By John Walker on May 12th, 2009 at 1:53 am.
After the announcement of Eidos’s Thief 4/Thi4f sparked some controversy over the replacing of letters with numbers in game titles, and after some suggested that perhaps E may not equal 4, we decided to delve a little deeper to see what other titles Eidos might have coming up. Read on for this world-breaking, possibly slightly untrue news.
Battlestations: Pacific may not have been released yet, but that doesn’t stop us from revealing this world exclusive lie about its unplanned sequel.
A tenth Tomb Raider may not have been announced, but we know it’s coming, even in Square Enix’s hands.
And finally, while Deus Ex 3′s logo has previously been shown, we can exclusively reveal that it will definitely soon be updated.
WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN
report
So much l33t, it makes me feel like I’m 15 again. Who wants to watch Hackers?
report
I want to play a game called TOMB ROIDER.
RAWR.
report
Good show.
report
Wow, if Eidos’ controversial THI4F logo was intended to get the internet buzzing, it certainly succeeded. Two posts on RPS, and they haven’t released a single detail about the game!
report
74472 20 47732083 1 2477 3739 5340 17!
report
DEU3 EX… lawlz
report
Heh, love it! All of those dumb marketing moves should be called out like this.
report
Thats quite some photoshopping gents.
report
Classic. I knew you guys would deliver on this one.
report
So I’m the only one who doesn’t find all the Thi4f jokes funny or even cared about the “THI4F” logo in the first place?
report
Liking the comedy, along with Alec’s declaration that we should only trust RPS. Keep it up.
report
The DEU3 EX one looks pretty plausible.
report
Battlestations Patooific.
report
I can’t wait for 44444!
report
It’ll be hard to top 44443.
report
Oh god I giggled like a little girl.
report
Not enough game use the absolute value brackets in their titles.
report
@Alex: You mean the pipe?
And regarding the post itself: excellent.
report
Next up, a preview of /-*|H@lf-Lyf4 3|*-\: 1337 4dition!!!1one
report
I have very limited tools at my disposal and am rather tired, but what the hell. Horribly crude mangle-o-tron done in paint, of all things:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3605/3524346392_56473edca4.jpg
report
The sequel we’ve all been waiting for
(may or may not make any sense)
report
@Muzman: I hope the Boston Post means “defuse”, either that orthe convicts are going to spread the bomb around until it’s less concentrated? ;)
report
Heh, Yes that’s it. Also I was too slack to find a Guardian banner
(fixed. less haste more speed, mother would say. or is it the other way around)
report
Deux Ex? That’s not a game.
I like Tomb Roider
report
yeah, Tomb Emo Roider, a new hip look at the battered old hag that just refuses to sit down and went all dark eye liner on us, they might even pull a Spid3rm3n
report
I’d love Tomb R101der. Assuming it’s a reference to 1984?
report
I was dyslexic enough not to notice the number in the logo until today.
And I was silly enough to attempt to pronounce it.
report
comments spawn article. interesting
report
My favorite so far:
Left4Garrett
http://ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1853701#post1853701
report
1 = l
2 = z
3 = e
4 = a
5 = s
6 = b
7 = t
8 = B
9 = g
Yes, in your unlimited superiority over 15-year-old “h4xorz” you might believe l33t is about replacing random letters with random numbers. Well let me tell you something: it ain’t
report
Holy cow, Left4Garrett has made me snarf my evening beer right out my nose.
report
How to pronounce it? Thiaf? Thourf?
report
Now that I think of it, how does one pronounce Eidos? Perhaps the name of their own company is indicative of their challenged approach to English. I had never considered this before today.
Sorry Ee-Yii-Doss (?), I’ll never be able to look at you the same way again.
report
I hope Tomb Roider contains a rage mechanic and tigers. Rargh!
report
OMG! I laughed so hard! Thank you, John, you made my day!
report
DEU3 EX, where the hands of stupid approach genius o’clock.
report
Next to the Sh*t trailer of Dragon Age, Thi4f is acceptable.
report
“Tomb Rioider” just sound like the Devonshire version of a famous video game.
report
Wulf: I think it’s pronounced Eye-dos. (Not sure where I heard it, so maybe I’m completely wrong).
report
Thifourf has the worst logo since Sesevenen
report
What about ThIVf? That’s, you know, uh…
report
Mafiia?
report
Yes, yes you are.
I, for one, am intensely outraged by this unprecedented alpha-numerical bait-and-switch. The game has been ruined for me forever.
report
@ Real Horrorshow: Yes, it’s just you. We all lead empty lives.
report
Just be glad it wasn’t T.H.I.4.F. Alternatively, marketers might eventually decide to make efficient use for all those little dots as binary for an easy-to-use sequel ticker, with a dot for zero and a dash for one:
T.H.I.E-F
T.H.I-E.F
T.H.I-E-F
T.H-I.E.F
Video game marketers are the true pioneers of our time.
report
Thorf?
report
Maybe Eidos will buy some assets from 3D Realms:
“It’s time to blackjack taffers and chew bubblegum. And I’m all out of gum”.
(Cue picture of a knucklehead in a black cloak smoking a cigar.)
P.
report
THIEIVES.
report
@AndrewC: So they’re going to announce a new multiplayer mode because “its what the fans were asking for” and release the teaser trailer to Marilyn Manson’s Fight Song?
report
DEUS 3X works fairly well…
report
Maybe they should call it Heift.
report
1 4ppr0v3
report
I don’t give a shite what it’s called, I’m just glad it exists.
report
Will this continu4 until w4 know all th4 d4v4lop4rs, th4n pr4s4nt a list of th4ir nam4s with l4tt4rs r4plac4d appropriat4ly? Th4y should also do that in the cr4dits.
report
I can tell by some of the pixels.
etcetera.
report
This looks shopped I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.
report
@Required: Perhaps you missed the joke? Take a close look at the Thief 4 logo, and you’ll see why Walker is substituting random letters for random numbers, rather than following conventional “l33t spelling”
report
Max Payn3, STALK3R, Call 6f Duty, 2pore, Residen7 Evil… Not difficult is it?
This is a trend that concerns me greatly.
I really thought 2 Fast, 2 Furious was a bit of marketing genius in as much as I didn’t, at all, and actually believed it signalled that we had finally reached a level of dribbling inanity in the entertainment industry from which there would be no return; this opinion was of course cemented in place by the release of Get Rich or Die Trying which I thought was a Scary Movie style spoof on hip hop culture like CB4 but was actually a serious film – who knew…
My point – after all that digression – is that franchises and stupid naming conventions are the sort of things that appeal to the same sorry retards that like stuff like 2Fast2Furious and I wish the mainstream guys would fuck off with this continuing dumbing down of entertainment or at least restrict it to churning out movies full of stereotypes and stop cross contaminating the gaming market.
report
Left 4 Dead did NOT make these silly names OK again. L4D was also silly but it made some sense. Thi4f does not, it’s just dumb.
report
Left 4 Dead was a homophonic replacement, those are sort of ok in my book, it also has a fairly good double meaning that they turned into a triple meaning by using puntastic box art. Win.
Driv3r was dumb but a valid l33t replacement of 3 for e and so also sort of ok from a suitably liberal language perspective but awful from a marketing perspective because there’s nothing less cool than an uncool person trying to look cool. Fail.
Thief is 4 for e and now we’re into a dark unexplored region of trying and failing to look cool while violating the rules of l33t, breaking the minimal rule set required for intelligibility. Epic fail! Thank goodness it’s only a working title.
report
Tomb Roider : A fighting game set in an old tomb. Power up your roid meter to perform special R01D M0V3S that devastate your n00b opponents!
Sorry, if that was shit, couldn’t resist it.
report
They sure didn’t try very hard. Why not Thie4 with a backward 4?
report
Who cares. Really. It is difficult for me to imagine the level to which a human being had to sink before they felt offended by something of this nature.
report
Actually I’m finding it difficult to imagine the level to which a human being had to sink before they didn’t feel offended by something of this nature.
It smacks of shoe-horning in a number because “games with numbers in the middle of a word sell better according to market statistics!”.
The sort of person who came up with this would probably use the word “product” instead of “game”.
report
@Alaric: Offended? Who’s offended? I just think it’s funny that they misspelled their product’s name during the big unveiling.
report
I’m not sure which I found more amusing, the people who didn’t get it, the humourless people moaning about it being posted or the post itself. Winner!
report
@DMJ
“Thief 4ranchise.”
report
More offensive than Driv3r was their NOT using DrIVer for the fourth game.
report
Let’s put the blame squarely where it belongs, and that’s on David Fincher’s brilliant motion picture “Seven.” Or, as IMDB and half the world likes to call it, “SE7EN,” which doesn’t make any god-damned 7ense at all.
We REALLY should’ve put the hammer down on this garbage with that steaming pile of a movie “Independence Day,” aka “ID4.” Huh? ID4? Way to confuse A) Americans who are questioning where ID1-3 are and B) the rest of the world who don’t care about the significance of the number four. Really, really a desperate, awful naming convention that should’ve been buried alongside a million E.T. carts just outside of Albuquerque.
Now is the time to channel Howard Marion-Crawford and his single, bile-filled and oft-repeated, word of condemnation from Lawrence of Arabia.
OUTRAGEOUS! OUTRAGEOUS!
Stop the madness. It’s not 1337. It’s not cool, not in the slightest.
report
ROFL!!! Bravo to writer.
report
Tomb R-lol-der?
DrIVer is a beaut. And of course unmber 5 could be DriVer, or drVr in this day and age
report
DriVer’s pretty drivey.
But Driver 6 is DriVIer…
Shameless. I know.
report
@MeestaNob!: I’ll shake your hand for that. Before I bludgeon you to death for the exact same thing. Naturally.
report
DriVer’s pretty drivey.
But Driver 6 is DriVIer…
Shameless. I know.
7/10
report
Tomb Roider:
Solving the double mystery of Lara’s bust size AND aptitude for outlandish athleticism.
report