I went through the entire Thief III game TWICE, and never used third-person once.

Thief was way way way before Splinter Cell. Thief defined the "stealth game genre."

Thief III was alright. With the exception of the crappy engine and its limitations, I think it followed the spirit of the first 2.

I wasn't saying that Thief 3 was a ripoff of Splinter Cell, I was saying that a "modern" Thief 4 would be a ripoff of Splinter Cell.

Have I ever made sound mention of how much I hate Eidos? I'm generally a non-participant, but for Eidos, the sleeping giant (or 'insignificant mouse with oversized head', who knows...) awakens. I do. I HATE EIDOS. They take the greatest stories and realms of the PC, rape them, writhing them free of the original design teams (it was a big deal when announced that Tony Garb would work on character design for Tomb Raider 7? Tell me that's not wrong...) and if we want to see them, we have to spin in our chairs to see our fair heros staring blankly, looking around, knocking on glass from inside the TV. What... the... fuck?

Gameplay takes a step back, controls are dumbed down, graphic innovation is retarded for the sake of the Playstation; environment size, shading complexity, texture size are held back, shoe-horned into the XBox.

Anyone remember how Deus Ex came about? There was only going to be a DX:IW if there was going to be an XBox version. Then DX got ass-slammed even further with an XBox oriented Unreal Engine making for a mere experiment for an XBox Thief. Deus Ex was a digital miracle, an anomaly of story telling in a video game presentation marred only by its faint association with John Romero. If you allowed yourself to be absorbed by the e-mails, the overheard conversations, it became as deep and involving as an American Ghost in the Shell could have been.

"Here come your chance to be a hero."
"Good."

^ A beautifully subtle moment of understanding between Herrman and Denton that Eidos' idiot moneymen couldn't possibly understand. This was a game based our most romanticized theme of literature - the heartaching inevitability of change, the transition between one civilization and the next and one lifestyle passing into obsolisence while the new lifestyle struggles to hold onto the old.

Eidos could never understand this and couldn't possibly understand the artistic potential of games. They aren't fit to participate and their games aren't worth stealing anymore.

-Z

It was pretty clear to me after DX:IW and T3 that Eidos is headed toward dumping PC games completely. Both games seemed to have only grudging support for PCs. They didn't even feel the PC was important enough to change the UI ferchrissakes. Let alone higher resolution textures, larger levels, etc. So we were stuck with enormous TV-sized fonts, obtrusive loot glitter and arrow trails that you could see on a TV screen 6 feet away, no rope arrows cause they were too hard on an XBox control ... They didn't want to spend one extra red cent more than they had to for the worthless PC port. And who bitched the most about any of it? PC players.

I think the whole "consumer-focused" comment means consoles only from now on. And you know what? Good. Thief died with Looking Glass, let it rest in peace as far as I'm concerned.

Thief was way way way before Splinter Cell. Thief defined the "stealth game genre."

Of course, thief wasn't "way way way way" before metal gear/metal gear solid, and tenchu. And when you consider most stealth games play like metal gear solid, hell all besides tenchu and thief, im not sure how thief "defined the stealth game genre".

Hell, the only other stealth game that plays like thief is tenchu, which came out before thief did.

This comment was edited on Aug 28, 12:00.

DROP CONSOLE SUPPORT!! IT RUINED BOTH GAMES!!

"Deus Ex: Invisible War was a good game with solid reviews, but not enough people bought it. We'll fix that in the future."

He's just going to come round to your house and force you to pay for it.

In my opinion, whether Thief gets a slight boost from being a bit more modern, it's not being modernized for the right reasons. I mean, this guy is a representative in our industry and he gets away with publicly saying this shit?

"Deus Ex: Invisible War was a good game with solid reviews, but not enough people bought it. We'll fix that in the future."

Anyone else imagine him just cackling and rubbing his hands together after saying this? Good game? Solid reviews? Hell, I know people need to make money on games but "consumer focus" is what made DXIW suck in the first place - the entire vibe of that quote just screams "do anything to sell more" at the expense of making a good, fun game by doing more feature-stripping.

Well at least we know who is, The King of Stupid Ideas!
Run one company into the ground, cripple two of the best game series Deus Ex and Thief and completly ignore your customers.
Crave actually will hire this guy?

Hey now - he didn't just say modern, he said *more* modern. That could mean anything between the middle ages and present day! Who wouldn't love sneaking around in knee-length pants and a ruffled collar for Thief: The Renaissance? And you certainly know it'd be fun pulling off a great train robbery in Thief: The Old West. Personally, I can't wait for a chance to loot bombed out homes and occupied military bunkers in occupied Normandy for Thief: D-Day 1944! That's just about the only WWII-themed FPS left to play, right?

Dammit, I wanted to say that. Good post.

There used to be a TV show in the 70s about Raffles the gentleman cat burglar, set during the 20s (ish). I'd play that.

Of course, after all this is no longer a market for people who take risks (or should I say people who possess genuine creativity).

Well the more crap floods the market the better that one maverick game that redifines things will look... eventualy.

I do think Thief could be modernized, but it would take much more intelligence and planning than Eidos has show thus far.

I do think Thief 3 was a letdown; there are some obvious issues with the game and the engine (all aspects - graphics, physics, and control) was a mess. For that a third Thief game could have been, Thief 3 was an even bigger letdown.

Thief could be modernized, but it should be in small steps, not Thief 3024 AD.

If you are modernizing Thief, you need to stay away from Eidos in its current form.

Expecting many a generic game now,
Ray

-----
A locked copy of Half-Life 2 is now on your computer.
http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
I love you, mom.

Talk about everything wrong with the gaming market and a symbol the generally idiotic management at some companies. Oh well, at least they realize that T3, IW, and H:C did not have obvious, blatant issues. Thankfully, they will "fix" me so I will buy more of the games.

Basically, expect this to be company by the numbers (take W license, spend only X developing it, definitely spend Y marketing it, and get Z percentage to buy it regardless.)

Not going to say much else; disgusted,
Ray

-----
A locked copy of Half-Life 2 is now on your computer.
http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
I love you, mom.

You guys need to go to the GDC in San Jose and see just how corporate these guys think at times. I actualy sat in on Warren Spector's talk 2 years ago with his team members and I was expecting to hear someone who saw things from a gamers perspective, but it was all bussiness (I was never a DX fan but I respected it). Things like him saying concerning Thief 3 "Well our first 2 games involved 2 of these 3 factions so we're limited in our ability to design Thief 3 because our fans will expect the involvement of the third faction." (this of course coming from memory isn't an exact quote but it's pretty close). His talk continued on how as a game gets popular you gain fans, and this is both a good sales point but it limits your design choices, etc, etc. His talk basicly boiled down to how the fan base is both a blessing in terms of garunteed sales and a hinderance to opening up to a wider market.

Yes good bussiness sense is a must but there should be passion behind the world your making. Computer games are in a lot of ways an art form. To their credit after the talk I went up to one of the other team members and told him I appreciated that they made it a point to hire the same voice actor for Garret and he was pretty cool in acknowledging that a level of continuity is important. I'm sure most if not all of the rest of the team IS passionate about what they're creating.

A game company does have to think in terms of making money, there's nothing wrong in that, but a game is made inifinitly better when it's has a focus on world building and imagination over "what feature's should we have so as to appeal to a wide audiance?".

As an example Half-Life does a great job at this. If you play it and the expansion packs you'll see there's an emphasis on continuity. In fact Blue-Shift helps explain why some of the characters end up in Half-Life 2. Even the PS-2 mini-game Decay holds up well in this area.

Sorry to see this batch of games go south, but I'm not too surprised.

[edit] Let me just add...
What happens to directors who make great movies?
They get rich.

What happens to musicians who sell alot of records.
They get rich.

What happens to game developers who sell tons of their games...
It's not hard to see why movies, music and games kinda suck these days (with some exceptions).
This comment was edited on Aug 28, 04:09.

please next time you want to vomit your ignorance use your holy console to post your sheep like flappings.

and next time you want to use a wordprocessor, use your holy pc to type your sheep like flappings.

Wait..What?

PC fanboys. please next time you want to vomit your ignorance use your holy console to post your sheep like flappings.

Consoles are closed, proprietary, exclusionary, trite nonsense. I was tolerant to their existence until Lucasarts, Obi-Wan fiasco. I was looking forward to the glyph/gesture solution, that went out the window when it went console, and the inevitable dumbing down for the twitchers.

Perhaps if console manufactures would stop wasting money paying developers/publishers not to make the wares available on multiple platforms, the environment would not be so adversial.

I say bring on the cheap 640x480, takes more time to load that for me to have sex, console ports.

Hey now - he didn't just say modern, he said *more* modern. That could mean anything between the middle ages and present day! Who wouldn't love sneaking around in knee-length pants and a ruffled collar for Thief: The Renaissance? And you certainly know it'd be fun pulling off a great train robbery in Thief: The Old West. Personally, I can't wait for a chance to loot bombed out homes and occupied military bunkers in occupied Normandy for Thief: D-Day 1944! That's just about the only WWII-themed FPS left to play, right?

You know, if they want to make their Splinter Cell rip-off ...

I went through the entire Thief III game TWICE, and never used third-person once.

Thief was way way way before Splinter Cell. Thief defined the "stealth game genre."

Thief III was alright. With the exception of the crappy engine and its limitations, I think it followed the spirit of the first 2.



"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."
-Fry, Futurmama
This comment was edited on Aug 28, 01:21.

I liked Thief 3 but I thought Deus Ex 2 was a mildly entertaining, hollowed out shell of it's predecessor.

Eidos can do what they want with Deus Ex and Thief...they have that right I suppose, but for me at least, there was only ever one Deus Ex game (the second being sort of a 'what-if' scenario if I have to acknowledge it at all) and Thief was a trilogy and it's over with. They can make whatever games they like but it's their own thumb up their ass. It's like Highlander or the Aliens series; all true fans know that the second and fourth movies (respectively) simply do not exist as part of those series.

So Eidos can do what they want, they're a company that wants to make games and we all know what happens when companies make games. Just fill me in on what Warren Specter is doing next, I prefer people and not companies with "consumer focus" (ie. the horse most beaten) to make my games.

DX2 was crap, Thief 3 was OK but definitely needed a better engine. Both were designed for the Xbox and moved over to the PC because it was easy. These people need to grow a brain and understand that slapping the PC community in the face by handing them half-assed console ports as sequels to series that they love and which started and got made big on PC is a good way to kill yourselves.

Parallax Abstraction
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada