Elentari on 13/5/2009 at 22:11
Personally I don't mind loadzones too much. What bugged me about them in TDS was the zones were so blasted TINY. I mean, going through a loadzone into the Rutherford Mansion would have worked. Then you have the whole mansion area to explore/run around in. Then go through the zone to leave. Instead you had the mission start 'load zone', then the place was cut into two as well. Which made no sense to me.
I realize the level of details/objects/animations going would slow things down, but surely it can handle larger areas than that did??? The city zones didn't bother me as badly - it did make the city seem a bit larger being able to run around *some* sections of it, and I can understand that couldn't be nearly as large as a real city - but. . .well IN T2 there's larger areas and still a large selection of objects and such. . .and less you can actually interact with. Couldn't they balance that? Use load zones where necessary, but leave more of an open world?
I was going to say use load zones like Guild Wars or something. . .BIG areas to run around in, zones into new areas, that are also quite large - but then, games like that have very little 'interactivity' with the world, which probably helps that. . .and not a direction I want to see see Thief go in. Part of its charm is all the things you can do. :P
Opal-Eyed Fan on 13/5/2009 at 22:38
I'll have to write this from memory so it may or may not be totally accurate.
When Ion Storm tried to make the sequels to Deus Ex and Theif, they had good experience working with the Unreal engine for Deus Ex.
The original Unreal engine were brilliant for it's day, so they wanted to use Unreal2 engine for Thief3 and Deus Ex 2.
Unreal2 engine however was not very good, and they made it worse when they decided to use similar lighting and shadowing as Id was making for Doom3. The end result was levels to tough to handle for the xbox, and because they were a bit stupid,, they ended up with small chop'd up levels, no swimming, no bla bla... and they even claimed that "less is more". :joke: TDS Design = epic fail.
Let's hope Eidos Montreal get's it right. :D
SneakyJack on 13/5/2009 at 22:40
Please, no loading zones. A million times no.
