About the Lost City... - by Bulgarian_Taffer
Knock on 25/4/2009 at 20:40
Which came first, the Kushok's Citadel or Karath-Din? Is there any canon to confirm?
Stath MIA on 25/4/2009 at 20:58
I'd gamble on the Precursors first if I had choose one or the other. However, their is some lore to suggest that the two civilizations coexisted, if you just scroll up the page a little to jtr7's mask pics you'll see in the lower left hand corner the 3 masks from the Lost City; one appears human, one fish (Kurshok, anyone?), and one a mix of the two. This could represent the two knowing each other. There actually was a discussion on this very idea a while back, do a search for Kurshok on the forums and you will (hopefully) be able to find it.
Check out these two old topics for some ideas:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102189&highlight=kurshok)
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107560&highlight=precursor+masks+kurshok)
No 100% consensuses, just some interesting theories. I know there was a more recent one but I can't seem to find it.
jtr7 on 26/4/2009 at 02:48
Yeah, I vote for the Precursors being around the longest, but there is no canon to verify this, and it's just the impression I get, mainly for the following reasons:
The Kurshok are called an off-shoot race of the pagans, but no one ever mentions something from before the Precursors, except perhaps the Woodsie Lord.
We are given thirteen rough generations of Kurshok Kings, and we don't know who came before the vainglorious Gruliac, or how long a Kurshok generation represents.
The devs borrowed from Ancient Egypt and Greece for Karath-Din, so that makes them seem thousands of years old right off the bat, even though the Thief Universe doesn't follow our timeline, blending eras together.
Hmmm...a theme of TDS: The Kurshok seem an exaggerated near-metaphor for the dwindling knowledge of the Keepers, and the dumbing down resulting from a growing lack of knowledge, cut off from the light, both literally and figuratively, as a lingering Dark Age.
Stan_The_Thief on 26/4/2009 at 06:34
Come on, an entirely different team of people was writing the story for TDS! They roughly mounted it on the history in the previous games and tied a few loose ends, but did it in such a superficial way that any corroboration between secondary details is most likely a coincidence. In fact, with the way the game was being rushed into production, I doubt they did even half the in-depth analysis done, for instance, in this thread. And surely they had no way of knowing the minds of people who made up the story of the original games to know all the subtle nuances and interconnections of the plot.
In short, "The Kurshok" were thrown in specifically to add variety to the latest installment of the game.
And let's just consider the whole of T3 to have been Garrett's bad dream. :)
EDIT:
Although this is quite good:
Quote Posted by jtr7
The Kurshok seem an exaggerated near-metaphor for the dwindling knowledge of the Keepers, and the dumbing down resulting from a growing lack of knowledge, cut off from the light, both literally and figuratively, as a lingering Dark Age.
As there are examples of civilizations attaining some amount of greatness due to having inherited a share of ancient knowledge, yet dwindling at the same time because they don't know all the deeper workings of that knowledge and use it superficially, minimally, and ineffectively. Come to think of it, The Kurshok can also be a metaphor for "Thief 3".
Beleg Cúthalion on 26/4/2009 at 06:42
Since we have to "blame Terri" for the Cradle continuity error with the grammophone, I strongly doubt that there were entirely different people. ;) Plus, the few things cut in TDS which we know about (likewise the glitches) all point to the asumption that the original story and intellectual elements are about the ones we see in the game.
jtr7, good point with the Kurshok-Keeper relationship.
jtr7 on 26/4/2009 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Stan_The_Thief
Come on, an entirely different team of people was writing the story for TDS! They roughly mounted it on the history in the previous games and tied a few loose ends, but did it in such a superficial way that any corroboration between secondary details is most likely a coincidence. In fact, with the way the game was being rushed into production, I doubt they did even half the in-depth analysis done, for instance, in this thread. And surely they had no way of knowing the minds of people who made up the story of the original games to know all the subtle nuances and interconnections of the plot.
In short, "Kurshok" was thrown in specifically to add variety to the latest installment of the game.
And let's just consider the whole of T3 to have been Garrett's bad dream. :)
Wow! I'm not going to break this down sentence-by-sentence, but this is 95% incorrect, and the 5% that isn't entirely misses the point of what we're doing. :laff:
I was waiting to see who was going to start the old counter-point, but this time I'm surprised.
Stan_The_Thief on 26/4/2009 at 07:20
What. So you know better than Randy Smith? --
Quote Posted by http://www.gamer20.com/features/201/2/
Amped IGO: So, what happened with Thief 3? Was Looking Glass bankrupt by the time Ion Storm picked it up? Were you the lead on the third game?
Randy Smith: Thief 3 started at Looking Glass, and I had been promoted to Lead Designer (Tim Stellmach shifted over to leading up design on a new project which was never completed due to LG's shut down). Terri Brosius was my co-lead - I was more gameplay and she was more story. We were basically the only two on the project when LG shut its doors in 2000.
LG's IP (intellectual property) went to auction to pay off debt, and Eidos purchased Thief and gave the project to ION Storm's Austin office, headed up by Warren Spector. I interviewed at ION, expecting Warren to offer me the position of Lead Designer, which he did, but he surprised me by also offering me the position of Project Director, so I wound up on both for a while. (Towards the end of the project, Jordan Thomas took over the Lead Design responsibilities.)
IGO: And, again, how did you view the game upon its release?
RS: Well, mostly I didn't view it upon release, to tell you the truth. I was visiting a friend (Tom Leonard, programmer / designer at Valve) in June of 2004 when I saw Thief: Deadly Shadows in a box for the first time; it was Tom's copy he had bought the week before. By that time I had been off the project for a couple of months and had been traveling along the west coast to decompress.
The end of the Thief: DS project was an extremely tense and stressful time for our team and ION Storm in general. No one was happy with how production was going, for various reasons, and it was clear that the quality wasn't shaping up as well we'd hoped. The team was burning themselves out trying to get the game out of the door, and I was terribly unhappy. Before I could quit, I was fired. Getting out of that situation made my life much better, but it also made me averse to being involved with the project in any way, which included playing the game once it was released or even reading the reviews.
At this point I’m finally pretty much over that horrible experience, and I realize I really should dive into the results and feedback from Thief: DS, but it always seems like there is something more pressing to be played in my video game in-box.
Randy is a very tactful chap so he doesn't say it all; you would have to piece the picture together from the whole interview. You've shown that you can do such a thing, so go read the entire article.
Beleg Cúthalion on 26/4/2009 at 09:24
Quote Posted by Stan_The_Thief
Come on, an entirely different team of people was writing the story for TDS!
Quote Posted by Randy Smith
Terri Brosius was my co-lead - I was more gameplay and she was more story.
Plus, I have never read anything by the devs where they complain about story or general depth elements that couldn't be executed as planned/wished. It was usually about the engine or xBox memory etc. etc..
Getting back to topic a bit, the Kurshok gave the Pagans a bit more of history and plurality, while the precursors are somehow ancestors to the City's people and partly to the Keepers (or at least they are special subject for Keeper studies).
@jtr7: Come on, I was very moderate by my standards. :p
Stan_The_Thief on 26/4/2009 at 17:34
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
back to topic a bit, the Kurshok
^ This is in no way on topic.
And one doesn't really need written confessions of the devs to know that T3 story is at least a bit off from the spirit of the original games. Just think about it: would the people who gave you the Keepers in the first two games then go ahead and come up with Keeper Enforcers?
A question about the Lost City: what is that marking in the upper-left corner of the TDP map? The one that looks like a castle with a human shape extending over it. I wasn't able to find this place in the game.
Stath MIA on 26/4/2009 at 18:49
[sigh] Stan, Stan, Stan:tsktsk:...I'm fully with you when it comes to believing TDS is only slightly above pond scum when compared to the originals, however, we cannot just say "I don't like it so it isn't true", otherwise Viki would be alive, Looking Glass would still be together and I'd be playing Thief 6 right now. In that interview Randy never denies the cannon of TDS, he simply expresses that he wasn't satisfied with it (just like the rest of us). If you still want to argue about this then start you're own thread.
Now, BACK ON TOPIC.
Jtr7- I like the parallel you drew between the Kurshok and Keepers. It seems quite the apt metaphor.
