Thief

[deanb]

Hey look, been a year since last posted in here. Lot's changed.

 

Anywho been playing it last few days. *sucks in breath* Well, someone made a game with very little polish didn't they? Core mechanics work fine and all but for a stealth game the audio is terrible, at the start chatting with Erin it's like you're on a comms channel in Halo not two thieves in a early 20th century-ish city. Guards are all over the place for sounds too, likely to force hand in upgrading to the "see the sound" ability. You peck when stealing things too which is a rather strange animation choice. (not the only odd animation choice either, there's a sort of mini chase at the start and the sort of stalling as you hop over barriers rather than an AC-like flowing through stuff is quite jarring)

 

Story so far is okay, though I'm slightly concerned by the general lack of concern Garret has for the fact he's been missing for a year. Also after playing Dishonored "corrupt city government ran by shadowy figure while town is infected by plague and there's a blind old woman giving a helping hand with levelling up" is certainly not super original at this stage.

 

I'll perceive, but I think this was in the oven too long. Certainly releasing after Dishonored hasn't done it any favours. I guess I kinda like the hidden areas (though be nicer if non-climbable areas were made a bit more obvious)

[staySICK]

oh hey I somehow missed this thread when I was looking for it the other day.

 

Just in case anyone missed it on any of the sites that posted it:

 

[Mr. GOH!]

Just curious: do the PS4 and Xbone versions feel very next-gen, or do they feel like 360/PS3 games with a graphics boost?  I am aware my question is kind of vague, but I'm interested in what folks consider next-gen.

[TheMightyEthan]

It feels to me just like playing the PC version of a gen 7 multiplat, so in that sense I guess it feels like an uprezzed last gen title. Though since it's a cross-gen title that's hardly surprising. I'm more interested to see how something like Arkham Knight feels.

[Mr. GOH!]

That's what I suspected. Just wondering to what extent developers are cross-generation changing games for the new consoles. The fact that cross-gen titles essentially feel like competent, but not spectacular, PC ports doesn't bode well for Watch Dogs.

[TheMightyEthan]

doesn't bode well for Watch Dogs.

How so?

[staySICK]

same situation, being developed for both gens holds it back, I'm guessing.

[TheMightyEthan]

Well right, but I don't see how that's boding poorly.  That just seems like it's expected.  I guess I took "that doesn't bode well" to mean there's some worse implication going on.

[Mr. GOH!]

It  bodes that Watch Dogs will not be very next gen. I was under the impression the basic gamesystems other than graphics required a lot of processing power and RAM. If they just require the meager power and RAM the 360 and PS3 can supply, it doesn't bode well for the game living up to the hype. 

Edited March 12, 2014 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

Ah.  I don't know if I'm just out of touch with it, but I never really got that impression.  Though they have said that the world will feel more alive on PS4/Xbone/PC because they're able to have a lot more NPC's/drivers/etc around at the same time.  The last-gen version is supposedly fairly empty seeming.

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't understand not enjoying Thief, unless it's purely because it's been changed since the originals/doesn't measure up to them.  On it's own it's quite nice.  Nothing amazing, but fun.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, the originals are among my top games ever with Thief 2 being the best stealth game ever made, imho. And I'm still enjoying it a lot. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and some mind-boggingly stupid design decisions were made with it but it's still a solid game. Shit, I'd even say it's a solid Thief game. It's no Human Revolution, that's for sure, but it's certainly worthy of the Thief name. It definitely didn't deserve the shitty reviews it got.

[deanb]

I should note that I've not been able to play the originals (before my time, and then later on my OS was beyond their time. But I was gifted Thief Gold which I believe runs a bit better on modern OSes). So there's no comparisons from myself going on between old and new, I can only judge it on it's own (well, on it's own in the series, obviously it's up against other games in general).

 

It's just got quite a lot of flaws to it, and those built-up during my time with the game to the point where I was like "fuck this".

It's terrible at teaching you mechanics, and when it does teach you mechanics it then tends to ignore them or void them (the whole shadow stuff and using water arrows. Either the level is littered with electric lights with no switches, or the torches just get lit up again, both kinda making it a bit pointless). The animations are god awful. Garret must be part chicken the way his whole torso "pecks" at things. The map is terrible, and has a habit of popping away too often with no way of just making it stay permanently, and the quick launch thing doesn't properly work 80% of the time. Which is super horrible because it doesn't pause the game, it just slows down time a bit. Thankfully I've yet to come to a scenario of needing to actually quick swap my arrows/throwables yet. It's been a few weeks since I played so probably some other specific elements of the game too. It just had a large feeling like no one gave it any love. And given external happenings of the game I've a feeling that largely was the case, calls from on high said "you've spent too long making this game, finish it and get it out the door".

[TheMightyEthan]

The map is terrible, and has a habit of popping away too often with no way of just making it stay permanently,

I don't even understand what you mean by this...

 

and the quick launch thing doesn't properly work 80% of the time.

That must be an issue with the PC version, it worked fine on PS4. But yeah, I can see how that could get super frustrating.

[deanb]

As in the map in general was pretty hard to decipher, but on top of that the mini-map only stuck around for a bit, so you had to keep constantly calling it down.

[toxicitizen]

I should note that I've not been able to play the originals (before my time, and then later on my OS was beyond their time. But I was gifted Thief Gold which I believe runs a bit better on modern OSes). So there's no comparisons from myself going on between old and new, I can only judge it on it's own (well, on it's own in the series, obviously it's up against other games in general).

I don't think the originals suffer from any issues with modern OSes. At least, I didn't experience any when I replayed them last summer. Might've been because I used a few mods and fan-made patches but I doubt it. They're definitely worth a look.

 

It's terrible at teaching you mechanics, and when it does teach you mechanics it then tends to ignore them or void them (the whole shadow stuff and using water arrows. Either the level is littered with electric lights with no switches, or the torches just get lit up again, both kinda making it a bit pointless).

I dunno, I thought guards noticing torches that are out and lighting them up again made sense and was a logical bit of added challenge. That wasn't a thing in the originals but I would hardly say it makes the water arrows pointless. You're not really meant to take 'em out and hang around forever so I'm not sure how that could've been that much of an issue. And if you don't like them doing that you can always just conk 'em on the head and make the issue go away entirely.

 

Same could be said for the electric lights. If you could just shoot water on every single light source then where would the challenge be? Besides, if the obvious way is too bright and you can't do anything about it, then there's most likely an alternative path somewhere.

 

The animations are god awful. Garret must be part chicken the way his whole torso "pecks" at things.

I don't know about god awful but the way there's this little looting animation that plays for every single goddamned thing you steal got old pretty fast. Having the things just disappear out of thin air like in the originals might've looked weird I guess but I dunno, there has to be a better way to do it than this.

 

the quick launch thing doesn't properly work 80% of the time. Which is super horrible because it doesn't pause the game, it just slows down time a bit. Thankfully I've yet to come to a scenario of needing to actually quick swap my arrows/throwables yet.

The what? I feel like I'm missing something here...

Edited March 28, 2014 by FLD

[deanb]

Well it was a couple years ago, but there's definitely issues in trying to get at least one of them running or yeah I'd have at least one of the old Thief's under my belt. Probably the first one. Deadly Shadows? As I said, been gifted Thief Gold, which I imagine/hope comes with a bunch of compatibility patches included (and it's through Steam, not that it's saying much) so should run.

 

It's not just guards, it's pretty much anyone around will relight stuff, kind of annoying to find a few seconds later you've just wasted an arrow, so tend to give up on any thiefy sneaking and just run through areas(mainly in the town). Which to me feels a bit against the point of how I reckon they'd aim for you to play the game. As for the electric light, it feels it might make sense if introduced in later part of the game to combat torches being put out, but they pop up almost immediately after you're taught to put out light sources to sneak around. It's like "here's the mechanic, now we're going to make it mostly obsolete". Somewhat broken game progression system. If there are alternate paths then they're not highlighted too well, most alternate paths I come across don't tend to have any major changes just...well an alternate path. Not sure how to explain well. It's "six and two threes". They're alternate paths that do the same job....okay to compare with Deus Ex you've the path through the gas, the path through the vent, the path through the weak wall. actually different paths rather than 3 corridors with a robot roaming down each.

 

Oh yeah talking of alt paths, another issue is most of the fucking struts for your rope arrow just lead into a single empty room, no extra path or secret loot or nothing. Who came up with that idea? Especially since the arrows ain't free. It's one of the complete opposite of one of my fave aspects of Deus Ex with "Explorer 100". You get rewarded for exploring, looking for different ways. But with Thief it's all "Oh you thought you'd found an alt route? Well you haven't so fuck you. You've wasted an arrow and got nothing for it. Hope that makes you feel like continuing and attempting to explore with rope arrows in later levels."

 

Just a hand grab animation would do for stealing stuff. It's one of the main animations of the game when you're thieving stuff in Thief. You'd think someone would have piped up on refining their main animation regardless of others. As I said, it just feels like the game didn't get much love. No one on the team felt strongly enough about the game to give it a mirror polish. 

 

The quick swap/weapon wheel/I dunno. The big circle accessed through d-pad(it's how I was playing it so I could cycle at same time). Doesn't actually change your weapon most times, takes a few tries until your choice sticks. Strikes me as a bug more than anything.

[TheMightyEthan]

If you're talking about rope arrows in the overworld leading to single empty rooms, those will have sidequests that become available later in the game. And your rope arrows will stay there, so they're not wasted.

[deanb]

They should maybe make that a bit clearer.

[toxicitizen]

I don't think I've ever stumbled into a completely empty room. There's always been at least one or two things to grab. And for the weapon wheel, I'm playing with mouse and keyboard so that must be a controller-only thing because the game never mentioned it, it just told me which numbers to press during the tutorial.

 

As for the alternate paths, well, this isn't Deus Ex. Thief has always been about exploration but in a more environmental awareness sense. You're not necessarily going to get some explicit reward for finding the alternate path, it's just going to provide you with a stealthier way in that won't cost you as many resources. And resource management is kind of a big part of Thief.

 

In the old games, the motivation to get as much loot as possible was you'd need it to restock your inventory at the start of the next mission. It really emphasized that Garret lives from job-to-job. Thief 1 and 2 didn't have city hubs for you to roam around and stock up on cash or gear. One thing I hate about the context-sensitive/permanent rope arrows is it prevents one of the most fun thing of the old games: shooting your rope arrows strategically so that you can climb up and be able to recover them.

Edited March 29, 2014 by FLD

[deanb]

A lot of the rope arrow-only rooms are pretty empty. In fact if it leads into a room it's pretty much sure to be empty, the only times it tends to go to an alternate route/hidden area(such as the game tells you it should) is if it's an outcrop over the street or something.

 

As I said, the alternate paths tend to be much of a muchness(where they exist). In the city hubs there's definitely a bit of encouragement to explore with rooms with loot and such in, but it's hugely diminished by the terrible map meaning many times you end up going back on yourself or ending up in a completely wrong part of town where you're meant to be heading. I remember the side mission to collect the mechanical hand and it's meant to be just around the corner but there's a whole building where there's meant to be a passage according to the map. I ended up in some weird spots for that one (I assume weird spots, the invisible wall told me I shouldn't have been able to climb that particular rooftop). I can't even remember how I ended up there in the end.

And I understand the whole limited resource stuff, hence the frustration with the water arrows. Oh and frustration with the blunt arrows, have a full stock of them only needed to fire three so far that actually did anything(and about 10 or so that did nothing). I don't even understand the rest of the arrows, full stock of fire arrows, nothing to set on fire (except braziers I guess but I want them the opposite of lit).

 

edit: Oh and to add it seems I have some Digital Deluxe edition, so until you posted about the Bank Heist being DLC I hadn't clicked. Explains why I don't remember getting given the mission for it and why it seemed to have a really weird difficulty curve. So I might have some parts of the game that's not in the normal game.

 

edit 2: Oh yeah talking of the bank job, what does the wire cutters do? I came across a box early on and I couldn't do stuff then I bought the wire cutters next chance and I've cut a few wires (which was jsut a rope on a weight or something) and I've no idea what it's doing. No feedback or anything of like "hey now a safe is open somewhere or a door is open or a room full of gas has cleared" or something. Lights still remain so it's not cutting the lights.

[TheMightyEthan]

Usually there's a trap the wire cutters are disabling.  If you use your thief vision you should see red pressure plates and wires that lead to the switch box, and when you cut it the wire it disables the pressure plates.

 

Fire arrows can be used to set enemies/oil slicks on fire.

[toxicitizen]

Like Ethan said, it's for disabling traps. Did you not read the description when you bought it? And yeah, fire arrows are more of an offensive kind of item, not meant for stealth. Never really used them here or in the originals.

 

I really miss the moss arrows, now that I think about it. I haven't bothered buying the moss quiver because it's for broadheads and such and I'm going non-lethal but moss arrows were really cool. Definitely up there with rope and water arrows as the most useful ones.

 

One complaint that I'm starting to have is the thieving challenges. They are retarded. Remain undetected, sure. 6 knockouts or kills, uh... okay? 5 combat takedowns? Go fuck yourself, game. I'm not breaking stealth for your stupid bullshit. Then there was a client job where there was one about using an environmental thing. But it drops this huge fucking crate which makes a bunch of noise and automatically invalidates remain undetected. So you can't get them all? What's the point then? it's not like they pay all that much individually.

[deanb]

As in there's zilch feedback it's disabling traps(or doing anything). I'd assume it's doing something, but there's no indication of what it's doing/affecting. Which given the rope arrows that go to empty rooms wouldn't surprise me if it is just a red herring.

Also the pressure plates are stopped by hidden buttons nearby usually, no wires running from them though (which'd be handy).

[toxicitizen]

What are you going on about? There is a wire going from them, you need to use focus vision to see them. What kind of feedback do you expect? Some loud noise or something? It's a trap and you disabled it, that's it. Normally you'd be aware it was there before you randomly opened up some box on the wall to cut things up in it. Once you've disabled the trap, focus vision no longer highlights it. A red herring? Man, you draw some weird conclusions sometimes...

 

And you keep bringing up these empty rooms but in all my exploring (and I've done a lot) I've yet to encounter a single one. So either you have the absolute worst luck in randomly walking into only quest-related rooms or you're just not looking very hard. There's always been at least one or two things to pick up for me. Usually more.

Edited March 29, 2014 by FLD