Third Thief Title Transitions To Third-Person

Thanks to GameSpot for its article revealing further details and screenshots from the third game in the Thief series, now named Thief: Deadly Shadows, which makes a change in supporting "...what publisher Eidos is calling a 'third-person cinematic action view'." The piece continues: "This new perspective will be in addition to the series' traditional first-person view, which was first created by long-defunct developer Looking Glass Studios." Blue's News also has information from the full press release, which notes: "Characters and objects cast real shadows that effect stealth gameplay, requiring the player to manipulate darkness and light to create your own shadows to hide in."

Comments

Damnit, not again.

[MachDelta]

"third-person cinematic action view"

ARRGH! Its been consolified! :(

Re:Damnit, not again.

[Cecil]

I feel your pain. :/

All the major publishers are going console. There are a few big primarily or at least heavily PC developers left, but you have to keep your eye out for them. id Software, Valve, Bioware are a few that come to mind.

I don't think anyone disputes that games are going to get shitty in the next little while, but at least the defection of the big PC publishers and developers will leave a big opening for a lot of the stronger small studios to slide into. In my opinion, a short lull will be followed by a bunch of innovation. I'm looking forward to (read: hoping for) it.

That's what I thought at first

[Pluvius]

Then I remembered that third-person view isn't a bad thing for a stealth game, since stealth games don't tend to rely on aiming ability or anything. The only real problem is that it makes the game less realistic, as you'll be able to see people around corners and behind your character's head, most likely. In exchange, you have advantages such as being able to do jumps reliably as well as judge whether or not you're in shadow better.

Rob

Re:That's what I thought at first

[neostorm]

I think the largest factor in people being upset with this move is that it signals a similar direction that Deus Ex 2 took. Having a third person option isn't all that bad on it's own, but the potential reasons behind it and more recent releases from the same studio make me really stop looking forward to this game.

As long as the player has the option to be in first person it should be ok, but this game is really being weighed against a hefty legacy and I myself am a huge Thief fan that recoils in pain at this news. I just don't want to be let down.

Re:That's what I thought at first

[Babbster]

The only real problem is that it makes the game less realistic, as you'll be able to see people around corners and behind your character's head, most likely.

Does it really make it that much more unrealistic than a first-person shooter? In real life, I always know exactly where every part of my body is (unless I'm "impaired"), I can stick just my head and eyes past a wall in order to see around (with a concomitent reduction in counter-detection), I have peripheral vision and I can turn my head without turning my entire body - all things the first-person perspective in video games traditionally has trouble with.

Whining about this news (and there's a LOT of whining posted here so far, though not in your post) is a knee-jerk FPS-centric reaction considering nobody here has played even a minute of the game. I guess it's just the double-edged sword of hype in that a game can have interest stoked well in advance of release, and/or a game can be raked over the coals without ever having been seen or played.

Re:That's what I thought at first

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically it means that the game got "dumbed down" to work on a console. DX2 had problems such as an interface that was designed to work with gamepads, which made it horribly clunky. In the old DX, the inventory was drag and drop and you could have hotkeys for everything. Nothing worked the way it should in the new one. The level sizes were tiny, probably also due to the limitations of the console. The AI sucked (which may have to do with the fact that the XBox didn't have the processor capacity to deal with a complex AI). In a game that could have made great strides over its predecessor (which was a fantastic game), it seemed to fall flat. It didn't add any depth to the gameplay and it didn't even do things as well as DX1 in most cases. It was just a tremendous letdown.

A bland trend.

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon all games will be 3rd person action adventures. Why? Beats me - people keep buying them. They're the cinematic equivalent of 2 hours explosions. I hate them with a passion.

Gamers: Stop buying them... please.
Developers: You're hurting your games by following everyone else.

I can tell this from a single screenshot. This is an absolutely useless perspective and completely unimmersive (as that's supposed to be me - but I can't see what I'm supposed to). See the knife in the player's hand? What happens when you throw it? Yeah, exactly - how the hell are you supposed to aim when you don't have a straight line of sight?

Don't give me a retarded answer like: "You'll get used to it" or "the game will aim for you".

Thanks for making Mario 64 again - the gaming world needed it. No, really.. way to keep your fanbase. I know the article says that you can play in 1st person.. but just to be completely clear to the devs (if they're reading this) understand this:

I NEVER WANT TO SEE A 3RD PERSON PERSPECTIVE WHEN I AM PLAYING YOUR GAME. OH, AND STOP MAKING CUTSCENES - THEY'RE SHIT. K? THX, BYE!

I want to bring a group of developers from the early 80's into the present and see what they could come up with. Deliberately not showing them the games that have been made since then so they wouldn't follow everyone's retarded cliches.

Re:A bland trend.

[Rallion]

Erm, maybe you've never played Thief. the first-person perspective was a bit difficult to use at times, since you need to be aware of exactly where you are. How about Splinter Cell, have you played that? The games are remarkably similar -- minimal combat, what combat you do is preferably melee -- That's a club in his hand, not a throwing knife.

When I played the first two Thief games I often found myself wishing for a third-person perspective, to help me see how much of me was hidden in a niche, see how close I was to stepping into the light, ensuring that I kept walking on the moss and didn't accidently make a fatal, noisy step onto the flagstones.

Re:A bland trend.

[MWoody]

On the contrary, the third person perspective is far more realistic than first person. Once you've stopped being bothered by looking over the player's shoulder - it barely even gives me pause after hundreds of hours of GTA3 & GTA:VC - the information this view presents is far more representative of actually "being" the character. It allows a greater range of vision, avoiding the disconcerting "tunnel vision" FPS' can sometimes create, and it let's you know immediately where you're standing, if you're touching anything, what stance your body is in, etc - all things you'd know in real life, but which aren't usually communicated in first person.

Ideally, I'd like screens or headsets that finally take advantage of the full field of human vision coupled with some sort of seperate HUD detailing the current stance of the player character (assuming full-body tactile feedback and/or neural interfaces aren't feasible in the near future ^_^). Until then, I'll crank my suspension of disbelief up a notch to believe I'm the guy whose back I'm staring at, and I'll continue to enjoy being able to actually see that demon coming at me from the side.

Re:A bland trend.

[drewmca]

Riiiight.

Because PC games are such an original bunch. Heaven forfend that such a bastion of originality be infected with the herd mentality. Now we have a game that is neither

a) An FPS. (but with really good graphics and killer multiplayer!)
b) An RTS (but this time there are 6 factions, each up to 5% different from the others!)

What is happening to gaming?

Re:A bland trend.

[blincoln]

A few PC gamers had similar complaints about the new Legacy of Kain game (also published by Eidos).

When I see posts like this, it reminds me of the people who absolutely freaked out about the transition from 2D to 3D gaming around ten years ago. It was the same sort of mindless "I hate new things and want games to always stay the same!" mentality.

Devil May Cry was the first game I played that used a third-person cinematic perspective, and as soon as I saw it, I loved it. It allows the designers to use so many styles and tricks that have been in films for years.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance and Ico cemented that opinion for me.

And really, I can't understand why someone who doesn't like cutscenes is playing a game that clearly has a decent chunk of storytelling to do either.

If you like the 80s videogame style so much, AC, why not just keep playing them instead? New games don't mean the old ones don't exist anymore.

Re:A bland trend.

[AuMatar]

I still see 3D as a bad thing for gaming.

Why? Because it doesn't add anything to it. An rpg is the same gameplay, wether its 2 or 3 D. An rts is the same in 2 or 3D. There's very few games where the 3D actually improves gameplay over a 2D game.

At the same time, 3D is sginificantly harder to get right, introduces a lot of bugs, and isn't as graphically mature. Meaning the developers now spend most of their time on graphics and 3D physics instead of on gameplay. Ever wondered why there's so few innovative games today? Its because they don't have time to innovate after spending a year writing the damn graphics engine. Keep the 3d to the few concepts its actually used in, keep the rest 2D and start innovating again.

Third-person mode is no big deal

[Black Hitler]

The third-person mode, by itself, is no big deal. The game already renders the player's entire body in first-person mode (meaning you can look down and see your own feet), so it was probably ridiculously simple to implement.

The problem is the levels: DX2 had horribly tiny levels to accomodate the Xbox's limited RAM, and apparently Thief 3 is going to be the same way -- apparently levels in T3 are divided into areas roughly 1/4 the size of the average level in part 2, and to access the different areas you walk into a sort of misty thing and confirm whether or not you want to leave the current area. Again this is a complete compromise to deal with the Xbox's comparatively pitiful RAM but it's almost certainly going to be carried over to the PC version -- just as it was in the PC version of DX2 -- even though my PC has eight times the RAM of the Xbox and a lot of folks have far more. In short, screw Eidos, screw Ion Storm and screw Warren Spector for his "this is how we'd be doing it even if it was PC-only" bullshit.

Re:Third-person mode is no big deal

[Babbster]

Morrowind for Xbox managed to make very quick load transitions that gave the illusion of one huge, seamless world. Don't blame it entirely on the RAM - blame it on developers who don't want to do the extra work.

Peripheral Vision & the Console Market

[superultra]

I anticipate comments here mirroring many of the comments on the web forums discussing this, consisting mostly of the assertion that third person loses some of the immersion that first person supposedly provides. Consoles have again "ruined" what would have otherwise been a great PC title.

Now, I played Thief 1 & 2, and they're both great games, classics to be sure. Still, I can't deny that after having played Metal Gear Solid and especially Splinter Cell, there's something to be said for the third person perspective, particularly when used in stealth games. What the first person perspective may add in immersion, it detracts signficantly in peripheral view. Ok, sure, I can see around a corner that I probably wouldn't be able to see around without third person. But the fact remains that playing a game in first person is really like looking at the world through a narrow cardboard box. If someone is standing next to me as I type this, I can see them even though I'm not looking directly at them. Likewise, I can see things to the side in a third person game. Conversely, in a first person game, I can't do that. Personally, I'll take the "unrealism" of being able to see around corners over the lack of peripheral vision anyday in a stealth game. Besides, I'm not really sure how this unrealistic looking around corners really differs that much from the infamous lean keys in FPS, and more recent games (like Splinter Cell) add the cost of being seen when you peek around corners.

With regards to the belief that consoles have ruined yet another title, I think that the PC industry (consumers and publishers alike) needs a good long introspect look at itself. The fact that we're sitting close to the end of this console lifespan and yet I have yet to see graphics, and far more importantly *good* gameplay, truly exceed that of what exists on my consoles as they once did at this point in the Playstation lifecycle is significant. Moreover, PC game piracy, both pre-release (i.e. HL2) and after is at least as rampant as it ever is if not much more so. The charts are dominated by The Sims, and yet PC publishers think that the market with the money will orgasm over a monthly screenshoot of Doom III with super-vexal-triple-z-buffer-120fps screenshoots. I remember when this all started at the beginning of this console cycle, and all the PC gaming magazines said it wouldn't last. Well, it's obviously lasted, and I personally think that it'll only get "worse."

Basically, this: stop bitching about Ion Storm and kin making console games and stop pirating. Moreover, petition (and demonstrate appropriate patronage, or the lack thereof, towards) companies to release final products that don't require 4 years of IT certification to install and get operational (obviously including Ion Storm). In relation to the PC market, the console maret is merely the path of least resistance, both consumer and publisher wise. We're in a (generally) free market, and by and large companies, who are in business to make money, will go where the making money is good. If that's not in happy utopia PC land, we have only ourselves to blame.

Re:Here we go again

[beakerMeep]

while you may have been moderated flaimbait (and maybe righlty so I dunno really) you do have a point there. Trying to port games platform to platform with a little work as possible makes for some terrible games. I dont think anyone can argue against that and I think it works both ways. But, I think there are companies out there that can port and they port well. However, Ion Storm is not one of them. But off the top of my head -- rockstar and bioware have seemed to do ok so it's not impossible.

I call it 'Consolidation'

[meowsqueak]

According to my dictionary (and I do mean *my* dictionary):

Consolidation \Con*sol`i*da"tion\, n. [L. consolidatio a
confirming: cf. F. consolidation.]

The act of removing enjoyable and involving gameplay from a promising video game in order to accommodate the less mature and undiscerning tastes of 14 year olds for the purposes of selling more units sooner. For unfortunate examples see: Deus Ex: Invisible War, Halo: Combat Evolved. It usually involves 640x480 title screens too.

A consolidated game is pretty much guaranteed to be crap.

Third person? I can handle that

[obeythefist]

Okay, so everyone is complaining about third person perspective. I don't have a problem with this. Third person is excellent for an action game with a lot of melee. A good swordsman knows where his body is and is pretty aware of opponents all around him. Third person perspective fits this very well. For example, Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy give you a first person view when shooting ranged weapons (also sensible), and a third person view when swordfighting. These games have been incredibly successful! And less successful on consoles. (Probably because you had to do adult things, like aim, think, and use more than just the fire button).

But seriously, I agree with what everyone else has been saying about consoles and worsening games. I couldn't believe the reviews of DX2, given that DX was one of the best games in recent years to grace the PC. But yes, DX2 was atrocious. The graphics weren't optimised at all, they were clunkier in a lot of ways compared with the original DX. I couldn't even bring myself to play it long enough to get out of the first area, it was just too clunky (even after using all the third party tweak patches!).

I grieve for the Thief franchise. I grieve for us all. The loss of great quality games on the PC lessens us all. With consoles there can be no new revolutions. There will be no "shareware" DooMs anymore, no OpenGL Quakes, no mod communities. We can't avoid change, but it is unusual in the IT world that any change brought by new technology takes so much away from us all.

Re:Peripheral Vision & the Console Market

[Babbster]

Thief and Thief 2 may be considered "classics" now but the PC gaming crowd didn't buy them in large numbers the first time around. Why should a developer believe that the third iteration is going to break through in any significant fashion by sticking with the same formula?

There's a reason Looking Glass is out of business: As brilliant as their games were, nobody was buying them.

Re:Peripheral Vision & the Console Market

[Danse]

I guess PC gaming will be doomed to lame console ports and the few cool games that small developers manage to put out. Much like the old days. I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing, but it is kind of sad that truly good games don't get the attention or sales that they really deserve, and yet so many console games that are complete crap manage to sell so many copies. Guess it's the same reason there's so much crap on TV.

please.

[*weasel]

You have to admit that little 'lightness' jewel in the HUD wasn't exactly the greatest immersion tool. 3rd person, so long as its optional (as they seem to suggest it is), could only be a potential improvement. if it sucks, you never have to use it. I'll go so far as to suggest it would be an improvement. How can you convey visibly some of the more interesting 'sneaky' moves with a first person-only camera?

propping yourself between the walls above a hallway, hanging from a chandelier, pressing up against a wall, swinging from a rope, hanging off a ledge, etc?

Splinter Cell has a predominantly 3rd person camera view primarily to facilitate many of these features. Features that are prominantly mentioned when it's hailed as the greatest of such games in the last few years.

Console games are not necessarily dumbed-down or crappy. Heck have you seen half the titles on the shelf? There's no qualitative boundary between console titles and PC titles. Most is dreck, and if either side has a hit, it's invariably ported to the other.

If you think Deus Ex 2 suffered because it was refined for the console you're just being elitist. The game wasn't harmed, and the changes didn't adversely effect the story, so who cares? Name one 'involved' gameplay element they removed? I'll sympathize with many of the technical problems that were on the PC (sluggish UI, blossom lighting, etc) - but downloading that 1.1 patch to be able to play a new game is the calling card of PC gaming. You can't exactly blame the developers for maintaining status quo.

It sounds to me like once again the primary pc vs console rift is forming because of the loss of keyboard/mouse aiming. 3rd person angles removes the advantage of keyboard/mouse precision. Using a control pad obviates the precision advantage as well. playing on a TV removes the advantage of high resolutions on aiming. Yes, resolutions are nice - but they are not the end-all. I've yet to see a game where having PC resolutions was a requisite for the gameplay.

What enjoyable or involving gameplay has been removed from a game to accomodate consoles?

A tendancy to disagree

[Iscariot_]

You know, I'm really going to have to disagree with you here.

"...in order to accommodate the less mature and undiscerning tastes of 14 year olds..."

Now, besides that sentance being a bit imature itself, I think it's backwards.

I've been playing games since I was very young (atari 2600). As soon as my family got our first 386 I switch to playing PC games almost exclusively. And for years I did that. Why? Well, because back then each new game didn't require a major hardware upgrade. And honestly, if it did, I often had the computer to play it on since my dad enjoyed upgrading the computer.

But now, as an adult, I don't have nearly as much time to play games as I used to. This makes upgrading my PC to the absolute latest and greatest less worthwhile. It's also amazingly expensive and I have things like rent to pay. So whilst you say that only 14 year olds play console games, for me it's been the other way around. With a console I know that my $300 investment in the xbox is going to pay of over the course of many years. And I'm not going to have to upgrade aside from the purchase of a new controller or perhaps xbox live. A better bang for the buck if you ask me.

So please, remember that the reason that developers are flocking to consoles is because gamers are flocking to them in droves. And if you look at the latest numbers, shown here on /. a few times, you'll see that the majority of those that own console systems are in their mid twenties to early thirties, not teenagers.

Either way I cannot wait for this game, and I hope you can put your dislike for consoles aside for a moment and give the game a chance.