometimes f$+@s off of the main gameplay to hop around like an idiot and find random stuff to do. Or tries to, when teh games don't try to constrain you too much.

It's not anywhere close to a dealbreaker for me but context sensitive jumping was always my least favorite part of the 3d Zeldas.


MrSin wrote:
Well what I say is the truth and I say your wrong. Why? Because its the truth and I said it.

Is that supposed to be problematic for me? I've already explained to you why your belief is absurd; if you continue to hold it there's really nothing that I can do.

Quote:
But no seriously, so not only is disagreeing with your opinion absurd, its now willfully ignorant?

Yes.

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Why should I bother responding to someone who acts like that.

That's for you to decide.

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Splitting hairs usually means your losing the argument. And I'd infer that losing your job reviewing things would mean some sort of loss.

It would. But then, of course, as your own article explained, he went on to found an incredibly successful gaming website along with all of the other editors from GameStop (which was, apparently, a company full of journalists who refused to have their journalistic integrity compromised). It was a singular, poor decision by GameStop and I doubt it was the norm before and I doubt it's the norm now.

Quote:
Right... Its a problem with everyone else who you don't agree wtih. That's convenient.

No, I'm saying that parsimony points to that being the explanation. The alternative is literally a conspiracy theory.

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Are we talking about SimCity 2013?

Yes. That's why I linked to the Simcity 2013 Metacritic page.

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That was a pretty big flop if I remember correctly.

It's sold more than 2 million copies. It may not have hit EA's brand expectations, but that's a pretty solid sales performance for a video game.


Rynjin wrote:
Who cares about the realism factor? I don't think anyone mentioned that.

No one did, you're right, but I got the impression from Hama's complaints that it was an issue of feeling like you ought to be able to do something that the game didn't let you. I was simply pointing out that jumping isn't really something that people do, and that it really just exists as a kind of holdover from back when games were universally two-dimensional and the ability to jump was one of the few ways the player could move in that second dimension.

Quote:
Being able to jump whenever you want is a nice feature. Is it silly? Yes. Is it fun? Often so.

I actually feel like it adds almost nothing to third-person games that wouldn't be better accomplished by a set of context-sensitive actions.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Scott Betts wrote:
Quote:
But no seriously, so not only is disagreeing with your opinion absurd, its now willfully ignorant?

Yes.

Quote:
Why should I bother responding to someone who acts like that.
That's for you to decide.

Okay. Can you make this your sig for me too?


It adds something to do when you need to walk all the way to <Destination> because your vehicle or mount blew up/died. =p


Rynjin wrote:
It adds something to do when you need to walk all the way to <Destination> because your vehicle or mount blew up/died. =p

That's definitely true. My night elf rogue probably spent days worth of time jump-flipping his way across Azeroth in time to my music because I had nothing better to do while walking.


Scott Betts wrote:
Rynjin wrote:
It adds something to do when you need to walk all the way to <Destination> because your vehicle or mount blew up/died. =p
That's definitely true. My night elf rogue probably spent days worth of time jump-flipping his way across Azeroth in time to my music because I had nothing better to do while walking.

I remember doing the same with my blood elf, except I got to twirl instead of flip. Nostalgia. These are memories.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

It never ceases to amaze me, what people will argue about...


3 people marked this as a favorite.
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I don't see any indications that Thief is being "simplified". I see indications that it is being changed (and, really, it's a little baffling that people are seeing developer quotes like, "We don't want to force you to play through as a traditional thief," and immediately coming to the conclusion that they're curtailing player freedom).

The indications are very clear.

1: You cannot jump at will.
2: You cannot use rope arrows in any wooden surface, only pre-determined 'trigger points'.
3: The first three games de-emphasised combat. The new game emphasises it by allowing multiple ways of killing and taking down enemies, even multiple enemies. There will probably be achievement awards for this. In the preview linked below, the reviewer disables three guards in simultaneous melee combat despite not knowing how to block.
4: The game features dramatic, pre-scripted events that the player cannot avoid, avert or control. QTEs will feature to a degree. One preview level had the journalist escaping from an exploding building by tapping keys in response to on-screen prompts.
5: The game features apparently open levels with multiple paths to the objective. However, these are illusory, as the paths funnel back down to the same areas where unavoidable set-pieces/cut-scenes/QTEs take place.

All of these point to significant 'simplification' of the game compared to the first three titles in the series, and taking away of player agency so the developers can shoehorn more 'exciting' scenes down the player's throat. [/mixed metaphor]

In fact, the comparisons to DISHONORED seem to be off the mark: THIEF 4 seems to feature significantly less freedom and player choice than DISHONORED. At this point the game ending up as free and reactive as DISHONORED would be a good thing.

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On the bugs: New Vegas' were significantly more detrimental to the game than FO3's or Skyrim's were. In FO3 or Skyrim you might get the occasional quest glitch or enemy randomly flying off into orbit. In New Vegas you would get crashes every 5 minutes and fairly frequent save wipes for the first month or so after release.

FALLOUT 3 also had significant numbers of CTDs in the first month of release (and actually quite a few BSoDs, which I never had with NEW VEGAS), it had Games for Windows Live forcibly installed with all its attendant baggage and crashes, and the DLCs crashed a lot as well (or, more randomly, the screen would go completely black but you could still move around).

Of course, both games were fixed and patched up within a few months, but I still get multiple problems with FO3 (when I can actually get it working with Windows 7) and only one recurring issue with NEW VEGAS (sometimes the game will freeze if you load from the main menu, so you have to start a new game and then load from the worldspace, which fortunately only takes about 2 seconds). Yet NEW VEGAS is the only one of the two that was criticised for its bugs on release. This is very curious.

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Games have changed, and Thief is too valuable of a property to be left to a niche.

Why is THIEF a valuable property? Because of its critical acclaim. Why is it critically acclaimed? The gameplay.

Also, THIEF cannot simultaneously be both valuable and a niche. If it's a niche, no-one would give a toss and Eidos wouldn't be interested in remaking it. It is valuable because it's a well-regarded, moderately well-selling series with interesting gameplay. So stripping down the gameplay doesn't make any sense, apart from one reason:

What actually appears to be happening is that Eidos is tapping the name-value of THIEF to create what is effectively a new, action-oriented gaming franchise with blockbuster production values and easy gameplay for a mass audience, whilst throwing a few bones to the hardcore fans. Since this worked with DEUS EX and FALLOUT - using those games' 'legendary' critical acclaim to hook a mass audience into a reboot - they clearly want to do the same with THIEF. The problem is that what they appear to be doing with THIEF is far more excessive than what they did with either DEUS EX or Bethesda did with FALLOUT.

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Go take a look upthread, I told Hama to do outside and size up the world around him, and ask himself how much jumping up is going to be necessary for him to move across the environment. You could do the same. The reality is that jumping all over the place is a pretty weird thing to do and makes games (especially games with any kind of behind-the-head third-person perspective, and first-person games to a lesser degree) seem unrealistic.

I don't need to jump a lot whilst wandering around in real life because I'm not a thief in a medieval fantasy city. OTOH, if I was a parkour free-runner I'd be able to tell you that running is an invaluable part of my skillset. So your raising of this comparison is inane.

THIEF is a game where you have to avoid detection, shimmy up buildings, hide behind walls and fences etc. Being able to jump in such a world at will and on a semi-regular basis is a logical and realistic thing to do. Sure, bunny-hopping on the spot for ten minutes might be unrealistic, but then that's up to the player. If the player wants to do that, why not? They are supposed to be playing the game in the manner they want, after all.

Caveat: a lot of the discussion has focused on early preview builds, some of them from many months ago. The final game may well be far more stealth-oriented and reactive than the previews suggest. But based on the information released so far, things are not looking so good on that front. The final product may well be a solid, enjoyable game if taken purely on its own regards, but it may not match up to the aesthetics or gameplay of the franchise to date, which fans of that franchise have every right to criticise.

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