What can change the nature of a thief (game)?Originally Posted by b0rsuk
What can change the nature of a thief (game)?
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 1982.
I think you missed my point. What I mean was a situation where a game naturally drives you towards a certain play style not because it's corralled into a narrow set of mechanics, but because a certain subset of those mechanics is just more compelling than the alternatives. Deus Ex comes to mind.
Not really optimistic. 'Modern audience' means 'dumb people'. Not that I'm saying people are dumb (though there is a good argument to be made for that; see this forum), but that's what it means when a developer says it.
Precisely. This phenomenon has been evident in pop music, where it's far easier to go and listen to music all the way back to the early 20th century, as well as modern recordings of music written long before that.
With videogames, the situation is far worse. Even with GOG, who's going to go back and play a game with crummy 3D graphics and weird controls? I constantly hear people complaining that a game from three years ago looks like shit, never mind 15 years ago. More and more gameplay mechanics get dropped for the sake of simplicity, never to appear again.
This is my great hope for the indie scene, that they will preserve and iterate on great ideas that never really got the chance to be explored to their fullest. Thus far I've mostly been disappointed, but there are are good things on the horizon.
The game's director has clarified his comments:
I guess he's making the right noises, saying the mainstream stuff was purely character design and meant compared to their other internal designs. I think perhaps there was a case of him being quoted out of context and being leapt on for that that video yesterday, poor editing perhaps. Or maybe we just all kind of expect Thief to be nothing like Thief.“It’s not correct to say that we’re trying to make Thief ‘mainstream’, or that we’re trying to make Garrett ‘less gothic’… This isn’t the case.
“I was referring specifically to a previous Garrett design we tried out internally and not Garrett from the previous games. Our early design went a LOT more gothic – with black nails etc – but we thought that this wasn’t true to the legacy of Garrett so we pulled it back a bit.
“Returning to something more true to the original Garrett is what I meant when I said we made him more ‘mainstream’, this wasn’t a comment about the direction of the game. I can assure you we’re huge fans of the original games and we’ve done our homework to create a game that maintains the essence of the original.”
As a long-term Thief person, I have the same knee-jerk as most ('mainstream? hisssss' etc), but I'm trying my best to reign it in. Not entirely successfully, but I am trying. This kind of back-seat-driverdom seems to be an unfortunate, but inevitable, product of culty fictions, entertainment economics and the internets pretty much instant dissemination and response. It's like giving someone else, maybe even a talented chef in their own right, the recipe for your favourite dish, but then literally standing right behind them and shouting in their ear 'OH MY GOD THAT'S TOO MUCH PEPPER WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? IT'S RUINED! RUINED!' every time they follow their own instincts. If you had to just wait in the lounge until they'd finished it would be less stressful all round. This isn't enough information to form any real opinions about Thief: Inevitable Colon, other than they seem to be trying a few new things, and that is probably a good thing, right? (As long as it's not third-person cover mechanics instead of proper stealth and stabby third-person takedowns, those are definitely too much pepper). If all you want is Thief with a bit more shiny The Dark Mod already exists.
his explanation doesn't sound plausible at all lol
“We wanted to bring in more for the modern audience of today’s console market.”
Does that really sound like someone following their own instincts to you?
Its an AAA game, they don't really have a choice.
.... yeah. Like I said. Bright side. There has to be a bright side. Like, that does, to an old Thief fan, sound quite bad. You assume it means QTE, immersion-breaking, forced perspective shifts, huge, eye-numbing UI's etc. But what is he actually talking about? Dishonored definitely had some of that stuff, and you could turn it off (in fact you had bloody better turn it off unless you want to feel like you're in possession of some kind of murder satnav). Things I definitely don't want are forced third-person (for anything, seriously, being sucked out of the back of your own head to watch yourself hit someone or cower behind a box is super bullshit) and forced combat sections. Things I definitely do want are a lightgem, a blackjack, and a difficulty setting that fails you for killing anybody. Everything else I am trying to keep an open mind on until there's some solid info.
Actually, it's the kickstarter scene that's the most promising when it comes to preserving and iterating on great old ideas. Indies generally don't have the kind of budget you need to make a Thief-inspired immersive sim, for instance. But a nostalgia pitch on KS might get some traction.
Plus, there are overlaps, of course, like Xenonauts, a faithful indie remake of X-COM that was also on Kickstarter.
Edit: Eek. What I meant was, indie or not--doesn't matter. Kickstarter or self-funded--matters. Mainstream publisher--no way.
Last edited by karthink; 15-03-2013 at 10:58 AM.
I'm also hoping that soon some indie or someone on kickstarter starts making some really neat stealth game (Not 2d sorry..),we are lacking true stealth games,its kinda hard watching genre dying.
... I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell.
To be fair it was never an overly prolific genre. And IMO it has been on a bit of an upswing these last few years, with Dishonored, Mark of the Ninja, Deus Ex: HR, et al.
Also what's wrong with 2D stealth? I thought that MotN was the best stealth game in a long while to be honest.
steam
http://dailycelluloid.blogspot.com/- where I write about movies.
Dishonered and DE were not really good stealth games,whille Mark Of Ninja on other hand was pretty good little game but like i said i prefer 3d for this kind of games,where i can feel more immersed in world.
... I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell.
If they really had a new vision, they should have just made the girl from the end of Deadly Shadows the new character.
Also, Metro 2033 had decent sneaking even if it wasn't really a stealth game.
Any more doubt about this game being crap now that we have an official screen of "Garret"?
Virtual Pilot 3D™ NEVER NOT SCAM!
You are missing the point. It's obvious that a big budget needs to sell to a large audience. But there are mass market compatible designs which their developers can enthusiastically get behind, and then there are products the company just pushes out to keep the lights on.
What I'm noting is this: these guys released a measly 3 minute video about character design. If I were them, and I was proud of the work, guided by my sense of quality (like Vivian's chef analogue), I'd spend every second of those 3 minutes talking about the character design itself, what's cool about the new things, and maybe how the development process resulted in all that coolness. The fact they choose to instead spend time talking about "modern audiences of today's console market" sounds very much like they are apologizing in advance. In fact, I can't interpret that in any other way. It creates the impression the developers themselves think the changes are for the worse. So it's not the case that I'm distrusting these particular developers' intuition. Rather, I'm somewhat trusting their intuition, but I perceive they are being forced to go against it!
They said that at first they went with emo look but then that was ditched in for new look which,wait now,still looks like total emo,eyeshades anyone ?
This is going to end up like newest Tomb Raider,mark my words.
... I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell.
Which is a shame considering how much fun Guardian of Light was. You don't have to slavishly recreate the original to make a decent game, but this looks like they just don't get it. Guardian of Light got the feel of Tomb Raider while changing more than the new one did.
Dunno. You tell me, you seem to be some sort of screenomancer.
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