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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 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.
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.
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.
Apparently they don't. You know what one of the -best- features of Deus Ex was? It was a LONG game. The fact that it was long made it immersive, like reading a good novel. It worked really well with the conspiracy angles in the game. It also had RPG like qualities, with the skill system and all. By dumbing it down to play well on a console, and making the game pathetically short, they managed to extract all the unique and fun stuff out of it.
So if they follow their current trend, Thief 3 will be a short-lived, dumbed down, insult to its predecessor that can be finished in 10 hours... (I have never understood why a game company will spend years writing an engine, and then skimp on the levels to the point it can be finished in a day or two)
- 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 ;-)