Digital Nightfall on 21/8/2008 at 14:07
Thank you 242! I hope more people make posts like this, even if they have alot more didn't likes than you do. :)
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-the whole design direction, spy movie atmosphere, working in a command, more modern setting than FMs usually have, even though it somewhat contradicted the time the mission was supposed to take place in (before T2). I guess I'm just bored with usual FM setting;
We did shoot for more modern than the average Thief environment with this one, yes. I believe that The City is a place lost in time. You can be on one street and feel like you're in the 1920s of America, and take a turn down another road and suddenly you're in 13th century Germany.
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new technical achievements, especially comm mask;
We knew a person's like or dislike for this was going to make or break the mission.
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architecture & map design, it felt very realistic, like real place, right proportions of everything;
Some people may want to credit my years at architecture school for this, but the truth is that 80% of the mission was made by Finial, and the little bits that I did (another 15% maybe) were all finished before I set foot inside the architecture studio.
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AIs placement, it was very realistic too, diversified and thought out, some areas were realistically empty and some crowded;
Anarchic Fox did most of the patrols. His time spent as an FM reviewer (he probably reviewed 25+ FMs... correct me if I am wrong, Fox.) is very evident here.
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loot placement, the loot is not nearly as devilishly hidden as f.e. Randy liked to hide it or MadGod ;) almost all of it is quite easy to find, required is not dull clicking at every inch but attention;
The loot was placed by someone who
hates hunting for loot (I feel like I am playing pac-man or mario looking for coins...) and who wishes all missions had an optional or no loot objective. I had to force myself to make it even as hard as it was!
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texturing, lighting, new objects, conversations, movies, music, inventory items, menu screens - everything was not just top-notch by itself, but what's important was done in one style aesthetically and felt very harmonic all together;
And with about 10 different artists and designers on the team, that was no small accomplishment! :D
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writings quantity, their length, and distribution. It's really VERY rare virtue in an FM (!). FM authors often overload their missions with readables placing several scrolls in about every room. Before playing, I looked into books/english directory to determine if I would be overloaded with reading in this FM, and it seemed I would, and very much. But as it turned out, it wasn't the case. Writings were distributed very well, there wasn't a scroll or two in every room at all, as the result I wasn't pulled out of action and immersion more than it was needed, moreover there was NO ONE overlong writing. I'm almost sure it was made deliberately. Very professional.
I am glad someone noticed the attention I gave this. I made a strict rule - no readables are to be more than one page. We only had to break this rule on one occasion, and that's with Dante's transcribed version of the Head Accountant's ledger, but I figured that was okay. The rule was not just about not forcing the reader to scroll through five pages of text, but to force quality too - one of the the best ways to improve your writing is to take what you've written, and rewrite it half as long. Not only will there be half as much text for errors to creep into, but it forces you to discard passages that add nothing or little to the overall message of the text. I was often surprised about how little meaning was lost when condensing a two page readable into one page.
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lots of customized writings, it all adds to mission quality very much;
They're going to be a pain for anyone who wants to do translations though. :erg: The funny thing is that many of those custom-art documents actually exist. In most cases I actually made them, and photographed them to put them in the game. That was the most realistic way to get the text to adhere to the folds and wrinkles of the paper.
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attention to details, loved how it was not that easy to figure out where the mistress ACTUALLY stayed in, loved how the objective became checked off even though it wasn't the right door. I didn't know that until I finished the mission and wondered why there were so many hints if the objective was very easy to accomplish by marking every door until the objective would become checked off. How naive I was :)
That objective was a bit of a pet project of mine; how to make the player follow clues and come to a conclusion, and to express that conclusion with a deliberate action, without letting trial and error ever be a means to success.
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unusual absence of loot goal and prohibition to knockout/kill.
I think that a loot goal and kill/nokill should always be plot driven, and not based on tradition or standards. In GatI, they were appropriate. In MX they were not.
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difficulty. It's like it was made for my taste.
Glad you think so! We wanted to challenge the veteran players. But after the patch, things will be a bit easier, since some of the difficulty came from broken patrols. On the other hand, Expert will be much easier - less AI and more Health Potions.
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commercial quality of the whole package;
:D
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absence of PUZZLES. I love hard puzzles, logical or acrobatic.
Please forgive me if I take this as another compliment. I don't think that there should ever be a situation where you go, "okay, so this is a puzzle" ... the so-called puzzles should be worked into the plot and environment so seamlessly that the p-word should never enter your mind. You said yourself how much you liked the mistress objective.
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Now, I hope that at least CoSaS Mission 3 will see the light of day, or rather the dark of night eventually, we'll be waiting :thumb:
I sure hope so too! :D
