So whats wrong with Thief 3?

SD on 11/3/2010 at 17:13

The only thing wrong with Thief 3 is that it directly follows two superior entries in the series. It's a bit like The Godfather Part 3 in that respect.

Taken purely on its merits, it's a very good game.

Avalon on 11/3/2010 at 17:53

Quote Posted by nicked

It's the level design that suggests the City is about the size of Gervasius' mansion, and the inconsistent and occasionally laughable bits of backstory that just feel "game-y" rather than like a real world (though the actual plot is strong) that blemish an otherwise brilliant game.

You know it's funny, "gamey" is the word almost all of us Thief veterans have used to describe Thief 3. I remember discussing that very thing on IRC the week it came out.

Deadly Shadows certainly added a lot of things to try and relate to the modern 'gamer'. It's funny that things we consider standard today in games, the things that appeared in Thief 3, were all considered the dreaded "breaking the 4th wall" in yesteryear's gaming. It's something you just expect today, though - along with the recent universal standardization of "Achievements," a notification that pops up in the middle of your 'immersive' game to tell you that you accomplished some mundane feat.

In that respect, I don't expect Thief 4 to come any closer to the original games than Thief 3 did. It's just the way that gaming has progressed. But in its own way, it'll probably be a lot of fun, just like Thief 3 was.

uncadonego on 11/3/2010 at 18:11

Quote Posted by JC_Denton

To me there were 3 main flaws in T3:
- small rooms and areas (thanks to Xbox)
- unresponsive controls (again thanks to Xbox)
- lack of rope arrows.

Quote Posted by nicked

For me the only thing in TDS that I can't handwave is the "shrinking" of the whole world, which reduces the atmosphere to 2 dimensions... It's the level design that suggests the City is about the size of Gervasius' mansion, and the inconsistent and occasionally laughable bits of backstory that just feel "game-y" rather than like a real world (though the actual plot is strong) that blemish an otherwise brilliant game.

Quote Posted by SD

The only thing wrong with Thief 3 is that it directly follows two superior entries in the series...

Taken purely on its merits, it's a very good game.

Mostly these points. Swimming also. You need swimming. I hope Thi4f sees itself as a chance to buy back some things that were lost.

Jarvis on 11/3/2010 at 18:19

There's a prevailing opinion that TDS is a great game, but just not a good Thief game. I disagree. People make the claim that had they played TDS first, or as unconnected to Thief, then they would have really enjoyed it.

So I tried playing it again from that sort of perspective. As though this was a totally independent game. New intellectual property.

I still can't stand lines like "Hey Garrett, how's the thieving?!". What about the voices of big bertha and so on. There are literally black market shops? They don't have a front business? They are marked by a recognizable symbol that is out in the open? They consistently toss around the names of their clientele?

Did you listen to the way the nobles talked? They all had the same "snoodiness" in their voice. It's as if the voice director said "think saturday morning cartoon quality here people. Think Gilligan's Island. You know, the millionaire and his wife? ...and action!"

The point I'm making here is that TDS treats you like an idiot. It insults your good taste and intelligence. Compare the presentation of TDS to say the original Deus Ex. Deus Ex is what an intelligent game looks like when you have to interact with many NPCs. The dialog is sharp and the voice acting believable. The world was consistent and made sense. TDS makes you turn off your brain in order to accept the way the Black Market and the Keepers operate.

I probably would have been temporarily amused by TDS had I played it first. I would have seen it as failed attempt to do a fantasy version of Splinter Cell, worth playing once and forgetting. I've only touched the tip of the iceberg of my complaints with TDS' presentation, but I think I've made my point.

There's no accounting for taste. If you like that sort of thing, then more power to you. I hold though that we should demand higher quality in our games.

nicked on 11/3/2010 at 20:10

Quote Posted by Jarvis

Deus Ex. voice acting believable.

LOL!

Painman on 11/3/2010 at 20:25

It tried to do some new things (such as the City interludes and factions), which weren't bad ideas, but they were implemented so poorly. The City had little exploration value, and the sections were pitifully small. The loading zones sure didn't help. Travel from your apartment in South Quarter to Stonemarket Proper, and you might spend more time looking at loading screens than skulking about.

Part of the problem is technical limitations of an Xbox, another part is having lost so much development time.

Factions? Another idea that could have gone somewhere, but didn't. Hammerites and Pagans want you dead (and rightly so), and what are their solutions? Play exterminator for the Hammerites, procure some shrubbery for the Pagans, and everything's copacetic. You can fiddle around with this "system" for 15 minutes between real missions, get both factions completely on your good side, then never think about it again. The whole thing is pretty weak.

The problem here, most likely, is simply lacking the time and resources to implement it in a more meaningful and interesting way.

Now, I like many of the missions, and the story isn't terrible, but those are 2 things about the game that strike me as poor enough that they probably shouldn't have bothered, and instead, spent their limited resources on the franchise's core elements. This is what bugs me when I play through the game. It was a bad title for Ion Storm to try to be ambitious with, given the limitations of the Xbox and what happened there during development. The new elements ended up just being mediocre.

Sulphur on 11/3/2010 at 21:28

Quote Posted by Jarvis

There's no accounting for taste. If you like that sort of thing, then more power to you. I hold though that we should demand higher quality in our games.

So go thou forth, and make them. To paraphrase Jean-Luc Godard, the only valid way to criticise a game is to make one of your own.

Namdrol on 11/3/2010 at 21:42

For me, what was inexcusable was the ludicrous over abundance of resources and the removal of the no kill objective.

lost_soul on 11/3/2010 at 21:53

I don't hate T3, but the limited size of the maps really took me out of the "lost in a huge world" feeling that I had in the first 2 games. Also, no water was a bad move IMO. It just detracts from the believability of the environment. The low res textures issue was solved with a fan-made texture upgrade pack.

I enjoyed the city parts though, particularly later in the game. It was fun to deliberately create lots of havoc and then disappear to watch the fighting!

T3 did have some great missions though, like the seaside mansion and the cradle. Also, I liked that music that plays when you're near a holy water fountain. It sounds very pretty.

There are some absolutely HILARIOUS things to do in T3.

When you're going up to the hammer cathedral from the cemetery via that elevator with bars on the top, try this! At the top, get the guards to chase you back to the elevator. Now, jump up and down inside of it so that the guards move to the edge (just before they can step on the elevator). Press the button to go down. As the lift goes down, the doors will close behind the Hammers and push them off and on top of the elevator! They will die, flop around, and then fall inside of the elevator. I once even had the elevator break in half doing this! i don't think I've ever laughed so hard!

Captain Spandex on 11/3/2010 at 22:24

Quote Posted by nicked

It's the level design that suggests the City is about the size of Gervasius' mansion.

Which is ironic, because... in terms of square feet... isn't Gervaisius' Mansion the largest map in Thief II? I vaguely recall hearing that at some point. I always assumed (along with everyone else) that it was LotP.

DS had tiny environments, yes. But more importantly, they retained the ability to complete objectives via different approaches. That's much more central to the 'Thief Experience' than the actual size of the levels, I think.

I mean, if Thief IV comes out with gigantic levels that are nevertheless completely linear (like say - ugh - The Downwind Thieves' Guild) can we honestly say that would be an improvement over TDS?