Did anyone get an impression of creative burnout at the end of The Black Parade? - by Garrett731
Lord Taffer on 2/12/2025 at 14:42
I actually enjoyed the last mission quite a lot and appreciated all the different monsters that appeared there. My absolute favourites were: Where Old Faces Fade, Death's Dominion and The Long Shadow Falls. Probably the least favorite mission for me was The Brand, but even this one was still top-notch level work from this team.
I think the last two missions were very good overall and didn't feel like the quality had lowered.
Garrett731 on 2/12/2025 at 14:48
Quote Posted by Lord Taffer
I actually enjoyed the last mission quite a lot and appreciated all the different monsters that appeared there. My absolute favourites were: Where Old Faces Fade, Death's Dominion and The Long Shadow Falls. Probably the least favorite mission for me was The Brand, but even this one was still top-notch level work from this team.
I think the last two missions were very good overall and didn't feel like the quality had lowered.
Yes, I adore the 'multi-traversal' and eclectic architecture of Where Old Faces Fade. In fact, it's probably one of my all-time favourite missions in a game; the design is just fascinating.
FireMage on 2/12/2025 at 17:54
Quote Posted by Garrett731
Thanks so much for getting back to me, and I sincerely appreciate your need to move on and work on new artistic projects.
I think it's tragic that there are no plans to improve or remake any of the missions, as what you collectively produced is possibly the best stealth simulation campaign of all time. There was so much untouched creative potential with the magic and trans-dimensional themes of the last two missions: creating lootable items out of gold transmutation tables, astrological textures, elemental guardians/sentinels, Lovecraftian voids of shattered architecture and levitational platforms that tested every facet of the player's toolset and cunning, (I could go on). I'm certain that if your team ever came back with renewed creative fire, you'd produce something marvellous.
Like I said, I’d be willing to commission a re-collaboration if I ever came into some funds (not that the petty construct of money has anything to do with creativity) or even offer some of my own ideas for you to use and refine to your own specifications.
Please convey this heartfelt message to other members of The Black Parade team if possible. If you ever want to contact me personally, please let me know, but if it's not to be, you all have my deepest love and respect~
Take care, and may the Builder be with thee in thy work ---[] *
Sorry but we did what
we wanted, just not what you wanted.
Doing elements trial on Arcane Sanctum ? You already had it with the previous mission, Jaw of Darkness.
If we did that someone would call the campaign lazy and repeatitive.
And the last mission is what it is due to Thief being a Thief game, making it complicated to make a great final - we did our best with the organic horror genre and no creativity would have helped.
And all the mechanics you mentionned would suit more a rpg like Arx Fatalis than a stealth game. It would have been called off topic or lame pacing-wise. Platforming or loot creation are bad mechanics on the FM scene with classic gameplay and physics. It should be avoided. And again, we still had complaints about the few cases of plateforming, easy or not.
Sorry if my answer feels cold, but we won't change nor rework our campaign for anyone aside important bugfixes or else it won't be our project anymore.
You are however free to use all our provided assets with Dromed and make your own TBP missions if you believe your creativity could bring something better. ( and I swear I am not being sarcastic : anyone is welcome to harvest the project's resources for their own missions ;) )
But that would definitely be your own work and without us.
Garrett731 on 2/12/2025 at 18:35
Quote Posted by FireMage
Sorry but we did what
we wanted, just not what you wanted.
Doing elements trial on Arcane Sanctum ? You already had it with the previous mission, Jaw of Darkness.
If we did that someone would call the campaign lazy and repeatitive.
And the last mission is what it is due to Thief being a Thief game, making it complicated to make a great final - we did our best with the organic horror genre and no creativity would have helped.
And all the mechanics you mentionned would suit more a rpg like Arx Fatalis than a stealth game. It would have been called off topic or lame pacing-wise. Platforming or loot creation are bad mechanics on the FM scene with classic gameplay and physics. It should be avoided. And again, we still had complaints about the few cases of plateforming, easy or not.
Sorry if my answer feels cold, but we won't change nor rework our campaign for anyone aside important bugfixes or else it won't be our project anymore.
You are however free to use all our provided assets with Dromed and make your own TBP missions if you believe your creativity could bring something better. ( and I swear I am not being sarcastic : anyone is welcome to harvest the project's resources for their own missions ;) )
But that would definitely be your own work and without us.
Oh, if I had the time and developed skill, I would - believe me.
I fear you misunderstood much of my post. I didn't make explicit demands, and the examples I provided weren't meant to be taken
that literally (I didn't actually mean an element trial).
Besides, a basic item transmutation mechanic in a magic sanctum is no less
RPG-esque than restringing amethyst harps with spider silk (Jaws of Darkness) and recovering holy swords through solving riddles (Death's Dominion).
Your answer is more disappointing than cold, but I can appreciate your feelings.
Take care.
skacky on 2/12/2025 at 18:59
marbleman and FireMage are correct that we don't intend to make an update to the campaign besides bugfixing. There is no TBP Gold or TBP Remastered in the works, nor will there ever be. Not even if you, or anyone else, pay us for it.
As for the topic at hand, no I don't feel like there was creative burnout anywhere in the campaign. There was overall burnout and the need to finally release it, but creativity remained constant throughout. The missions were not made in a vacuum, each and every one of them has very detailed design documents penned as far back as 2015. We stuck mostly to this, including the final mission which did not receive the same amount of love than the others.
Many of the things you mention, if not all of them, were considered for Arcane Sanctum. We even had the possibility of obtaining spell scrolls you could conjure at will for this mission and the next, and there was a lengthy side-quest with a special door. We cut all of that because, frankly, it did not gel with what Thief is at its core and it'd have turned the mission into a giant gimmick gallery. The mission which already has semi-ghosting and a failstate on taking any loot within the castle on Expert, may I add. We wanted to stick to the classic Thief formula. YMMV on whether this makes the campaign more compelling or not. Reading your posts, it feels like you're disappointed that the mission did not give what you expected it to give you, some of which were already core elements of the previous mission. I don't think that's the mission's fault, nor is it creative burnout.
Also, ratings are to be taken with grains of salt naturally, but Arcane Sanctum is one of the highest rated missions in the campaign on Thief Guild so I'm not entirely sure where you get the idea that most people find it disappointing.
Garrett731 on 2/12/2025 at 19:54
Quote Posted by skacky
marbleman and FireMage are correct that we don't intend to make an update to the campaign besides bugfixing. There is no TBP Gold or TBP Remastered in the works, nor will there ever be. Not even if you, or anyone else, pay us for it.
As for the topic at hand, no I don't feel like there was creative burnout anywhere in the campaign. There was overall burnout and the need to finally release it, but creativity remained constant throughout. The missions were not made in a vacuum, each and every one of them has very detailed design documents penned as far back as 2015. We stuck mostly to this, including the final mission which did not receive the same amount of love than the others.
Many of the things you mention, if not all of them, were considered for Arcane Sanctum. We even had the possibility of obtaining spell scrolls you could conjure at will for this mission and the next, and there was a lengthy side-quest with a special door. We cut all of that because, frankly, it did not gel with what Thief is at its core and it'd have turned the mission into a giant gimmick gallery. The mission which already has semi-ghosting and a failstate on taking any loot within the castle on Expert, may I add. We wanted to stick to the classic Thief formula. YMMV on whether this makes the campaign more compelling or not. Reading your posts, it feels like you're disappointed that the mission did not give what you expected it to give you, some of which were already core elements of the previous mission. I don't think that's the mission's fault, nor is it creative burnout.
Also, ratings are to be taken with grains of salt naturally, but Arcane Sanctum is one of the highest rated missions in the campaign on Thief Guild so I'm not entirely sure where you get the idea that most people find it disappointing.
Hello there. Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, along with the transmutation table, a spell scroll mechanic came to mind, and that's wonderful.
To be fair, restringing an amethyst harp with spider silk to summon a bridge is conceptually gimmicky (and there are more examples in The Black Parade), so I don't understand why transmutation tables or spell scrolls were considered too extreme, but very well.
Yes, ratings can indeed be fallible (just look at some of the most popular games today), and some players don't participate in ratings at all, which can lead to false impressions.
The post was more an enquiry than an expression of disappointment. The Black Parade is exquisitely designed (I also
love your personal level design philosophy, Endless Rain being one small example), but I felt there was some missed potential, whether intentional or not.
Even if you never return to The Black Parade, I still respect what you collaboratively produced. Where Old Faces Fade is officially one of my all-time favourite missions in a game; the design is just fascinating.
thehardyboyz on 2/12/2025 at 23:25
Well, at first this thread didn't seem disrespectful to me as I said, but 10-15 messages later, it's getting different...
Garrett731 on 3/12/2025 at 03:17
Quote Posted by thehardyboyz
Well, at first this thread didn't seem disrespectful to me as I said, but 10-15 messages later, it's getting different...
To be fair, I can understand them. I suppose if a stranger created a thread highlighting 'unrealised potential' in a campaign I'd devoted 8 years of my life to (even if civil), I'd struggle to be respectful too.
I'm disappointed how this thread turned out (I was hoping for more positive discussion), but nevermind. I wish them all the best.
skacky on 3/12/2025 at 07:47
I don't believe anyone has been disrespectful (you nor us in the TBP team, maybe FireMage was a bit blunt).
So to explain why we didn't want Arcane Sanctum to have unconventional elements: each mission in the campaign follows a specific archetype. Like in the original game, we tried to make them varied, and to also alternate between the broad archetypes. That's why you usually have a "normal" mission, followed by a supernatural one, and then another normal mission and so on. The only exception to this are Mission 4 and Mission 5, which are both heavily supernatural. For Arcane Sanctum, Mission 9, we wanted players to have a last classic Thief mission in human territory after Mission 8 that was our wildcard mission (more on that below), and Mission 10 which was designed from the get go as the very final, no-loot mission, which is why simply adding more things to do in that one won't solve its issues; it'd need to be redone from scratch. Arcane Sanctum was specifically described as "the calm before the storm", and was meant as a breather (despite the hostile objectives at the beginning).
Mission 8, Jaws of Darkness, was designed as the mission where we wanted to experiment with unconventional elements within Thief's frame because we wanted the player to be lost in uncharted territory, both in terms of navigation, and also in terms of mechanics. That's why you have a whole menagerie of unique critters with their own unique behaviors you do not see elsewhere in the campaign. We had more things planned, but these were cut either because they were too complicated, or were actually detrimental to the experience.
That's exactly what happened to Arcane Sanctum. At one point we had to sit down and think of whether this or that made for a better experience. Believe me, all that stuff regarding spellcasting or transmutation or potion-brewing would've made for a lesser mission, and one that was at odds with the campaign as a whole. We did not want to suddenly turn Hume into a spellcaster or being able to use complicated magical formulae because that's not who he is.
All of this combined is why I say, and feel, that there was no creative burnout during the making of the campaign. We had a lot of ideas. The good ones (or at least those we thought were good for the campaign) made it into TBP, the ones we thought were either detrimental, were scope creep or didn't gel with the core experience, were thrown out like in any other project. To be honest, there was an idea for Arcane Sanctum I adored, but it was just too complicated to make for absolutely no payoff, so it was canned. That's what happens.
zajazd on 3/12/2025 at 08:01
Sorry for a little offtopic - this thread reminded me of another big fan project - Operation: Na Pali (2006) for Unreal (1998). After it was released there was a similar thread in one of the bigger Unreal fan sites and one of the lead authors replied to it very sarcastically. The Unreal community was different to ours as they were run and gun guys :joke:
