Comments on: The Making Of Thief: Deadly Shadows

By: i dont give two shits

i dont give two shits — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:40:02 +0000

i dont care what some of you guys think about it thief 3, the point is i dont give two shits about the graphics or the short story line, to me thief 3 is a sweet game its all about the experience and for me, it was sweet :P

By: Rock, Paper, Shotgun » Blog Archive » Dungeon of Regret

Rock, Paper, Shotgun » Blog Archive » Dungeon of Regret — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:48:12 +0000

[...] Kieron’s splendid Thief 3 retrospective attracted a whole bunch of comments discussing how both it and Deus Ex spawned sequels that didn’t tickle their respective fanbases in all the right places, and thus caused the apparent end of their respective lineages. [...]

By: Robert Yang

Robert Yang — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:50:56 +0000

Regarding Ion Storm being too “academic”… I know the feeling. I’m looking into my university’s “New Media” program and it’s all this silly academic jargon about redefining the act of play and whatnot. Do they ever put all this theory into practice? Do they actually go out to design games? Most of them don’t, and it’s really frustrating when I’m trying to discuss the gameplay systems at work and they keep going back to a cultural context that often has little relevance to anything.

By: Ben Hazell

Ben Hazell — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:19:43 +0000

Still, it was quite an experience to have to clean out a whole town, then have to sneak quietly into the one room where I wasn’t allowed a weapon.
Lets have a post where we can mutter about Stalker in the comments rather than hiding in the Thief zone…

By: John P (Katsumoto)

John P (Katsumoto) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:49:07 +0000

Hmm! That reminds me of the time I was hanging around near the bar, and suddenly bullets started flying – i thought there had been an invasion by the mutants/another faction and was really excited! It was only after about 15 minutes that I noticed all the bullets were aimed at me. I’m not sure what to make of that

By: Alec Meer

Alec Meer — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:25:45 +0000

Yes. But only barely, and by having to murder pretty much everyone else in the game so I could get to him. Most annoyingly, I hadn’t actually annoyed Duty – a (pre-patch) bug just caused them to decide I had.
I may post about it at some point actually, as it made Stalker a very different experience than the one I was supposed to have.

By: Ben Hazell

Ben Hazell — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:01:09 +0000

Stalkers AI was very alive – I never saw enemies fail to react to firing. If anything, I saw a single noise stir whole camps full of troops out into the open to hunt for you. Only the odd respawns felt clunky to me – the Duty checkpoint from the garbage where a full squad always reappeared.
If only Stalker had really let you work with the factions rather than just odd jobbing. You could break the atmosphere through legitimate roleplaying choices. Did anyone else manage to get to the Barkeep after annoying Duty?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:49:38 +0000

Same as Jim re: STALKER’s AI. And I definitely saw AI-ecology going on. It wasn’t just a warzone, and it wasn’t scripted stuff. It could mess up the scripting, in fact.

I also greatly enjoyed Thief 3, warts and all. Thief 2 is probably my favourite of the series, and it was the one I played last of all. I somehow skipped it originally, getting Thief 1 way back when then going straight to Deadly Shadows. All three are great games, though.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 11:11:06 +0000

>> The STALKER AI was just totally garbage…

Funny, I experienced none of the bugs Eric mentions here. I did experience bugs, but they were almost all with the scripting.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:53:56 +0000

Grr. Blockquote not working then…

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:53:35 +0000

I disagree – I thought Deus Ex 2 was garbage at the time. Writing, story, world design, quests, mechanics… just crap, and crap with some very bizarre mistakes – right from the opening scenes, where you’re supposedly making judgement calls on people and organisations you’ve never even heard of, right up to the ending.

I replayed it a while ago after needing some shots from the original, and it’s still horrible. It failed miserably at what Deus Ex had made a decent stab at, and was a rubbish shooter/RPG in its own right as well. The handful of genuinely fun bits in it (NG Resonance, um.. er… aaah…) were drowned by some of the most insipid cyberpunk crap it’s ever been my misfortune to play.

Without the license and the names attached, it’d have been down in the 50-60% bargain bucket for obscure Russian imports and clones that just didn’t get why their original worked. At best.

i uninstalled it, and read a walkthrough online to find out if the story EVER tied back into the Dentons or the events of DX1 (and when it does, **SPOILER ALERT** you kill the Dentons! WTF?!)

Well, on a couple of paths you do. You don’t have to.

By: James

James — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 07:38:36 +0000

> Deus Ex 2 was the worst game ever created. Period.

I think it was an accomplished game in its own right. I can’t think of anything super-wrong with it off the top of my head. If you’re comparing it to its predecessor, then sure, but the commercial sequel very rarely lives up to expectation. There was still a very good game there.