bob_doe_nz on 13/2/2006 at 07:32

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1: Yes you can... but it ruins the story...

2: the V1.1 patch and possibly the minimalist project.

3: You personally controlling Garrett so why not play through the eye(s) of our one eyed wonder :D

Thats my opinion anyway.

Komag on 13/2/2006 at 07:56

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Good questions, let me make a somewhat educated stab at them, having played all three games more than once, and having played Thief 3 entirely in first person and currently replaying in 3rd on Xbox (about 2/3 of the way through so far)

1. You can play Thief 3 without playing the previous games pretty well. There are a few small allusions here and there that cause a nice smile among us "veterans", but nothing is completely essential. There is some history among the Keepers that would be more meaningful if you'd played the first two games, but Thief 3 was designed with new gamers in mind, so it's "newbie friendly" in that regard.

That said, why not get the first two and play them first? You could do that, and then in a few months pick up Thief 3. But of course, it's up to you.

2. There was a patch released that fixed a large bug of the difficulty setting reverting back to easy whenever you loaded a save game or entered a load zone within the game. If you normally play on easy anyway, it's not even an issue. I don't recall the patch doing anything else, but perhaps there were a couple other minor fixes, nothing major.

There are a few tweaks such as high resolution skins, textures, and HUD options, but if you don't care about those things then the default game is very good the way it is (plus the improvement things can reduce your framerate performance and increase load times).

3. 1st vs 3rd person view - having played extensively both ways, I can say that the game works best played in 1st person, which is how it was originally designed anyway, and it's more true to the Thief legacy.

The developers made Thief 3 as a 1st person "sneaker". At some point later in the development, since they were using a (heavily) modified Unreal engine a few of the guys hacked in a 3rd person view just for the fun of it. When the boss saw it though he said it looked cool and that they should implement it "for reals". So they added 3rd person, but there are many cases during the game where it's obvious that the design was really meant for 1st person.

One example, in one mission you can sneak into a small attic storage room and then into the mansion proper, but in the store room there is a small object on the floor which can come in useful later on. It's nearly impossible to see from 3rd person because of the distance from the camera floating above Garrett all the way down to the floor, even with the help of the "atomic blue" frob highlight (which I think they exaggerated because of this exact issue of having a hard time seeing smaller objects from 3rd person view).

That's just one instance - this happens all the time, and you'll miss many things or find them through dumb luck or have to go back and hunt them down like crazy, all of which you can avoid if you play in 1st person where you can see properly from a Garrett-eye point of view.

In other cases, the camera in 3rd view gets caught on the environment all the time, erratically moving futher or closer to Garrett, or it gets so squished up right behind him that you can't see 2/3 of the screen for his back and head, or it gets even more squished up close so that his head plain disappears and you can see down into the ghostly hollow form of our protagonist. That just sucks. It ruins the gameplay and draws you jarringly OUT of the experience. In 3rd person view it happens a lot.

Playing from 1st person isn't perfect though. Since they implemented 3rd person they made some changes. They changed "lean" to "sidestep", which makes it utterly worthless. Yes, it's WORTHLESS. There is no point to the sidestep whatsoever, except to see Garrett do it in 3rd person because it looks sort of cool. After you've seen it once or twice in 3rd person, even if you play the rest of the game in 3rd person you'll never use it, because it has no point. If you want to see around the corner, you used to be able to stay in your darkened room and lean out the doorway to peak, staying effectively in the shadow. But now if you sidestep, you actually move out into the hall into the light. You might as well just step out there normally and then step back, it's easier and quicker anyway.

So, one small advantage playing in 3rd person has is that since the camera is floating back a bit, you can swing it around a bit to cheat and see around corners without having to even step out. Even then it doesn't always work because the view angle doesn't show you the direction you want, but oh well. With that in mind, you might at times switch to 3rd person for a moment to get a view, then switch back. But the view from 1st person will still usually be superior, as you can more precicely step just barely out past the corner, look the exact direction you want, and step back.

The other problem with 1st person view is that it's "wobbly". Garrett's movements are somewhat tied to a botched implementation of 3rd person view, so there is more "head-bob" than normal (although I don't really mind it). Garrett also moves only his head when you look around up to a certain view angle, and then when you start to move in that direction he has to take a turning step to first pivot his body, so you actually move slightly in the old direction his body was facing before getting turned all the way to the new direction you are looking. This can cause trouble if you are trying to step exactly on some narrow ledges or beams.

The main solution is to move slowly when starting to move after a turn (and you'd want to move slowly in precarious locations anyway, so it's usually not a problem). Just keep in mind that because Garrett's body is there (you can look down and see your arms, chest, legs, etc), it can sometimes seem to "get in the way" of your movements. I LOVE the fact that his body is there, it makes the 1st person experience far more real to me, so I don't mind the "baggage" it comes with.

My bottom line with all this is that I recommend playing almost entirely from 1st person view, keeping open the option of switching to 3rd person once in a while. You might even end up never using 3rd person at all.