He left Ion Storm?
...crap.
a little piece of my future hopes just died.
Is he still making games? He's going to be a 'consultant' but that doesn't mean he works in a studio...

Warren Spector... Well what can I say..

Good luck to you man and thanks for all the great games!



The worst thing is Warren will probably be remembered more for
DX:IW than all the other hits he created/helped to create.

Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), Eidos Interactive
Backyard Wrestling: Don't try this at Home (2003), Eidos Interactive
Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003), Eidos Interactive
Whiplash (2003), Eidos Interactive
Cel Damage (2002), Electronic Arts Inc.
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition (2001), Eidos Interactive
Frequency (2001), SCEA
Deus Ex (2000), Eidos Interactive
Thief: The Dark Project (1998), Eidos Interactive
Crusader: No Remorse (1995), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
CyberMage: Darklight Awakening (1995), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Dragonsphere (1994), MicroProse Software, Inc.
System Shock (1994), Electronic Arts Inc., ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Wings of Glory (1994), Electronic Arts Inc.
Ultima VII, Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Ultima VII, Part Two: The Silver Seed (1993), Electronic Arts Inc.
Wing Commander: Privateer - Righteous Fire (1993), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Ultima Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds (1992), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams (1991), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (1991), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2: Crusade (1991), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Bad Blood (1990), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Wing Commander (1990), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Wing Commander: The Secret Missions (1990), ORIGIN Systems Inc.
Space Rogue (1989), ORIGIN Systems Inc.





* * * * * * *
Their freedom was taken away as they crashed . . .

* * * * * * *
Their freedom was taken away as they crashed . . .

smaller levels

Smaller yes, too small, no

GLINT 'O EASYNESS to everything

So you miss having to pick up every fricking cup and plate to see which ones were valuable, and then try to find some quiet way to drop them when they weren't? I agree with a previous poster that this is a wonderful way of expressing Garrett's thief skills.

it seems unaware of what happened in Thief 2

How so? I haven't noticed any glaring omissions.

numerous issues with the AI

The thief series has always had AI issues. I'm not sure I'm good enough to play a Stealth game with a realistic AI.

NPCs that will endlessly respawn, NPCs that do not even bother to respawn offscreen

Haven't seen the offscreen respawning and the only place I've seen respawning at all is in Auldale. I think, like SysShock2, respawning is there to add to the tension. I though it was appropriate for SS2, but I admit it seems out of place in Thief 3.

taking out the ever-basic rope

I miss the rope and love the gloves.

lacking polish

Agreed. I've seen too many "holes" in the walls that shouldn't be there that any extensive playtesting would have caught and fixed.

Overall, I'm very pleased with it. I think it's the best grpahics yet, the sound is top-notch (The Cradle scared me more than the Doom3 demo ever did). I appreciate new gameplay elements and hope that if Spector was involved with T3, that he'll produce more stuff in the future.

This comment was edited on Nov 9, 16:59.

I'm sure there's lots more where those came from, but it's late and I'm tired.

Again, I don't think that's "hyping the shit out of it"...



http://www.placeboworld.co.uk

What else effects the decision? I'm trying to come up with something, but it seems to me that publishers are almost always driven solely by money, so if a game wasn't profitable the first time around, why take chances with a sequel?

Well, and this is my total guess here, but the other factor at work is how much will it take to make a game. If a publisher can make the game cheap (i.e., the developer agrees to eat a lot of the cost, it uses existing tech, developer made it out of love, etc.) then the publisher might be more apt to comply.

Plus, the gaming industry is different. Sure, games like Halo 2 will sell millions of copies, but for a PC game, selling 100,000 copies is considered a success. For all the problems with Tribes 2 it eventually sold 200,000 copies, meaning that it broke even (very expensive project due to delays, etc.) and sold enough to greenlight Tribes: Vengenance.

Finally, this weird thing happens sometimes when the mere existence of a sequel gets people stoked for it. No One Lives Forever sold a paltry amount, but just enough to get Sierra interested in a sequel. A ton of people got interested in the game and not only bought NOLF 2 but the original game as well (value priced by then). By contrast, I was never interested in The Bourne Identity but when the sequel, Bourne Supremacy came out, I got interested in the first one.

I have to say that IW wasn't half bad. You had to get over the small-ass environments, the fubar'd upgrade system (biocanisters made the game way to easy and not using the point based skill system...wtf?) and the AI-problems. But once you got over those mayor hurdles, the game was fun. Got me playing up to the point where I (apparently) reached the final battle (after meeting Alex)...and the game crashed with a showstopper bug, corrupting my savegame.
So, yeah: no matter that the game was playable, in the end it was a piece of crap which was crap even considered as a stand alone game appart from the prequel.

As for Thief:DS; this game was great, even though it wasn't as good as the two before it. I really missed the rope arrow, and the climbing gloves where very lame. But you didn't notice the small environments that much, because the game played at a much slower pace. This game did stand on it's own as a good game.
But it's quite obvious that the 'past master' has lost it. Maybe he can't handle a dev team of that size and still keep the overview picture, or maybe he has lost his sence of direction in the game-industry (which, if you look at his talks at GDC, could well be the case)...fact is, the last two games he contributed to just weren't as stellar as his previous work. Maybe a change of scenery will do him good...and maybe you'd just better read the reviews on some smaller and still independant websites before buying his next game.

Just because they do interviews doesn't mean they "hyped the shit out of it".

GameSpy: At the end of the day, what do you want players to take away from Deus Ex: Invisible War?

Spector: I hope players take away from it that we didn't sell out, just doing another game with a number after the name for profit, because we didn't. I hope they take away that "Hey, these guys really paid attention to what happened in the first game, what we said about the first game, what they learned from the first game, and they refined the gameplay to a point that I can't even imagine them making it any better."

-- Gamespy Interview, 3/11/2003


"I would call Invisible War a more sophisticated game. Deus Ex was like early automobiles. They didn't know what they were doing! They were putting Wagon Wheels on this, and a steam engine and... they were making stuff up! And that's where we were in Deus Ex. Invisible War is a very calculated attempt to streamline and make more sophisticated."

-- EuroGamer interview, 11/14/2003

I'm sure there's lots more where those came from, but it's late and I'm tired.

Nobody saw that coming.

And with that, the last of the individually great game makers has pretty much departed from the PC industry.

*shrug*

Creston

I know people like to blame Smith, but he did leave and, if you listen to Spector's interviews, Spector honestly believes that these are all great, wonderful things.

We have a winner!

Spector was constantly promoting IW throughout its pre-release marketing. Regardless of who fucked the game up, he put his reputation behind it in the interviews he gave and the messages he posted. He even continued to defend it after it came out.

He didn't have to do any of this. He could have just kept his mouth shut and directed all inquiries to the PR dept. or Smith himself. Instead he fully endorsed the game.

Good riddance.

Things like Glints in T3 represent the character's skill as a theif. I believe there is an option to turn it off also. Saying the glints made it easy is like saying jumping made Super Mario too easy. Coming from the golden age of gaming, I am tired of pixel hunts.

No they hyped the shit out of IW. Warren Spector, Harvey Smith, and others on the team were constantly whoring themselves with all sorts of interviews and previews. Every god damn form of media was convinced it would be amazing.

I gotta respectfully disagree with ya there. Just because they do interviews doesn't mean they "hyped the shit out of it". It means someone read enough of the interviews and became hyped, thinking it might be the second coming.

There is a difference. They didn't pull a Romero. The games just didn't live up to the previous ones in the series.

http://www.placeboworld.co.uk

Mad Max is right. I remember the hype everywhere, on all the gaming sites, all coming from Spector. After the game was slammed to pieces by the gamers (and not the totally foreign-to-us gaming press), Spector and the rest just shrugged it off. I think Spector was probably just playing PR. He can't come out and slam his own company's game, it's just not doable.

I hope Spector makes a big come back some day though. Will Wright is kinda like a Pixar of gaming, so we always get G rated affairs there. Spector is more like an Oliver Stone or Ford Coppola.. violence and politics with some meaning the way it should be

Putting aside the quality of IW, it is true that very little hype was generated up till the last minute. In the last few weeks before release, of course, previews and interviews started popping up much more quickly.
I think so many gamers and gaming publications were anticipating it, that hype largely generated itself.

No they hyped the shit out of IW. Warren Spector, Harvey Smith, and others on the team were constantly whoring themselves with all sorts of interviews and previews. Every god damn form of media was convinced it would be amazing.

But hype isn't the reason the game was a let down. SImply put, IW sucked ass. Stop denying it. Just stop. FUCK.

Making games is not unlike making a painting. Imagine if some famous artist is working on a great piece for a whole year telling everybody how great it is. It'll be greater than the Sisteen Chapel and change your life forever. But when he finally reveals it to the public the damn thing is half finished, pencil lines everywhere, and somebody punched a hole right through it.

You can pretty much apply countless analogies to crappy games. And Invisible War WAS a crappy game. Anybody who likes something for what it "could have been" and not what the fuck IT IS and how you were lied too should be shot for failing the human race.

But Ion Storm never hyped the game at all. The only hype came from (reasonable) expectations based on the original game. Ion Storm never said the game would be the greatest thing ever made or be all things to all people. (That's not to say they deliberately made it worse than DX1; just that they didn't hype it themselves.) I remember that during the run up to release people were complaining because there was very little hype: few interviews, few screenshots, few videos, what have you. It's amazing how poor memories become in these siutations.

Second, the good things about DX:IW are not what 'could have been'. There are plenty of interesting ideas implemented in final version. They might be hard to see because of poor presentation, but they are there.

This comment was edited on Nov 8, 22:17.

if you listen to Spector's interviews, Spector honestly believes that these are all great, wonderful things.

Exactly. I've lost a lot of respect for the guy. He's clearly lost focus...

http://www.placeboworld.co.uk

I really liked Thief 3.

You know what else has a sequel? Mortyr. I dare you to correlate success with sequels now :p

I stand corrected.

sales only effect the decision to make a sequel half the time.

What else effects the decision? I'm trying to come up with something, but it seems to me that publishers are almost always driven solely by money, so if a game wasn't profitable the first time around, why take chances with a sequel?

Instead of judging the game for what it was, they judged it for what it could have been.

That's what happens when you make a sequel to a beloved game. I think most people would agree that not only did the game fail to live up to the Deus Ex experience, but fell way, way short.

This comment was edited on Nov 8, 21:07.

Honestly, the origingal DX was a great game, and when you make a great game people expect more but at the same time want a little piece of 'home' from the first game. DX2 was a horrible game which was designed for graphics not gameplay. I bought a preowned copy and I still think I paid too much for the game. It is a shallow husk that DX was. I tried reinstalling it the other day out of boredom but for the life of me couldn't even put 30 mins into the game before I uninstalled it.

Eidos and/or Ion Storm will no longer get my money, reguardless of who's at fault.