EM Teaser & Site Updates - Official Trailer Up & Latest PREVIEWS & Blog Fan Kit - by thiefessa
jtr7 on 13/5/2013 at 01:59
UnThief, NuThief,
Red Thief, Blue Thief.
"Big things are coming for Thief on the web"
When? Sūn.
thiefessa on 13/5/2013 at 07:10
Waiting patiently, y'all? :cool: :)
heywood on 13/5/2013 at 08:08
Well, if they do implement a cover system, it had better not be a 3rd person camera gimbal over the shoulder that lets you survey the area with no risk of breaking cover. That felt like cheating in DX:HR and took tension out of the game.
But I wouldn't mind something more natural than plain old crouch & lean. Like some kind of "peek" move that allows you to momentarily peek around a corner or over a hip wall, at a reduced (but not zero) risk of your head being spotted. Performed while remaining in first person of course.
Curunir on 13/5/2013 at 09:07
lol cover system?
You know it, baby! It will be a terrible 3rd person thing with sloppy camera angles and 4-button combos.
Beleg Cúthalion on 13/5/2013 at 09:16
I'm probably lacking experience of all the terrible cover systems in current computer games, but to me "cover system" simply sounds like a system to get cover behind objects. This would be exactly what Thief had right from the beginning, hopefully it will stay that way.
jtr7 on 13/5/2013 at 09:28
There shouldn't be a "system" at all. Give the AIs "sight" and make sure the player understands not to let those "eyes" see the player model.
Vivian on 13/5/2013 at 09:37
'Cover System' basically means 'special hiding button'. You point at a cover object and push something then bang, you are hiding behind it and nothing on the other side can see you. Although usually you get a 3rd person zoom-out so you can see them. It's shit. Jtr's right, hiding should just mean line of sight is blocked (it's a game, so I guess the 'I can't see you so you can't see me' fallacy is just a consequence of the refrigerator box), no such 'system' is necessary.
And what's frustrating is that recently, with Dishonored and Far Cry 3, there have been commercially and critically successful implementations of stealth that don't require these stupid chest-high-wall-isms. They're getting anachronistic in console terms (yes yes they were never needed in the first place). So it wouldn't even be a quote-unquote unprecedented or even that risky thing to not have them in Thief.
Chade on 13/5/2013 at 13:08
A "third person cover system" is more important when you don't have shadows to hide in. All stealth games need some way of knowing what guards are doing without them detecting you.
Thief has a diverse array of tools to achieve this: shadows to hide in, verbose guards, three lean commands, water arrows, scouting orbs, etc ... it's the central gameplay element in a stealth game, so it's important to give the player lots of good options. I'm open to adding more tools to spy on guards, with all the standard disclaimers about it "being done well" and in a "thiefy fashion" (for most people this just means "don't force third person" :p).
If they feel the need to streamline leaning and/or want to have some sort of cover button, the first thought that occurs to me is a peek button. The peek button would look for an edge close to the player's face which the player is looking directly at, and make the player peek around it while maintaining first person. This could actually be quite flexible: the player could peek under or over furniture as well as around walls or over balconies.
Peeking would require the UI to second-guess the player, unfortunately. However, thief already does this for mantling, and peeking should work a lot better (if the computer guesses wrong, it won't cause the player to jump up and down loudly on tiles!).
Renault on 13/5/2013 at 14:38
This cover system thing, coupled with the aforementioned Swoop mechanic (and Focus too, to some degree) doesn't paint a pretty picture of this game. Gears of War without all the shooting? It seems evident they're heading off in a direction that LGS never would have. Funny thing is, Thief is actually pretty simple and doesn't need all these features. EM is working all these new mechanics and flashy systems, and they should really just be focusing on sound and level design.
I'm pretty pessimistic about this game at the moment - the thing that really did it for me is hearing how SE considered the latest Tomb Raider and Hit Man games failures, when each game sold about 3-4 million copies. All this talk about cover systems and new mechanics fits into that perfectly - they're going for the largest demographic possible and they want to make the game super easy for anyone to play. Get ready to be consolised. You'll be able to get from one end of the mansion to the other just by pushing triangle, square, X, circle...
I was surprised to see it even existed, but there's a Wikipedia entry on (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_system) cover systems. Kind of interesting, while most the games mentioned are (of course) shooters and third person titles, they reference System Shock as the first 3D game to have a cover system.
Queue on 13/5/2013 at 15:01
Quote Posted by Brethren
Funny thing is, Thief is actually pretty simple and doesn't need all these features.
QFT
Most games don't need all the silliness that's being put in, which I find too distracting to implement in the first place (I have to push what and what to do what?). I recently played Max Payne 3, and never once used bullet-time. Same with Hitman:Absolution, never once did I use "instinct". They weren't needed to play the games, or enjoy the hell out of them. Features like these seem more like wasted time and effort that could be better afforded elsewhere during development.
