Erand on 9/8/2011 at 14:05

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At least the audio -aspect of THI4F sounds fairly promising this far. The Thief series has always had a strong emphasis on using sound as an element for both the actual gameplay as well as for creating atmosphere, subtly affecting the way player perceives the environment and how (and with how much caution) he/she decides to proceed in it. I hope, however, that they won't give players too much clues using this generative music.

(I argue that generative music is dynamic music, even more so than that "dynamic music" used in a lot of games, in the sense that it has variation of intensity in relation to gameplay events - and being "generated" real-time it would have even more of these 'dynamic' aspects of variety.)

As briefly mentioned in this thread - those who've played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion know how the background music suddenly changes when an enemy has spotted you, sometimes way before the enemy is identified or even visible, as in before the player has any suspicion of an oncoming attack. The game almost yells at you that "it's battle time again!".

Similarly, in a lot of games the music changes back to the usual when there is nothing hostile within reach, giving player a (valid) sense of safety. In a Thief game, this kind of an extra-sensory insta-alarm -system would notably decrease the amount of immersion through realism (at least for me) - and it would change the gameplay dramatically, for the player would be given too clear clues through audio. It's almost the same as if a message came on screen, saying: "Now you're safe again, the guards have stopped looking for you." I hope there won't be any "guard chords" that get played every time the player is in a close proximity of a guard. Different sound effects and their associative meanings usually become extremely recognizable after a certain amount of game time.

Even with this generativeness (which sounds really interesting), I hope they use music more as an atmospheric element instead of an element of gameplay, or they better to do a *very* good job at it. (Which could happen, at least my hopes are high.) Music (as in rhythm, instruments etc) should IMHO be used sparingly in a Thief -game, so that the soundscape would mostly consist of "actual" sounds heard in the environment. It's more interesting if music (as in a primarily-ambient mood-building device) is used to deceive the player a little rather than giving direct hints. (TDS does this pretty well in the first part of The Cradle.) But we will see.

I just love the different distant hums and those eerie, echoing sound-effects occasionally heard in TDP and TMA, so it's good news that they try to build on the work of Eric Brosius. The somewhat electronic loops of ambient music also fit the earlier games perfectly, but done in some different way it could've turned against itself. Like negativeliberty mentioned, at least there shouldn't be that generic "EPIC" orchestral hollywood film score thundering everywhere, let alone some popular goth-punk-band playing "emotional music" during cutscenes. May the Master Builder be praised for that, but only after the game has been released, and heard.