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Thief 3 Website Goes Live
Sabathius writes "If you're a Thief super-freak like me, you've been looking at the 'Coming soon' message at thief3.com for years...hoping they would finally put something there. Well, our collective prayers have been answered! This spring Thief 3 (Thief: Deadly Shadows) is being released by the same guys who recently gave us Deus Ex: Invisible War." S!: We've also recently covered previews of this new Thief title at Slashdot Games.
I hope they don't dumb down this game like Deus Ex.
Just so they can put it on the xbox.
Then again, the first one also had the zombies which didn't really work for the game.
I think that most Thief fans at this point are hoping the new game resembles either one of its predecessors.
Use Mozilla and the flash click-to-view plug-in. No flash you don't want and all the flash you do (ahh, flash games).
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
I first played Thief 2 after Hitman 2 and wasn't at all impressed. The graphics and feel reminded me of old Quake-era games, and the AI seemed horrible (enemies repeatedly going 'what's that!?' but just standing there outside the doorway). Admittedly I didn't play for long - was I too quick to judge?
I suppose this would be as good a time as any to start begging for another system shock sequel.
I loved Thief 2, creepy as HELL. I think the combination worked. But I still have nightmares of those little running golden automatons...and the ghosts in the library. Sweet screaming monkey that was scary.
both games started well - i loved the creeping around mansions and castles etc - thief 2 moreso than 1 personally. However, thief 1 got into twisted caves and other wierdness i can't really remember, and thief 2 became full of rubbishy robots (i truly hated the last level - never bothered finishing it at all) the best parts were set in the city - proper "thieving" i hope they stick to this side.
I wouldn't count on it, the Deus EX: IW config files are full of Thief 3 references.
I smell another xbox port.
You had me till you said "same guys who recently gave us Deus Ex: Invisible War". Deus Ex (and could people please stop pronouncing it like "deuce"? It's Latin, people. DAY-us) is one of a number of games that have suffered a less-stylish sequel, IMHO. (To Be Continued. I hear that Nihilistic isn't doing the new Vamp Masq, and that the new company is making it more like a first-person shooter. Great. We need more of those.)
/rant
What is the deal when sequel-makers get their hands on loads of cash and graphics capabilities, as a result of the popularity of the original, only to fuck the original squarely up the ass? I haven't picked up Max Payne 2, yet, and I sincerely hope this is not the case. Sure, DE2 looks... well, even to say "better" is to suggest that cartoonish bright colours and soft lines automtically mean better. The original DE looked grainy and that seemed appropros. Also, as a side note, the protag and his brother both looked and sounded like Stephen Baldwin, and that was a friggin cool edge. This new guy I want to smack.
Game makers pay attention: voice acting is important! Hell, even if Soul 2: Mythblighter wasn't a 10 out of 10, game-wise (though I'd rate it middling-high), the voice acting had me riveted. The diary entries with the first encounter with the undead, etc. were superb. Contrast with, say, Warcraft 3, esp Frozen Throne. Ok, that's a game that has me wanting to skip the crap and get to the game, but this just exacerbates that reaction. Whiny female non-acting "Our kingdom is in danger!" Whatever. End result: lowered respect for the game, generally.
If they do to theif what they did to deus ex I will be royally pissed. Deus Ex was my all time favorite shooter. The game introduced a very intuitive micro management system to the FPS genre and became one of the first and best FPS/RPG's of all time. Deus Ex 2 was a real dissapointment. Many of the problems were due to the dual xbox/pc development (many of the defaults for the game were optimised for console play, etc ..), but the game didn't live upto the original.
Keep an eye out on where they go with this, thief fans.
Steal This Sig
Now, I have not played Deus Ex 2 because of the above reasons, however, I have played every other game that Warren Spector was involved in with the exception of Terra Nova.
If you are that big of a Spector fan, I'm a little disappointed that you wouldn't at least rent DX:IW to see if you liked it.
People have said bad things about pretty much every game I've ever enjoyed. It seems to me that my opinion on the matter of whether or not I should have bought it is more important than theirs.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Thief never really struck me as an "action" game. Suspense, yes, and careful observation and planning (one of the few games were I'd find a dark corner to just sit and watch people come and go for a few minutes to learn their patterns). Any "action" that actually occured was usually fairly quickly followed by death and a reload from the last save, as Garrett was *not* a fighter...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You admit you haven't played the game based on a bullet-point list of reasons. How do you know those reasons are true?
I loved Deus Ex enough to buy it a couple of times (PC and PS2 versions). I played through it several times. Even though I'd heard it was bad, I went and got the Deus Ex OXM demo disc and played it.
You know what? It's still Deus Ex. Yea, there are a few tweaks I don't agree with (the item management is simplified a lot, there is no positional damage to speak of, and the AI is a bit silly on the easier levels), but it's still a solid game. I didn't notice any frame rate issues, but then I was playing the Xbox version. People can whine about PC version all they want, but if they really want to play some Deus Ex, they should sit down and play it on the Xbox. It's good, more so than people are willing to admit on Slashdot because they're too busy talking about PC gaming (I expect PC gamers spend more time complaining about the half-baked shit that most companies put out than console gamers do, because console games are higher in quality and usually complete upon release).
I expect Doom 3 on the Xbox to rock hardcore, since the fine fellows at Vicarious Visions have been able to tune Doom 3 specifically for the GPU in it (in fact, they use some shader intstructions specific to the Xbox GPU and saved about 3 passes per scene render, meaning your Xbox will look as good as the version running on a 3,000$ USD computer!). Give it a chance.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
... Looking Glass Studio's were the folks who gave life to Thief, as well as the equally amazing System Shock series. I can't help but wonder what this game will be like without the ingenious developers who brought the FPS genre to new heights?
The game is only third person if you want it to be (unlikely for old Thief fans), and I'm quite sure the PC version will be playable with a mouse...
As for "Tomb Raider", Thief 1 has a few Tomb Raideresqe levels, and a few monster hunts as well. It's like the game couldn't decide if it wanted to be Thief, Tomb Raider, or Quake. Thief II, thankfully, learned that the Thief levels were what fans really wanted, and concentrated mostly on those (the final level, alas, being the least Thief-like...)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
As far as I could tell Inivisible Wars was panned in reviews.
What reviews did you read? I could hardly find any negative reviews for the game.
Now fans were mighty pissed. There is quite a bit of speculation that a number of review sites were bought off, as the game is a major letdown, especially in light of the greatness that was Deus Ex. Many of the good features were removed or heavily dumbed down, the AI is terrible -- possibly worse than in the first game -- the weapons are stupid, the unified ammo system is illogical and balance-breaking, the environments are incredibly small, and the textures are ugly (low res). What's more infuriating is that a lot of the promised features didn't make it. Warren Spector and co stated in interviews that the PC version would have larger maps than the XBox version (where the XBox version would have a load point, the PC version would merge the areas) and higher resolution textures. This never happened. The PC version ended up looking like a shoddy port of the XBox game, a copy so obvious that even the default INI file was tweaked for the XBox rather than an average gaming rig. Also, the engine is bloated with dynamic lighting features that give realtime shadows for all objects for any given light source, even mobile ones. This is a new feature for any game, and it admittedly does look cool -- the problem is that it heavily bogs down the game engine, and it's utterly pointless beyond looking cool, because the abysmal AI doesn't react to differing light levels. Apparently the AI was going to notice brightly lit areas more than dark ones, and you were going to be able to shoot out lights (you can't do that in the game, though), but those features were dropped while the FPS-crippling engine was left intact, so you have a pretty lighting engine that does little but drop the framerate and show off how ugly the models and textures really are.
Did I mention the ugly models? The multitool (which combines the multitools and lockpicks from the previous game into a single, "streamlined" item) looks like a magic wand. Character models are universally ugly and low-poly. Weapon models aren't hideous, but they're nothing special and the textures tend to suck outright.
The physics engine seems like a neat idea -- after all, "realistic" physics is a new fad, as seen (and done well) in Max Payne 2 and in the upcoming Half Life 2. Unfortunately, they couldn't work out all of the bugs in the engine, and they didn't make logical choices. As such, your character is able to pick up and hurl steel drums from the get-go, tossing them accross the entire level (though admittedly, the levels are tiny). However, if they smack into someone...the person hit doesn't even notice unless you have a "strength aug". Another problem, the physics are BUGGY. People have ended up leaping up and out of the map because they hit a quirky spot and were able to jump far higher than should be allowed.
Oh, one last piece of the rant. The Invisible War engine (bastardized from the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine), which is the basis of Thief 3's engine, is sometimes nicknamed "The Dry Engine". Apparently it can't support water physics. As such, there are no swimmable areas in Invisible War, and don't expect any in Thief 3.
Urgh. There's a lot more wrong with the game than that, but I've typed up enough crap already. People will probably think that this is Offtopic, but before modding this AC post down, consider that all of the criticisms I've just thrown at Deus Ex: IW are criticisms of a game made by the same company and with the same engine as the game being discussed here. Don't be surprised if Thief 3 suffers from many of the same problems.
I'm hoping Thief 3 will be more like Thief 1 than Thief 2. Thief 2's medieval-magical-industrial-robotic setting didn't really work
I disagree. I think it totally worked. Like the Haunts in Thief 1, the Mech Guards were the creatures to be feared. Hearing one nearby made your hair stand on end and knowing that facing one head-on was suicide and getting away from one when it spotted you was near impossible. Although I still think the Haunts were much more dangerous.
The industrial-era atmosphere gave the player the feeling of the newness and wonder of these new machines but also the sense of the unknown since your equipment wasn't designed to counter any of it.
And recently, Warren Spector said Deus Ex 3 would be as different from Deus Ex 2, as 2 was from 1.
What's going on over at Ion Storm? They keep defending their awful design decisions as their "vision" instead of just realizing that they don't make the game more fun, they make it less fun. Why are they trying to ruin what made Deus Ex great? It's like they don't even know why people liked the first one.
Sadly, it reminds me of the Matrix sequels.
But Harvey Smith and team were insistent on it. They keep repeating the "streamlining" mantra about "removing what didn't work from Deus Ex 1." Clearly, they have no idea what they're doing, but Warren was opposed to it. He said different ammo types ground the game world in reality. He was right.
Naturally, they'll screw it up....
I really hope that this sequel doesn't go the way of Deus Ex 2 - that game was a waste of 50 bucks :( .. The quality of the game kind of sucked comparing to the first one. The graphics were choppy and unattractive (on a mid-range GeForce, P4 2.4 Ghz), character faces looked poorly bitmapped, gameplay was underdeveloped, and the "new" interface left something better to be desired. The patch fixed some interface issues, but it seemed like it was oriented towards console gaming, not PC's (where this game should belong!). honestly, I didn't even finish the game, and if I could get my money back, I certainly would. Comparing to the first Deus Ex, it has been a disappointment.
Thief 2 is an awesome game. I really hope that this sequel will be that and then some. The screenshots look nice, but I'd like to see some hi-res screenshots from the PC.
--- sig moved for great justice.
- Society developed along believable and interesting lines. I list this first since it is important in a plot-based game like Deus Ex.
- Interesting goodies and options.
- Some of the later levels are pretty good. Seeing the unatco base on liberty island again brought a tear to my eye.
- The physics engine really adds to the game. And when it screws up it can be pretty funny too (hint: try throwing a body at a flaming barrel. The thing will just about fly into orbit!)
Negative:
- Individual sections are too small (cut to fit the 64MB of XBox memory?). In Seattle, especially, I never felt like being in a city. And there are too few of them anyway, by the time the game really gets going it is just about over.
- Choices you make in one section barely influence what happens in another. The various parties are way too forgiving to you.
- Although everyone and everything casts a shadow, you yourself do not. It seems a strange oversight...
- The game is too easy. This was true for the first game as well, but since it was much longer that was less of an issue.
- The game rewards casual players far more than in-depth players. As casual player you will never run out of ammo or miss a story strand. An in-depth player is punished by hearing the same information over and over again, and will be forced to leave behind endless stacks of mod-canisters, ammo, weapons, and whatever. Speaking of which...
- I understand why they have one kind of ammo for all weapons, but I do not like it. There is far less strategy to weapon choice now.
- Since the game plays further in the future than the original Deus Ex, it does not feel quite so personal anymore. I've visited (in the great game of Real Life) Liberty Island, Battery Park, Hell's Kitchen, the Paris Catacombs, and many other locations from Deus Ex (Hong Kong and Area 51 are still on my todo list). By comparison, I doubt I'll ever set foot in a WTO arcology.
Despite all these complaints I enjoyed playing Invisible War! It is a good game; the complaint really is that it should have been _great_. At least it tries to do something new, to expand on the art of storytelling in games. And despite all the whining, it mostly succeeds in doing that.
So will there be a part 3? I really hope so; the brand is strong enough to allow it and by now they have the tools and experience to do it. And I think we deserve a game that covers the 20 years between J.C. and Alex, sort of like Deus Ex: the Dark Age ;-)
This is a geek site, isn't it?
Where is the Linux version? What you say?
XBOX Version but no Linux version?
OK. Bye.
I'm not buying any new windows games anymore. Yet I am thinking about how diffcult it would be to build an free/open sneak person shooter like Metal Gear Solid/Thief/Splinter Cell. Especially with engines like this one.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It is also an action/stealth game, but it is very, very linear and the variety between levels is mostly graphical.
I for one liked Thief because I had multiple options to solve most puzzles and the maps were pretty open ended. I never felt I was 'solving' any problem, just finding the only solution the game designers had left for me.
If you liked the freedom Thief gave you on most missions, Splinter Cell is probably not for you.