No, not another "will there be thief4" thread, but... - by Flux
jtr7 on 20/4/2008 at 00:11
There's a heavy emphasis on the drawing of Glyphs, in the air, or on a page, in the comments about crippled hands (New Order of the Crippled Hands? :D ) as a major part of the fate of the Keepers in the Unwritten Times. What about glyphs that had been carved, or were made of physical structures? The Final Glyph is made of streets, bridges, and monuments, all of which remain after the Glyphs are unwritten. Would the Final Glyph, or other possible glyphs made of physical structures be consider "written"? Is there a feasible loophole there?
Happy Birthday, Briareos H!
Renault on 20/4/2008 at 00:29
Quote Posted by MrBosnia
Played any FPS game in the past few years?
Quite a few. Granted, some of these are rentals and I haven't finished them all the way through, but I have played enough to know how they're designed:
Bioshock, Portal, Halo3, Call of Duty 4, Resistance: Fall of Man, The Darkness, FEAR, Condemned 1 & 2, Turok, Call of Juarez, Jericho, Timeshift, Gears of War, Black Site, Dark Sector...
I believe these are all straight forward chapter-based games. Some of those are 3rd person, but then again, so is Deadly Shadows.
In fact, I can't think of any games off the top of my head with hubs. I'm guessing you're referring to open world games like Oblivion, GTA, and Dead Rising..?
fett on 20/4/2008 at 02:02
Quote Posted by Brethren
I think you guys are way too RPG minded. If you dragged some of the ex-LGSers in here, they'd probably tell you there's a reason the game was configured so that your loot doesn't carry over to the next mission. It seems very obvious they didn't want this to be part of the game.
Actually the original TDP team envisioned exactly that - an open city system where Garrett would have to survive economically as well as physically. Without a city hub to legitimately buy and sell (like in TDS) it simply wouldn't balance out. But when interviewed, several of them said that TDS's open environment and consistent economy were what they would have liked to do in TDP.
I'm with you to some degree - I think it would have turned me off to the original game, but now that I've played Oblivion, it would be nice to be immersed in Garrett's life in the same way.
MrBosnia on 20/4/2008 at 02:27
Quote Posted by Brethren
Quite a few. Granted, some of these are rentals and I haven't finished them all the way through, but I have played enough to know how they're designed:
Bioshock, Portal, Halo3, Call of Duty 4, Resistance: Fall of Man, The Darkness, FEAR, Condemned 1 & 2, Turok, Call of Juarez, Jericho, Timeshift, Gears of War, Black Site, Dark Sector...
I believe these are all straight forward chapter-based games. Some of those are 3rd person, but then again, so is Deadly Shadows.
In fact, I can't think of any games off the top of my head with hubs. I'm guessing you're referring to open world games like Oblivion, GTA, and Dead Rising..?
That is what I was talking about. All of those games are progressive in nature, like Portal. You start off in one lab and go to the next, gameplay is never disrupted.
Unlike T:DP and T2 where it is mission to mission. You have absolutely no clue what your next mission will look like, except with some rough wondering supported by the briefings.
Zillameth on 20/4/2008 at 11:51
Quote Posted by MrBosnia
That is what I was talking about. All of those games are progressive in nature, like Portal. You start off in one lab and go to the next, gameplay is never disrupted.
Unlike T:DP and T2 where it is mission to mission. You have absolutely no clue what your next mission will look like, except with some rough wondering supported by the briefings.
That has nothing to do with hubs. Hub is an area you return to after each mission (or set of missions). For example, in Portal, if you returned to your cell after each of 19 missions, errr, I mean - tests, it would be a hub. But you don't, so there is no hub in Portal.
In general, there may be more than one hub. For example, in Diablo there was only one - Tristram. But in Might & Magic there were always several towns, and each of them was a hub. In Knights of the Old Republic, Ebon Hawk was your hub, although the concept was blurred, because you did your shopping outside the ship, for example.
On the other hand, TDS is clearly divided into missions, and yet it does have
a hub. Namely, Garrett's flat.
The difference you're talking about is minor and purely narrativistic in nature. It's just a question of how often you want to interrupt the gameplay with a major cutscene. Games like Bioshock or F.E.A.R. give you as little clue about what to expect as any other game (at least they try to, because Bioshock was very predictable, and F.E.A.R. was very conventionalized). Not to mention both are actually divided into missions, although Bioshock tries to hide the fact by allowing you to return to previous mission areas if you really want to. Even Gears of War is divided into separate episodes (four of them, if I remember correctly), and there are plenty of boring cutscenes in each of them. And how about Doom? It was divided into missions allright, but should they be glued together - would that make any difference? You did keep your ammo and weapons, after all.
The basic unit of FPS gameplay nowadays is an "encounter". It's a single section of a level that can be taken from it and put somewhere else, but cannot be further divided without disrupting the gameplay. It's called "encounter", because it usually involves a skirmish, although there may be more than one skirmish, or even none, if an encounter contains a riddle or serves some exposition. Encounters are usually separated from each other with bottlenecks. A bottleneck that cannot be passed before an encounter is resolved is called a "gate".
There is also a technological aspect. Basically, you want to load as much content as fast as possible. In the past, this usually involved loading a big, independent area, and that made the division into missions natural. In recent years, data streaming has become more feasible, and it prefers loading small chunks of data often. Thus the encounter-based approach.
abdallah on 20/4/2008 at 16:43
Interesting. So the HUB in a game like GTA is the entire city? Or just the flat? What about a game like Oblivion, where there's no need to buy a home or go to a home to save?
I like the approach in TDS, but it's too small. Seems unrealistic that Garret can remain uncaught in such a small city. He'd need to sleep at some point.. Besides that, I would like a day/night cycle, with a fast forward option to go straight to the night. It would open up for interesting level designs if not all jobs had to be done at night, too, sneaking during the day could be possible, and missions centered around that could be great. I think it was in Thief 1 where there was a mission where Garret dressed like a Mechanist to be able to walk around unnoticed in the parts of the church where acolytes were allowed. Something like that..
It would be nice to have a little countryside to explore too, getting to rob deliveries between the main city and some smaller town/s. Nature could be an interesting place to sneak around in, with zombies and creatures roaming.. Mines, small cemeteries, swamps and (more or less!) abandoned houses in the forest could be gold.
MrBosnia on 20/4/2008 at 21:00
The Hub idea is very applicable. The only thing is that the developers would really need to flesh out the city of Thief 4 a lot more. Many things to do, lots of places to rob, and at least a dozen of side missions you could take on would be nice. Give the game some value.
Zillameth on 20/4/2008 at 21:36
I only played GTA 2, and it didn't have a hub at all. I don't think a whole city in any GTA could be a hub, because there should be at least some separation between the hub and the proper challenge (for instance, in role playing games like Might & Magic or Fallout, towns are always generally safe, although some missions may take place within their limits).
In Oblivion, towns are hubs. Your house is important from the narrativistic perspective, but functionally it's more like a minor upgrade of a town where it's located.
A very good example of a hub is the first upgrade station you find in System Shock 2 (on the Med/Sci deck). It's safe, because monsters never go in there on themselves (you can lure them in there, but I don't think they would ever use the lift to the bottom floor). It provides "shopping", because you can spend modules there. It's clearly separated from the rest of the game, because there is only a single door connecting it to the rest of the deck. It's also located very conveniently, just a few metres from the main lift, so you can access it at virtually any point troughout most of the game.
New Horizon on 20/4/2008 at 23:43
Quote Posted by MrBosnia
The Hub idea is very applicable. The only thing is that the developers would really need to flesh out the city of Thief 4 a lot more. Many things to do, lots of places to rob, and at least a dozen of side missions you could take on would be nice. Give the game some value.
I still really dislike the idea of the city hub. I'm glad they didn't do it for Thief 1 and 2 because it forced them to keep things simple and turn to Narrative to make Thief feel far more classic in it's execution.
With the approach being proposed, it just wouldn't be possible to execute as tightly woven a story as Thief 1 and 2. In addition to that, building a city as complex as people are describing here is the equivalent of creating a completely separate game. That's the same mistake they made with TDS....they essentially tried to make 2 or 3 games within one, and all various sections suffered for it.
I demand nothing of a potential Thief developer, except that they focus on making a pure, classic, Thief experience. I say this mainly because I understand just how difficult it is to create a game like Thief in a new engine. Looking Glass Studios managed to create some amazing Tech. This tech has to be completely recreated from scratch by Eidos Montreal. I don't doubt they're talented, but until we see a finished product...we have no idea whether or not they're capable of pulling off a true Thief experience. People just seem to keep expecting feature after feature to be piled on top of Thief. My advice to Eidos Montreal would be to stick to the core features...and worry about extras if time permits.
jtr7 on 20/4/2008 at 23:56
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