EM Teaser & Site Updates - Official Trailer Up & Latest PREVIEWS & Blog Fan Kit - by thiefessa
Starker on 16/5/2013 at 23:33
Quote Posted by Chade
Absolutely, but we're not talking about Garrett being the best lockpicker ever. There's lots of locks he can't pick even once he acquires lockpicks. We're talking about him not having lockpicks at all.
Garrett's been thieving for a while by the start of Thief 1. Once Garrett acquires his lockpicks, he uses them all the time, in places that Basso couldn't reasonably get to unless he was just as skilled at sneaking as Garrett (plus a better lockpicker!). There's no way the lockpicks can reasonably go from "something he only occasionally needs, and gets someone else to do whenever he does", to "you are going to need these on every second door you come across". Are we supposed to believe that Basso followed Garrett around everywhere Garrett went?
(And while I'm at it, it's not just lockpicks, but all the other tools of his trade that get slowly introduced throughout the game, although there isn't any attempt to tie that into the fiction at all ... LGS just does it and hopes to brush it under the carpet without the player thinking about it too much.)
I don't think that Garrett was already an accomplished master thief by T1. In fact, it seemed that he was only just starting to be noticed by the big fish in the pond.
Anyway, even if the old games did something badly that is no excuse for the new ones to do it too. If anything, devs should work much harder to avoid ludonarrative dissonance. Especially in a series like Thief where immersion originally played a very big part.
Also, Thief had a very minimalistic approach to storytelling. The player had to fill in quite a lot of details.
Quote Posted by Chade
(System Shock 2 was something of an outlier with regard to sparse resources, too.)
Even more reason to be concerned then.
Quote Posted by Chade
So ... Garrett performing whatever commands you enter on the keyboard/mouse, like every single other game in the history of gaming ... is considered cheating now?
In the original games you had to aim your blows manually. The game didn't do it for you. You could even miss.
Quote Posted by Chade
By the way, I am
very happy that the player will not have a dedicated melee weapon. You say that using the blackjack like a club is a bad thing? Why? It sounds a whole heck of a lot better then skewering people with a sword!
Who takes a blackjack to a sword fight?
Quote Posted by Chade
And again, "taking on whole groups" refers to 3-4 guards, and requires using up some of the players finite focus resource, which is also something Garrett can do in the earlier games if he expends some of his finite equipment (health potions, arrows, fire arrows, mines, etc).
Notice that it was not a super effective combat option. Yes, you could do it, but it was quite likely to fail at first. Also, the really powerful equipment was quite hard to come by, unless you knew where to look.
jtr7 on 17/5/2013 at 00:04
Once again, if combat was already in place and so effective, why enhance it and add in more equipment for it, more special animations, etc? It's already plentiful. What I love about Garrett is his vulnerability in combat, the unmatched feeling of risk, but power over his opposition when successfully not detected.
Chade on 17/5/2013 at 00:13
Quote Posted by Starker
Anyway, even if the old games did something badly that is no excuse for the new ones to do it too. If anything, devs should work much harder to avoid ludonarrative dissonance. Especially in a series like Thief where immersion originally played a very big part.
Yeah, there's a grey area here. Players willingly immerse themselves games all the time, despite the odd things that never quite make sense. We do it in thief, we do it in other games. But obviously there's only so much we're prepared to overlook. That's why you have to take each case on it's individual merits, you can't apply any black and white rules.
Quote Posted by Starker
In the original games you had to aim your blows manually. The game didn't do it for you. You could even miss.
Which is still likely to be true in this game. Yeah, focus will make it easier, but again: finite resource. And slowing down time to make things easier does is not "click to win" either. Presumably you'll still have to carry through the appropriate actions, you'll just be much less likely to stuff it up.
Maybe. This is all speculation.
Quote Posted by Starker
Who takes a blackjack to a sword fight?
Presumably someone who didn't expect and isn't encouraged to enter a sword fight. Giving someone a sword in a thief game is a big problem when they then proceed to form the crazy opinion that, you know, they can legitimately use it.
Or maybe he's just a super cool emo ninja. I guess we'll see.
Quote Posted by Starker
Notice that it was not a super effective combat option. Yes, you could do it, but it was quite likely to fail at first. Also, the really powerful equipment was quite hard to come by, unless you knew where to look.
I would say it's not something you could afford to do very often. Depending on how thief 4 is tuned, it may or may not be the same.
Starker on 17/5/2013 at 07:12
Quote Posted by Chade
Yeah, there's a grey area here. Players willingly immerse themselves games all the time, despite the odd things that never quite make sense. We do it in thief, we do it in other games. But obviously there's only so much we're prepared to overlook. That's why you have to take each case on it's individual merits, you can't apply any black and white rules.
I'm far from being the only one who thinks that Garrett decorating his hideout with phat loot goes against his character. From my point of view they are reinventing a character that didn't need reinventing.
Quote Posted by Chade
Which is still likely to be true in this game. Yeah, focus will make it easier, but again: finite resource. And slowing down time to make things easier does is not "click to win" either. Presumably you'll still have to carry through the appropriate actions, you'll just be much less likely to stuff it up.
Maybe. This is all speculation.
The minigame as it was described in the preview does not sound like real time non-abstracted action to me at all.
Quote Posted by Chade
Presumably someone who didn't expect and isn't encouraged to enter a sword fight. Giving someone a sword in a thief game is a big problem when they then proceed to form the crazy opinion that, you know, they can legitimately use it.
How does having them enter the sword fight with a blackjack make any more sense? The way I see it, it's even a bigger problem to give them the idea that they can use a blackjack for combat.
Quote Posted by Chade
Or maybe he's just a super cool emo ninja. I guess we'll see.
Inline Image:
http://i.imgur.com/a13GhZW.jpgBriareos H on 17/5/2013 at 08:39
:yawn:
jtr7 on 17/5/2013 at 09:03
Commercial break! Go take a piss, and let the dog/cat out/in.
thiefessa on 17/5/2013 at 09:05
Gotta love the hyperbole. :laff:
Balliol on 17/5/2013 at 17:20
My sides hurt from laughing
And....crying.
Dia on 17/5/2013 at 21:02
Same here, Balliol. My only concern is that if the T4 devs actually read any of the T4 forum threads, you guys may be giving them the wrong kind of ideas, because obviously they've run out of ideas of their own. Quite awhile ago.
:ebil:
:p
Renzatic on 18/5/2013 at 04:32
There's nothing worse than an echo chamber.
There hasn't been any new info released on the game since the initial rush a month ago, yet you're all somehow even more enraged and cynical than you were when they first showed the trailer.
It's cuz you're all feeding off each other's negative emotions. The less you hear, the more you start putting pictures to things you all think you've seen by reading between the lines. The more negative opinion pieces that get posted around here, the angrier you all get. The angrier you get, the more you start misinterpreting things. Start thinking that the devs are actively making fun of you, due to the way they worded some certain thing in some certain interview.
If EM doesn't release any new info soon, in about 3 weeks you're all going to think that Thief 4 is going to be a Gradius sequel, and Stephane Roy is directly responsible for your hamster dying, and why you've been getting all that Viagra spam in your inbox.
