If only... - by wimmy
wimmy on 17/5/2006 at 15:54
Has it struck anyone else that Bethesda, creators of Morrowind and Oblivion seem to have been at least partly influenced by the Thief series? Playing Oblivion recently is about the closest thing I've had to a real "Thiefy" experience since T2 - moody environments, annoying city guards, a "light gem", archery, partrolling AI, overheard character conversations, different approaches to jobs...own up, has anyone else called their character after our favourite master thief or started sneaking and thought "it could be thief...almost"?
Ok, Oblivion is still Oblivion and its not Thief....but imagine if a development studio like Bethesda got hold of the licence and spent some time on it...
sigh...too much optimism :nono:
Dr.Haggard on 17/5/2006 at 16:26
Quote Posted by wimmy
Playing Oblivion recently is about the closest thing I've had to a real "Thiefy" experience since T
3Fixed ;)
New Horizon on 17/5/2006 at 16:59
Quote Posted by Dr.Haggard
Fixed ;)
Depends if you consider T3 a 'real' Thiefy experience. Many of us don't...it was close, but in many ways...it was simply a Thief clone.
june gloom on 17/5/2006 at 18:36
i don't agree with that. thief as it stands is fairly unique in its combination of light-based stealth (as opposed to, say, metal gear where you have to hide around corners), collection of loot, its rather lively characters (i can't think of any other game outside of an RPG that has THAT many scripted conversations, let alone one-liners by wandering or alert NPCs) as well as the steampunk theme.
okay, yes, many other games incorporate these, but not all at once.
as far as i'm concerned, a thief clone would be that assassins dealie that's been getting a lot of attention around here. so would thievery and the dark mod, but that's actually intentional.
yes, i liked thief 3 for what it was, and with the minimalist mod i found it almost as enjoyable as classic thief. and it was much less of a raping of a revered series than deus ex 2 was.
Dr.Haggard on 17/5/2006 at 19:18
Quote Posted by New Horizon
Depends if you consider T3 a 'real' Thiefy experience. Many of us don't...it was close, but in many ways...it was simply a Thief clone.
Yes, but my point was that whatever your feelings about TDS I don't think anyone can deny that when it's at its best it offers a 'thiefy experience'.
I didn't intend to start another debate about the merits of the game, but I find it hard to believe any Thief fan could fail to find something to love in it, even if it's only the story and the cut scenes. There's no denying they screwed up a lot of things - it's the runt of the Thief litter - but it retains just enough of what I love about the games, and is enjoyable enough, that it doesn't matter too much.
I think wimmy was deliberately being a bit provocative anyway - clearly Oblivion doesn't offer more of a 'thiefy' experience than Deadly Shadows, if you assume 'thiefy' to mean 'feels like a Thief game' - but he does make an interesting point, and I'm tempted to re-roll a stealthy character in Oblivion :)
Holywhippet on 17/5/2006 at 23:07
One of the developers for Oblivion is ex-LGS and worked on the Thief series. I believe he was responsible for implementing the stealth system into Oblivion.
wimmy on 18/5/2006 at 11:18
I'll be honest, when I was typing that post I did type T3 at first but then thinking back, the third game never really captured the atmosphere of the first two for me. There were just too many technical issues, such a different "feel" to the controls and too many things that stopped me being immersed in the environment (especially the "flat against wall" move that seemed to make you completely invisible - I ended up forcing myself never to use it in order to make the game more challenging).
I've replayed T1 and T2 countless times - I've never once been tempted to replay T3. :erg:
New Horizon on 18/5/2006 at 15:03
Quote Posted by wimmy
(especially the "flat against wall" move that seemed to make you completely invisible - I ended up forcing myself never to use it in order to make the game more challenging).
It did make you completely invisible. :) There was a bug that I verified with some ex developers, they only found out about it after the game had essentially been finished and they weren't permitted to go back and try to fix it.
Basically, it was a mathmatical error that caused the light gem to drop into negative numbers when you went into wall hugging mode. I fixed it in Minimalist Project 1.4...I just reduced the number assigned to the lightgem bonus for wall hugging until the computation gave the same result as crouching, which is what it was supposed to do.
