aidakeeley on 8/1/2010 at 03:34

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Is that DS and every-little-single-thing about it sucks.

If you don't know that then you don't really like Thief anyway and should "go away!*"

*AKA, Toady Toad-speak for "leave my master alone!"

PotatoGuy on 8/1/2010 at 08:31

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Haven't we talked about this enough? :rolleyes:

Some people like TDS, some people don't. It's a matter of opinions.

kamyk on 13/1/2010 at 01:41

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Going off topic here...

I personally liked the game. It was the one I started with, and if it weren't for TDS, I'd never have found out about TG/TMA in the first place.

I totally understand the differences and dissapointments at this point, having become a die hard TG/FM fan, but TDS was still Thief. Thief with warts and a learning disability perhaps, but still Thief. It had Garrett, the various factions, the right atmosphere, and the majority of the gameplay was sneaking and hiding in shadows, and picking up loot. Moaning about blue glow, or loot glint, or fonts doesn't make it not Thief, it makes it Thief with presentation issues you don't like.

To rock the boat a tiny bit, there are actually some few things I preferred in TDS to the other two games. Like lockpicking. Lockpicking in TG/TMA/FMs bores the living shit out of me. There is no skill of any kind whatsoever involved other than pressing [ and ]. It's even so boringly and repetetively implemented that I can posit a most commonly used picking setup in FMs. Start with one pick (most often gold), hold mouse button 5-10 seconds. Switch to the other pick. Hold for 2-5 seconds. Switch to the first pick again, hold for some ridiculous amount of time. Click goes the lock. Or some variation in order of the above three. I've seen this combination often enough to notice. At least in TDS there was some tiny bit more interactivity.

To go way off topic now, there is a perfectly good lockpick system built into TMA that would up the challenge and interest level quite a bit, but no one ever uses it. Using the wrong pick sets the lock back! I get so bored with the standard setup I want to scream. I look at lockpicking in FMs as a huge boring chore. Give me fumbling around with the mouse, finding the right sweet spot, over that any day if that's my only alternative.

kamyk on 13/1/2010 at 02:16

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Saying they did it on purpose is a bit over the top I think. They did what they could with what they had, and tried to stay as true to the game as possible given the limitations of both the engine and the parent company demanding xbox ready.

As far as games sequels that dissapoint you are concerned, I'm no stranger to the concept. I was playing the SSX (snowboarding) game series from it's conception. It culminated with SSX3, which was probably the best console game of it's type I will ever play. Then comes the next game in line which changes fundamental gameplay, on top of taking a tremendous change in presentation including music, art, character design and a complete lack of voice talents that were near and dear to the series.

Take Thief. Add guns and change it to modern. Instead of the factions we know and love make ones based on something else like say mobsters and Nazis. Change the way the main character steals into something harder like say having to carefully balance the object so it doesn't fall as he picks it up. Remove the rewarding ching. Make it washed out looking. Instead of Garret throw in a super generic create a character system. Remove any semblance of beloved voice acting, and throw in some idiot announcer. Add a good dose of rap and heavy metal.

Thats the order of mangling I have dealt with in a beloved series. Complaints about loot glint, and less than perfect control issues that tried to be as true to things as it could manage mean a lot less to me in comparison.

jtr7 on 13/1/2010 at 02:30

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Sorry, kamyk. The TDS controls are, for many of us, not less than perfect, they are less than adequate. Fonts were choices, loot glint was a choice, arrow trails...all you see are from choices, and after coming from the games that changed our worlds forever, TDS looks like a mockery instead of a leap forward. TDS has a long list of continuity errors affecting most Thief basics and details. It does a great deal of things right, but the best of those are buried under things that aren't so important. The choice to have XBox and a living room television as the delivery system of the entertainment to be the overriding design principle, and then to throw in 3rd-person as more important than 1st, and to build the game with an audience ten years younger in mind, were all choices that strangled what the other games had us in awe over. It's not an evolutionary leap of the Thief games, but a technical experiment that Thief feels shoehorned into. It's not nearly as petty or superficial as you would like to believe, and we've yet to find the words to help those in your position understand without first-hand experience. Most of my effort to play TDS comes form the system and game-mechanic differences, not the challenge of the game itself. I get tired of playing just fighting what I see vs. what I'm doing with the controls. The water and rope arrows are, in fact, two things the devs had no choice but to abandon, due to one programmer's bad decisions and his management's bad decisions, which the T3 team weren't even aware of.