Kurgan on 23/4/2006 at 13:16
Quote Posted by Dia
Does that make me a Thief-snob?
Only in the sense that preferring cleanliness over being covered in filth is being a soap snob. :) I think it's a safe bet most of us here are "Thief snobs," and proud of it.
Dia on 23/4/2006 at 13:20
I agree that it's a good idea Kurgan; just not likely to happen. Sadly enough. :(
ZylonBane on 23/4/2006 at 15:18
Quote Posted by Dia
You did.
Thank you, High Lord Overseer of All Which is Obvious. Once again thou hast brushed aside thine mighty obvious robes, unsheathed the gilded pen from which the ebon obvious ink flows, and scribed a new page in the Eternal Book of Obvious, for all to read who lack thine unparalled sight of obvious... stuff.
And yea verily, there was punch and pie.
Kurgan on 23/4/2006 at 15:51
[He] hath brushed aside thine mighty obvious robes...
Hast is present-tense, second person singular, whereas you wanted the past tense, second person singular. :cheeky:
Oh God, somebody stop me. Once I get into Jacobean English and preter-pluperfect tenses, I just can't stop. No, really, it's a sickness.
***Giggling merrily***
Edit: Ooh, ooh! I just noticed there was punch and pie. I am so there!
ZylonBane on 23/4/2006 at 16:05
Ah, now that's a fresh breeze of total non-obviousness.
(and so noted)
Gingerbread Man on 23/4/2006 at 19:02
I haven't played the new Tomb Raider title, but on the face of it the analogy seems decent enough. The Tomb Raider games were steadily going to shit (well, steadily in an exponential way) beginning with the third installment, but I believe that to be more a factor of trying to milk every dollar out of the only really lucrative franchise a floundering company like Eidos has.
Although there's also an argument to be made that it was the TOMB RAIDER EVERYTHING focus that was largely to blame for the Eidos floundering... all eggs in one bucket, and a bucket with increasingly lazy quality control at that.
If gamer reviews are to be trusted -- and I'm never sure that they are, they're just a hell of a lot more credible than the website / magazine shilling -- then the newest, Crystal D-created game is a welcome revitalisation and a return to what made the first two and a half games (I'm being very generous) so popular.
But there were several companies who could have had a good crack at energising the TR franchise. As seminal a game series as it is, there's nothing particularly difficult to grasp as far as the concept goes. Third-person puzzle / action, emphasis on traps and timing. The plots are standard adventure fare, there is no real gameworld or backstory beyond the character's rationale and the locations suggested by each episode's overarching quest.
We discussed many times who could possibly continue the Thief series after LGS fell over and caught fire. Ion Storm, mainly because of the quality and depth of Deus Ex, were considered to be the only real possibility. And then we heard Ion Storm was being given the reins and we said yay.
But some of us remembered too late how everyone said "You know who they really should get to be James Bond? Pierce Brosnan! He was great in Remington Steele, he'd be perfect"
There are some games which are such personal creations of a particular group of people that passing the torch simply wouldn't work, even if the perfect successor were found. Hell, Invisible War should have taught us that you can't even necessarily pull off a sequel to a game within the same house... Time has a way of making perspectives and ambitions change radically, especially in an industry as cut-throat and mutable as gaming. In a standard four-year development cycle, technology can change to the point where you have to scrap the awesome new engine you WERE working in after three years, because otherwise your title is going to be second-rate the minute it hits the shelves.
Um.
No idea where I'm going here.
My point is something along the lines of "No one liked Sammy Hagar. The American version of The Office is just weak and misses the mark entirely. Remington Steele is a worse James Bond than even George Lazenby was. And don't even get me started on what a terrible idea it is to remake Predator when 90% of that movie's perfection was the Carl Weathers / Jesse Ventura / Arnold Schwarzenegger cast."
Sequels are always a hit-or-miss affair, and sadly they are usually misses. And it's not the fault of the franchise, it's only sometimes the fault of whoever develops the sequel, and it's usually the fault of... okay look:
A band releases it's debut album to great acclaim. "This is fresh, this is great, this is noteworthy" cry the press and public. Those who have been fans of the band since before the record contract are smug and happy: "We told you they were great," they say.
By the third album, the band has developed a large and dedicated fanbase. The band has also aged five years, moving into their late-twenties with the worldview shifts that acompany it. They have also matured as musicians, and have slid into more interesting musical territory in some part. They want to create different songs, songs which reflect their current understanding of thier genre or their lives or whatever. They want to shake things up a bit, get back to the excitement and energy they felt when they were first playing gigs.
And their fourth album comes out. It is wonderful, it is well-crafted and displays an astonishing level of musicianship. The band has gone from goofy-yet-catchy fluff / airplay singles to a more mature and polished sound that is really starting to coalesce into something awesome. But it's not the goofy fluff of the first album that made them so popular, and so fully three-quarters of their fanbase (including those who were with them since before the record contract) start to hold their noses and say things like "sell out" and "their old stuff is better, this new stuff is shit" and so on.
And the kicker is that there is a whole new crop of potential fans, ones who don't like the band because of the old, fluffy, goofy pop singles... but they'd LOVE the new direction and the new vibe of the fourth album. But what do they say? Someone comes up to them and says "Dude, this new album by Such-and-Such, this is EXACTLY your kind of music, you'd love this" and they say "Such-and-Such? Aren't they the ones who did (insert goofy, fluffy hit from first album here)? I hate those guys. I'm not going to waste my time on their new stuff, what are you, crazy?"
Ha ha I still don't know what the hell I'm getting at.
Bottom line, if you can correctly visualise and appreciate the metaphors I've been clumsily attempting to draw out of my brain, is that for all its epic story wrap-up, special effects, and speeder bikes in the jungle, Return of the Jedi is unmitigated and disappointing shit.
Ewoks? EWOKS?
Fingernail on 23/4/2006 at 19:40
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
all eggs in one bucket, and a bucket with increasingly lazy quality control at that.
Bucket.... GET !!!???
trfan518 on 23/4/2006 at 19:52
all i meant by this thread is that the thief series could continue if they start a new story line and just close what they have now (instead of continuing based on Thief 3 ending which i dont think will work)...i dont have an idea for a new storyline...im just wondering if you guys think that could work if someone else picks up the rights to thief...
what you think...
i hope this clarifies things...sorry
GlasWolf on 23/4/2006 at 20:50
Sometimes that "difficult" second/third album scenario comes from the fact that the band in question has been playing, touring with and honing their first collection of songs for years prior to being signed. When they're suddenly asked to produce an album's worth of new material off the back of an 18-month tour before the end of the financial year they frequently end up filler-tastic. I guess the same could apply to the ideas of game developers. Plus, like GBM says, they have the tricky situation of trying to please the old fanbase and their own creative desires. When mixed in with the publishing (record) company's desires to meet deadlines for their beloved financial reports, they end up caught between two stools - unable to properly explore their muse (man) but not wanting to churn out another copy of their original ideas.
Surprisingly little is said on these forums about Randy Smith quitting ISA before T3 was released. He obviously did so to make some kind of point, but the bind of gentleman's agreements (not to mention contractual and rather less gentlemanly ones) means most of us can only guess at what the point was. My hunch is that he thought he could make T3 a much better game with another 6 months' development time, but wasn't given the opportunity to do so. T3 came out about 6 weeks before the UK (read: Eidos') tax year-end.
So maybe ISA weren't the right choice to make T3. Perhaps so much of the old T1/T2 was ingrained in their collective psyche that they tried too hard to move away from it, to produce something "new" and "different". With the ideas (and development time) spiralling out of control, Eidos called time and we ended up with the good, the bad and the ugly that is T3.
Yup, sometimes you need a new broom.
dlw6 on 23/4/2006 at 22:20
Quote Posted by trfan518
all i meant is that the thief series could continue if they start a new story line
T2X does, and Hammerite Imperium will do, what you suggest by presenting stories from the world of Thief that don't involve Garret. :thumb:
Don
