Melan on 27/11/2007 at 10:23
Quote Posted by nicked
Just to expand on my point, I meant that the missions would be remade with water and rope arrows and everything. Purely hypothetical, I know it's impossible, I was just trying to suggest that the engine flaws are not the whole problem. While they are annoying, the level design would be bad even without them.
I unfortunately have to agree. The city segments, for example, were very weak when we compare them to the possibilities of Life of the Party. The designers gave the player climbing gloves, but then built these levels - which should have been the most free-ranging of them all - in a way that you could only climb in a few locations. So many wasted opportunities...
I also dislike how low those buildings were. Come on, it was almost like a small town, not the over-urbanised, sprawling chaos of the City. :(
Beleg Cúthalion on 27/11/2007 at 11:57
The city sections were smaller, but I cannnot remember the insanely high number of the TDP/TMA fake doors in TDS. That's what I wanted to say: TDS did not (only) lack the "lineup" of possibilities or realism in it's design, it rather lacked the image of possibilities and realism that many people had in their mind from the former games. I definetely agree on flaws in story, objectives (the additional ones on HARD and EXPERT) and the technical issues, but I refuse to think that the levels themselves were much worse. It did not have clearely boring or useless corners; call it unrealistic or economical.
Stonemarket (Plaza? not sure) for instance offers ways to avoid the streets almost everywhere, to go through apartments etc. or walk on porches (?). The only thing comparable to that would be Ambush - neither Assassins (which only has the streets and a few sewers) nor Partytime/Dayport, which (although much bigger in area) is rather one-dimensional, since you cannot really get down and neither up. It's all about the rooftops and some little stairs and differences in height.
PS: Dealing with the static meshes now I even think many buildings especially in SQ were almost too high, but that is a matter of taste since I for one do not like the high neo-classical or victorian facades.
nicked on 27/11/2007 at 12:23
Personally I think TDS would have been an absolutely awesome game if the city sections had been completeley removed, and about 4-5 more missions had been worked in instead. The city sections, for me anyway, do nothing more than get in the way of the plot, and decrease the immersiveness due to their small size.
sparhawk on 27/11/2007 at 12:39
I agree. But the city makes sense from the developers point of view. They get a nice new marketing buzzword (freeroaming city levels) and they even can reuse a lot of levels (all the citiy sections) without the need of actually doing interesting levels.
The concept sounded nice, but in truth the city is just a cheap shot to reduce the work.
If you really want to see a free roaming city you should play "Need For Speed". You can drive around in a real city, and when you unlock a new district you can driver around through the whole city without any loading. It really feels like a city which is lived in and is also part of the gameplay. So it's not just a cheap reuse of levels. Well, of course it is, but it doesn't feel like it, which is the important bit, that failed in TDS.
The major difference is: The city in Need for Speed is interesting. When I drive to a new challenge, I can choose to teleport right into the event, or I can simply drive there and look on the map for it. In NfS I usually do the latter, because it's fun.
In TDS, there is no choice. If you need to go through half the city back and forth, because you need to go to the fence, and then back to find your mission, you are essentially forced. It usually felt more like "Oh, no, now I have to run all the way over there just to get the mission started."
nicked on 27/11/2007 at 19:03
It's easier in a game like that, because, as a racing game, there's not much interactivity. The more interactivity there is, the more work goes into the level design. And Thief is a VERY interactive game.
Doing a totally free-roaming city on the scale of Need for Speed or GTA would mean either hardly any accessible buildings for Garrett, or many years of hard work to create a city that will only run on NASA's supercomputers! Unless you brought in a randomisation element, where a new random building was created on the fly from a series of tiles every time Garrett entered a door...
Goldmoon Dawn on 27/11/2007 at 19:43
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
TDS did not (only) lack the "lineup" of possibilities or realism in it's design, it rather lacked the
image of possibilities and realism that many people had in their mind from the former games.
Jesus!
Every time I hear this story it gets more and more strange and convoluted.
It's quite simple. In Deadly, Garrett's movement is absolutely laughable. The level sizes are pitiful. The Maps for each Mission all look the damn same!!! In Dark Project, the Map for each Mission was unique and tailormade. No water, no ropes, on and on...
Deadly Shadow is a "Thief Lite", designed for the wouldbe newcomers and younger console fans. Such a shame that they called this third person console action game "Thief".
Beleg Cúthalion on 27/11/2007 at 20:59
That looks so flat I cannot even find a thing to contradict...:rolleyes:
Well, due to the fact that TDS has only ten missions, it was rather easy to make them different. I suppose you make a difference between Ramirez and Bafford but not between Rutherford Castle and Seaside Mansion. I persist that it's primarily people's wish to find something wrong about TDS that makes them so unhappy with it. But well, go ahead...
Goldmoon Dawn on 28/11/2007 at 01:52
No, I am talking about the maps for each Mission, not the Missions themselves...
Remember the *map* for the Lost City Mission? It was different than every other map in the game. In Deadly, every map was that same boring cookie cutter map reconfigured for whatever Mission it happened to represent...
Again, when I say map, I don't mean the Mission itself...
Got it?
Digital Nightfall on 28/11/2007 at 02:13
Quote Posted by nicked
or many years of hard work to create a city that will only run on NASA's supercomputers!
NASA only recently upgraded from their 486DX IBMs. :rolleyes:
sparhawk on 28/11/2007 at 08:48
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
I persist that it's primarily people's wish to find something wrong about TDS that makes them so unhappy with it. But well, go ahead...
And why would people wish that? People would have loved to get a good game and they did NOT get it. Pretty simple.
