Maladict on 9/9/2007 at 06:54
The whole series has more linearity than you can shake a stick at if you ask me, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Each one of the thief games has felt like a thief game to me, in terms of gameplay and atmosphere. And each game has had a different feel to it, which is as it should be. No two games should be alike in my opinion and the people that worked on the thief series at least kept that up.
Jarvis on 9/9/2007 at 07:06
Well... I remember before TDS came out we were all very excited about the concept of an open city where you can go about robbing as you see fit. TDS promised that, but look what we got? Holy crap! It's tiny! It's a couple of streets with a few shops. Compare that to Life of the Party. There was so much more to explore, and the best part:
You only had to once! You can spend hours going through everything in just the city section, and then you can go on with the rest of the game and not have to deal with LOTP again. Yet TDS makes us go down the same confined streets over and over and over again.
Linear, yeah.
[SPOILER]I'd also like to tell a story from Thief 2. In Ambush (another great city stage, btw) you have to get into Garrett's apartment. Granted, the building is very simple with just three levels. You can only go inside of Garrett's room and no others. Despite the simple design and tiny size of the building, let's list off all the different ways to get in there:
1: Front door
2: Windows in the back with the platforms
3: Window on the side of the building
4: Out the window of the building across the street, leaping over the guards heads right into Garrett's bedroom window.[/SPOILER]
Not bad, 4 separate solutions to what is truthfully very confined spaces. I can't draw any comparisons from TDS.
Maladict on 9/9/2007 at 07:13
I guess in the end it really depends on how you define linearity. If you count being able to enter a building in differnt ways as linearity, then by all means thief was a non-linear game for you. The same goes for those who choose not to knock out a certain guard this timearound , opting instead to go around him or choosing to get one treasure before the other. You could go on and on like this and argue non-linearity until the end of days, but in the literal sense of the word you went from one level to the next and you didn't have a choice in the outcome of the game, so to call it a linear series is not oustide the realm of possibility, in fact it's actually looking to be pretty damn solid to me.
Jarvis on 9/9/2007 at 07:48
By that definition you condemn 99.9% of games to the label of "linear".
If you want narrative in a game, and I do because the alternative often sucks, then you'll have to be okay with sacrificing that form of control. However, the player should have as much control as possible over game play. A lesson that hasn't been fully learned in the gaming industry yet is that the Stealth genre requires more open and free space than your average action/adventure game.
Look at Splinter Cell, it is slowly but progressively giving the player more space to move around in, and more options in how to approach challenges. Though it still can be tight at times.
Thief did the opposite with TDS. Tenchu suffers the same fate. Metal Gear has always been linear.
That's one of the reasons the original 2 thief games stand out so much. They are old, but were so far ahead of their time that the genre is still playing catch up. Splinter Cell survives on graphics and Tom Clancy's name, Tenchu on anime fans and ninja hype, Metal Gear on storyline, and Thief on Gameplay.
At least that's my assessment of the situation... and it's too bad that of all those series Thief is the only one that is not being made anymore.
Ziemanskye on 9/9/2007 at 13:39
TDS is a more limited play area, yes. Technical issues, but that's never a good excuse even when it is true.
The city, even the devs were disappionted with as far as I can tell.
As for having four ways to get into a room in Ambush, you can't apply that as a metaphor or even as a generalisation of TMA - most of the game was built around having one entrance to places, with only occasional branches and alternatives around that: and most of them that made much of a difference were with the outsides of buildings.
That is something that TDS lost - the ability to not go in at just one point, and is probably the biggest thing the City got wrong in my opinion. Even a SWAT4 like binary option of front or side door would have helped.
Once inside, it's mostly just multiple doors off a corridor or silly secret passages (which is at least part of the "thiefishness" of things, so I don't really look down on secret passages: just that many of them only seem to exist as gaming spaces rather than really having a point to the building), neither of which offer much in the way of non-linearity. Sure you can enter the rooms in a different order, but most likely you're going to go into them all anyway and almost none of them are in any way consequential to your current goals or the story. And you know what? TDS does that too - they're just smaller levels on the whole, so there's less of it.
crunchy on 10/9/2007 at 01:13
Further to what Jarvis said about Ambush. What about Assassins? IIRC, there is a least 7 ways to enter Ramirez's place.
Maladict on 10/9/2007 at 07:44
If you want a great example of non-linearity then look at any of the Elder Scrolls games, particularly the second one - Daggerfall. You could go almost anywhere, create any type of class, and do almost anything you wanted. They didn't feature level after level of gameplay, like Thief or Neverwinter Nights, another popular RPG. In the truest sense Thief is considered a linear game. I think that TDS was the most non-linear of the thief games in that it allowed you to choose a faction and do the levels in a different order, but in the end if featured the same type of linearity as the rest of the series. I'm not arguing whether this is a good thing or not, I love the thief series and frankly whether or not it's linear doesn't keep me from enjoying it. But when it comes down to arguing whether or not it is linear, well the answer is pretty obvious and I feel inclined to share my thoughts on the matter.
nicked on 10/9/2007 at 11:24
yes, the narrative structure of Thief is of course linear, but the level design is far more open-ended and non-linear. It's perfectly possible to complete a Thief mission and only see about 50% of the total gaming space. Compare that to, say, Half-Life, where you follow a single set path through the whole game, and if an area is accessible, chances are you will have to go through that area.
The Elder Scrolls games annoy me because they are so non-linear. There's no structure. It's like a giant sandbox of a game. Fun to play with for a bit, but ultimately not that rewarding because there's no sense of "This is my goal, this is what I should be doing in the game right now". A better RPG example would be Baldur's Gate. It's got structured chapters and clear goals, but with plenty of optional side quests that you can usually do (or at least start) at any time during the game. It's all about getting the balance right.
Lovecraftian on 10/9/2007 at 20:14
Quote Posted by nicked
yes, the narrative structure of Thief is of course linear, but the level design is far more open-ended and non-linear. It's perfectly possible to complete a Thief mission and only see about 50% of the total gaming space. Compare that to, say, Half-Life, where you follow a single set path through the whole game, and if an area is accessible, chances are you will have to go through that area.
The Elder Scrolls games annoy me because they are so non-linear. There's no structure. It's like a giant sandbox of a game. Fun to play with for a bit, but ultimately not that rewarding because there's no sense of "This is my goal, this is what I should be doing in the game right now". A better RPG example would be Baldur's Gate. It's got structured chapters and clear goals, but with plenty of optional side quests that you can usually do (or at least start) at any time during the game. It's all about getting the balance right.
Baldur's Gate OWNS! Especially the second one!
nicked on 10/9/2007 at 21:00
absolutely. I love those games. But I love them because I am given clear goals in addition to just being able to run off and do my own thing. Whereas with Morrowind - everything's optional, so I just think "What's the point?"
