jtr7 on 7/6/2011 at 22:23

---

The debate has never gotten anywhere. It's always the frustrated/disappointed vs. the deniers/blissfully-ignorant. And somehow, the frustration/disappointment with TDS is turned into total hatred for TDS and/or purity of the older titles, when it's directly responding to very specific aspects regarding only pieces of the whole experience.

If you never noticed any of that in the debates you are somehow aware of without knowing the nature at all, and you never noticed this stuff in the game, then you can't add to the debate constructively until you do, so I hope you will take some time here. Not caring is something else and not very useful to anyone but the person him/herself.


The clunky and malformed 1st-person was ruined by giving 3rd-person priority, and 3rd-person requires an animated player model. If there was no 3rd-person, but there was an animated player-model to create body-awareness in 1st-person, many issues would remain, but there would be a lot more time for the animators to serve the camera movement and terrain navigation. Don't notice the clunky 1st-person movement where the camera is locked into the rigid player-model animation? Don't notice the player model getting locked onto ladders and gliding only straight up and down on rails and how there is only one ladder model for every instance? Don't notice how the game auto-animates the character for engaging the lockpicking minigame with locks in the center of doors? Don't notice the many mentions of these things in various ways, common and uncommon. Never heard anyone describe TDS Garrett's movement as "drunken"? There is nothing classic or as free in TDS as the movement of the older titles, so no, game-play is not the same, nor superior, even if some concepts behind them are, stillborn or malformed in execution. There was a price paid, and it wasn't worth it.

Seeing around corners and above ledges without physically moving the character, eliminating some tension, surprise, and vulnerability, was not classic Thief, but safer and easier, which is the opposite of what's great about the gameworld of Thief. Add to that a ton of gear and weaponry to an already over-powered player-character, and you further remove tension and vulnerability and the need for observation and patience and thought, in direct opposition to classic gameplay.


The development requirements for 3rd-person, player-model, and animation library, are massive compared to 1st-person and limited body-awareness. The major thing that will fix what TDS got wrong is not having the camera locked into the player-model's animation during terrain navigation in 1st-person. The animation is not smooth, not comfortable in that environment, and is of low-fidelity, resulting in a camera that jerks rigidly from key-frame to key-frame, made worse with menu settings for higher environmental details. When moving horizontally, moving the body immediately in the direction the player is pointing the camera is critical, and of the trilogy, only TDS has the camera following the body, not the other way around, and so, walking across pipes in 1st-person often results in not walking in the direction the player points the camera, but in the direction the the feet are pointing until they course correct, eliminating finesse and immediacy, as well as intuitive and more-natural navigation. With limited animations, it's better to mimic real-life movement expectations, skipping animations altogether for that fraction of a second, than to force the player to anticipate and wait for an animation to play out to avoid misstepping; and likewise, the player shouldn't have to look down or switch views to align the feet to the intended direction to avoid a misstep, except to make up for the fact that there's no peripheral vision or tactile feedback. When climbing ladders, walls, ropes/vines/chains/cables, if the player looks upward, and presses the forward button, move upward. If the player continues to press the forward button but looks down, move downward. If the player looks up or down and presses the back button, move in the opposite direction the player is looking. TDS reversed the classic movement on the ladders for some reason. No, the gameplay is not the same. TDS movement is worse than the classic movement, when it should've fixed old problems and not created new ones.

Pyrian on 8/6/2011 at 22:42

---

Really. I don't like "close-follow-cam" interface, period. There are a substantial number of games I would probably enjoy if they'd simply been in first person instead of close-follow-cam (Epic Mickey, Dead Space). Close-follow-cam is IMO clunky, distracting, and inefficient - nothing quite like having your character literally get in the way of what you're trying to look at, and don't even start me on the cam-overrides that frequently come with it (Epic Mickey, I'm looking at you). (I'm using the term "close-follow-cam" to distinguish between more top-down views which are usually fine, but also aren't really suited to this type of game.)

I'm okay with the cut-scene separation (e.g. Deus Ex convos and Fallout 3/NV VAT), although my experience strongly suggests they're totally unnecessary (for example, there's nothing wrong with first-person conversation in Fallout 3/New Vegas nor first-person takedowns in Mirror's Edge). I'm okay with 3rd person being an option, although while trying it I really can't imagine the appeal to simply having your character's rear intruding into your viewspace, and I invariably quickly turn it back off.

jtr7 on 13/6/2011 at 23:01

---

In what manner are you envisioning? Conversations? In-engine cutscenes? Or actual intermittent enabling for specific scenarios?

nbohr1more on 16/6/2011 at 00:50

---

FPS is the way to go.

I had once believed that Chronicles of Riddick's hybrid FPS and 3rd person sequences were ideal for jumping and mantling but once you experience these actions implemented properly there's no going back.

I still wish for the ability to get into (FPS view) fisticuffs and perform "escape hijinks" similar to Riddick's entertaining fist fight system though...

Chade on 20/6/2011 at 04:53

---

By definition third person is not immersive?

Immersion is a mental state. The camera is a set of pictures on a screen. I wouldn't go around blindly assuming that other people react to pictures on a screen in the exact same way that you do.

You are a player sitting in a well insulated room on a comfortable seat, controlling an electronic fiction fighting for his life in a freezing muddy pit.

If you can ignore the conspicuous lack of cold, mud, and blood, and still feel like YOU are the one fighting for your life in a freezing muddy pit, then is it really so hard to imagine that other people do not lose immersion simply because their character appears on the screen?