Not really about the game, but it's tangentially related...
Kickstarter page for Project: Dark.
It's a tabletop RPG designed to play like the Thief games. I got to play it about a month ago and in regards to how a game handles stealth, it blew my mind with how well it did it. I love the stealth video games and have always lamented that very little in RPG's could even come close to replicating that feeling.
About the actual Thief game, I like that they added 'modern' visual elements to the game (HUD, highlightable environment) but that you can turn all of that off to make the game more like the originals. I think it's a great way to both broaden the appeal, while also staying true to it's own concept. Hopefully the game play holds up.
1. Loved Dishonored for its obvious Thief-inspired influences
2. Watched initial new Thief demos/interviews with mixed feelings until I learned that the XP system was tossed, "Focus" can be turned off, and you can complete the game without killing anyone.
3. Pre-ordered when I discovered it was releasing in Feb and will run on 360 & PS3.
4. Have taken the day after release off from work in anticipation of playing Thief all night on the day it's released!
I loved the originals. I'm willing to give this one a shot. Yes, it's going to be different. That doesn't mean it won't be good or a worthy addition to the series.
Just letting anyone who is interested know here.
Yep -coming out February 25th. There's was an extensive critique thread going for awhile.
It looks like there have been changes since then, and watching the both the Thief 101 and a full walkthrough, I am curious about the new game.
Been a fan of all three games and the mythology that has been developed as we followed Garrett against Hammerites, Pagans, and the Keepers. (Anyone else find it interesting that in D&D terms, he's dealt with Chaotic(Pagans); Lawful(Hammers); and Neutral(Keepers) factions.) I am little bummed that it doesn't look like any of these groups will be back (although the hint is that zombies may be back.) Also - I liked that the aesthetic was more Medieval and less Steampunk than in the new version. Still - it looks like they are keeping with some of the backstory for this game (Garrett's apprentice; Mechanical Eye) as opposed to a "clean" reboot. Well - also a little bummed that Stephen Russell won't be voicing Garrett.
That being said, my biggest criticism is that it looks too much like Dishonored with less magic. The guys at Arkane Studios seem to have raised the bar with their homage to Thief, and it just seems like the original is catching up. I'm not just talking about gameplay (there's parts of that) - just the whole story setup with the elements of a plague (with the included rats) is destroying the city; a power-mad "Baron/Regent" in control; a brewing revolution; the usage of Victorian/Steampunkish elements; and similar NPC types. It just makes it seem derivative. Granted - how they go about presenting these elements outside the setup could change my feeling about the game's style.
One good step I see is that they have created the ability to modify the game to change the UI and difficulty settings. This allows you to make the game run more like "classic" Thief games of the past, if you prefer. So - not overly excited, but interested.
Having just watched the walkthrough, and speaking as an Englishwoman, I have to say I find the 'English' accents awful. Laughably so. Enough that I don't know if I could tune them out enough to actually play the game. This could bomb horribly in the UK
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Having just watched the walkthrough, and speaking as an Englishwoman, I have to say I find the 'English' accents awful. Laughably so. Enough that I don't know if I could tune them out enough to actually play the game. This could bomb horribly in the UK
Now you know how we eastern Europeans feel whenever we are portrayed in movies and video games.
My English is so good, for instance, that American tourists often mistake me for a guy either from Seattle or Chicago. Sometimes NY too. Most of my friends speak it at least as well as I.
Having just watched the walkthrough, and speaking as an Englishwoman, I have to say I find the 'English' accents awful. Laughably so. Enough that I don't know if I could tune them out enough to actually play the game. This could bomb horribly in the UKNow you know how we eastern Europeans feel whenever we are portrayed in movies and video games.
My English is so good, for instance, that American tourists often mistake me for a guy either from Seattle or Chicago. Sometimes NY too. Most of my friends speak it at least as well as I.
My sincerest apologies to you on behalf of the movie makers and video game makers.
Having just watched the walkthrough, and speaking as an Englishwoman, I have to say I find the 'English' accents awful. Laughably so. Enough that I don't know if I could tune them out enough to actually play the game. This could bomb horribly in the UKNow you know how we eastern Europeans feel whenever we are portrayed in movies and video games.
My English is so good, for instance, that American tourists often mistake me for a guy either from Seattle or Chicago. Sometimes NY too. Most of my friends speak it at least as well as I.
So. with regards the video games, do you play them any way and tune out the accents, (does it work), or do you avoid them?
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Of course. I don't let accents ruin my fun. Althought the "Serbian" they used in GTA IV was completely unintelligible. It's like they got the first guy that passed by the sound recording booth and hat them read the words.
Plus, Roman and Nico aren't really Serbian names. Bah, never mind.
Also, don't get me started on the Russian.
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Not really about the game, but it's tangentially related...
Kickstarter page for Project: Dark.
It's a tabletop RPG designed to play like the Thief games. I got to play it about a month ago and in regards to how a game handles stealth, it blew my mind with how well it did it. I love the stealth video games and have always lamented that very little in RPG's could even come close to replicating that feeling.
About the actual Thief game, I like that they added 'modern' visual elements to the game (HUD, highlightable environment) but that you can turn all of that off to make the game more like the originals. I think it's a great way to both broaden the appeal, while also staying true to it's own concept. Hopefully the game play holds up.
There goes another $25. Thank you for helping me empty my bank account, Irontruth.
Pretty lousy.
Surprisingly positive from RPS (who are usually harsher than most other sites):
Yikes Thief is taking an absolute beating. Looks ill wait until this game is 20 bucks.
I'm not sure what your personal definition of "absolute beating" is, but it's receiving about equal parts moderate and positive reviews, with a Metacritic aggregate of 70. There's only one negative review on each platform.
Totalbiscuit seems it's good, plus I heard praise about it from friend who is really hard on stealth games done wrong. Because he loves stealth games. If he says that something's good, it's good.
Now all I have to do is wait for this 23 gigs of game to download.
It's interesting to see install size for games rise so sharply. Titanfall apparently clocks in at nearly 50gb installed, and it sounds like Thief is probably similar.
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Yikes Thief is taking an absolute beating. Looks ill wait until this game is 20 bucks.I'm not sure what your personal definition of "absolute beating" is, but it's receiving about equal parts moderate and positive reviews, with a Metacritic aggregate of 70. There's only one negative review on each platform.
I guess I haven't read every review but the 5 I did pretty much said wait till bargain price. I am back in school right now so I don't have the time anyways. I still think it could be good i'm not poo pooing it yet personally just the reviews got me not to pick this up immediately. I tend to shop that way anyways especially hearing about how you can finish this off in 12-20 hours.
I picked up my copy today, Stereofm. I'll let you know my thoughts too once I get home.
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And the QTEs ? Are they as annoying as initially described ?
There are no QTEs in Thief. They were removed because people complained about them.
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Mashing e to open a window is not a QTE. You can stop at any time and withdraw.
@Scott the game clocks in around 23.5 gigs. So less then half of what Titanfall does. And that mostly goes to high resolution textures. Yes, large textures are heavy.
It was the same several years ago (i think almost 10) when games suddenly jumped from being 700MB to 1.9GB to 7-8GB almost overnight. Technology advancing.
You can play this game like the original thief. You turn off all of the helpers except the light gem, which is a staple of the game, and use custom difficulty and turn everything on. Voila.
I am enjoying myself immensely. The game is fun, engaging and when there are three or four guards around you it gets really tense.
Some minor complaints:
- Some textures look low res. Maybe they will fix that in a patch
- Sound goes bonkers during cutscenes
- Why oh WHY do you just HAVE to steal everything not nailed down? I mean really, cutlery...scissors...inkpots...what. Seems more like petty thievery to me. Not something worthy of a master thief. Although, a girl's gotta eat.
Anyway, I'd give it a 9/10.
Also, the first time I agree with the metascore more then with the user score on metacritic (which is useless anyway)
Also for kotaku? They played it on a console, thus their opinion is worthless.
@Scott the game clocks in around 23.5 gigs. So less then half of what Titanfall does.
Ah, I thought you meant that the download was 24gb, which is the same as Titanfall's download size.
It was the same several years ago (i think almost 10) when games suddenly jumped from being 700MB to 1.9GB to 7-8GB almost overnight. Technology advancing
Try almost 16 years ago ;) HALF-LIFE was 400 MB in 1998. SiN I think was twice that, oddly. The same year BALDUR'S GATE pushed that up to 1.5 GB for a full install (at a point when a lot of people only had 3-4GB hard drives). STARCRAFT, published earlier that year, was only 90 MB. So that was a crazy period of game sizes being all over the place and then shooting up.
Surprisingly positive from RPS (who are usually harsher than most other sites):
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought - he has some caveats, but on the whole...
Well, I played it on my PS4 last night, and I quite enjoyed it. I've found multiple approaches to the same area, which is also pretty cool. The jewelry store that featured on the Youtube play through has at least three entrances for example.
Frankly I rarely use the focus ability. It's tough, which is good, but still fair. I've tried to avoid fighting, to the point of letting the guards kill me if they see me enough to attack me, so I can restart at the checkpoint. An interesting little mechanism for the PS4 is that the light on the front of the controller changes color and intensity based on the amount of light Garrett is in. Anyway, no QTEs as Mr. Betts pointed out.
I'd recommend it. Pretty solid game.
Where are you getting this? Starcraft was at least 400 megs if not more. I remember it being around 600.
My install size for the game. I've had SC1 permanently installed on every PC I've had since May 1998.
90MB for the original game alone, 135MB when BROOD WAR is added (though about 23MB of that is maps). Without the maps, you can fit the whole thing on a 128MB USB stick.
No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.
I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
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Yes. I want to watch a cutscene, not wait, tense for a prompt to appear, and if I press the wrong button or miss the timing, s**t happens and I have to do the entire cutscene again. I'd rather watch a cutscene where a character does badass stuff by himself.
This vexed me greatly in Tomb Raider, especially the fact that instead of writing which button to press they put some sort of idiotic icons. Damn consoles and their lack of buttons.
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No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
Yes.
I have found that I don't like games with QTEs, and that however the rest of the game may be good or not, QTEs ruin the enjoyment of the game for me after a short while.Past examples that were ruined for me : Dead Space 2 and 3, Tomb raider.
So now QTEs = no buy.
No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
You don't understand that sometimes people have different preferences from you?
No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
Yes.
You don't understand that sometimes people have different preferences from you?No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
No, I get that, Irontruth. I'm just struck by how odd it is that this is the one area of game design where certain gamers tend to be in favor of less interactivity. In almost all other aspects of game design, gamers tend to love high levels of interactivity. But there's something about the idea of QTEs that makes gamers wish they could interact less with the game.
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Because they are, most of the time, clunky, unwieldy and rely on reflexes, usually without any prompting, where most of us just want to enjoy the beautifully rendered custcene, and usually take our hand of the keyboard/mouse.
Also the problem of defeating bosses through QTEs is insanely annoying. It's not skill. It's a fat kid pressing a few buttons and thinking it's a gamer.
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Yeah mostly, you get a prompt at a very counterintuitive moment, that usually makes no sense at all, and by the time it is displayed on screen, it is too late, you die horribly, and have to reload the game, waste ten minutes, and learn the sequence by rote in order to hope winning.
And then, that's the good part, usually, they are bug-ridden too.
No, thanks. Give me back my cutscenes.
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While I have encountered a few qtes that were well enough executed that they carried some suspense through the 'interactive' cutscene, most of the, in my opinion, don't. And most of the time I prefer a cutszene to the low base of interactivity a qte represents (push the righ button at the time we tell you or the game doesn't continue).
I still remember Dragon's Lair and Space Ace and I also remember that, even then they weren't considered good games (they looked great and you sure wanted to know how the cartoons ended) by most who played them that I knew, because of the lack of meaningful interaction. qtes are basically the same.
In other words, I find qtes annoying for most parts, because they don't offer 'high levels of interactivity', compared to most other modes of play. While they sure offer more 'interactiviy' then a cinematic, they may well force you to repeat the same not very interactive part of the game over and over again if you miss the right buttom at the right moment before moving on to (hopefully) more interactive parts of the game - cinematics usually don't do that.
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Dunno, I'd pay for that.
You can pretty much turn of EVERYTHING, and increase difficulty to insane levels. I mean, get noticed, restart level (because you disabled the quicksave and autosave options), fall too far and get hurt? Game over.
I love it.
Although, I must confess that the first playthrough will be on normal difficulty so that I can enjoy the story. I've disabled most of the prompts as they are annoying, but after I do, I'll go full ghost. And 100% loot.
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No, I get that, Irontruth. I'm just struck by how odd it is that this is the one area of game design where certain gamers tend to be in favor of less interactivity. In almost all other aspects of game design, gamers tend to love high levels of interactivity. But there's something about the idea of QTEs that makes gamers wish they could interact less with the game.You don't understand that sometimes people have different preferences from you?No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
I find QTE's annoying. When I'm annoyed, it lowers my enjoyment of a game. Simple enough for you?
I find QTE's annoying. When I'm annoyed, it lowers my enjoyment of a game. Simple enough for you?No, I get that, Irontruth. I'm just struck by how odd it is that this is the one area of game design where certain gamers tend to be in favor of less interactivity. In almost all other aspects of game design, gamers tend to love high levels of interactivity. But there's something about the idea of QTEs that makes gamers wish they could interact less with the game.You don't understand that sometimes people have different preferences from you?No QTE = Good. I will probably nuy it after all.I really don't understand this. Literally the only practical effect that removing QTEs had on the game was making cutscenes that were previously interactive non-interactive.
That's a good thing?
That's very helpful, Irontruth.
I was looking for an explanation that is just a little deeper than that, though. Perhaps some reasons for why QTEs annoy you? Or what aspects of certain QTEs were annoying? Others in this thread were able to explain their issues with QTEs just fine.
Yeah mostly, you get a prompt at a very counterintuitive moment, that usually makes no sense at all, and by the time it is displayed on screen, it is too late, you die horribly, and have to reload the game, waste ten minutes, and learn the sequence by rote in order to hope winning.
And then, that's the good part, usually, they are bug-ridden too.
No, thanks. Give me back my cutscenes.
It sounds like your complaint, then, isn't necessarily with the idea of QTEs (which really just boil down to interactive cinematic sequences) but rather with the poor implementation of QTEs we see in many titles. Are there any examples of games you've played that contained QTE-like sequences that you enjoyed?
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Another issue with QTEs is that since they normally occur during points that would otherwise be handled by a cutscene, often times there is dialogue or other features of interest happening while you are playing them out. Having something that pulls attention away from that can easily have you miss things or puts the story elements to a sideline.
QTEs kind of mix the things that people dislike about cutscenes with the things they don't like about button mashing. Its hard to call most QTEs actual interactivity, its generally trying to follow a pattern or a rhythm rather which is better at taking me out of the game than bringing me in. A good interactive mechanic makes you feel like you are in the characters shoes, lockpicking mechanics tend to do a good job of this in games where rotating the sticks feels like you are lining up the picks. Hitting X a bunch to open a window, or tapping buttons in a pattern to do a stealth kill just feels like busy work instead of either having a real mechanic to let you play out the scene or simply enjoy the story they are presenting in the moment.