Eidos plc, one of the world's leading publishers and developers of entertainment software, today announced it has shipped to stores across North America the highly-anticipated Thief: Deadly Shadows for the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft and PC. Thief: Deadly Shadows is the third chapter in the Thief saga, which originated the stealth gaming genre. For the first time in Thief franchise history, the game will be available on a game console and will feature a third-person perspective. Thief: Deadly Shadows leaves actions, decisions and consequences in the hands of the gamer -- the master thief Garrett.
I almost think they sabotaged the PC version on purpose just to drive people off the PC--
I do wish Ion Storm had gone iD Software's route and handed the console version off to a separate, dedicated team, because I never quite shook the impression that DS's overall geometry was streamlined to fit under the Xbox's hood. The Hammerite church should be an imposing and haunting piece of work. The Pagan underground headquarters should be massive, with countless possible routes to your destination. I was consistently left underwhelmed with the size of almost all of the indoor environments, and was often confused by a few superfluous shafts and crawlspaces.
"There's also the unfortunate concession to developing simultaneously on the PC and Xbox: level divisions. During the game, many of the levels are divided by fog-filled doors that signify loading zones. This leads to a number of annoyances. First, it means that levels are much smaller than they could be, resulting in a tight and claustrophobic feeling to the game that previous editions never had. There's no Deadly Shadows equivalent to the brilliant (and huge) rooftop missions of Thief 2, and they're sorely missed.
Second, moving from one area to another freezes time in the section you've left. If you duck out of one area, neatly avoiding four Pagan daggers, those daggers will still be falling when you return, making for some nasty surprises or long, circuitous routes to avoid it. Third, load times, while not that long (I didn't clock any at longer than 15 seconds), are still annoying -- especially when they're totally unnecessary and unwelcome on the PC."
I have it on good authority that this [Gamespy] statement is just flat-out false