Muzman on 9/1/2007 at 07:01
Some of you folks, old and new, may recall that back in the day the things generally refered to as Apebeasts around here were commonly known as Ratmen or Ratbeasts. (which you can see an example of (
http://www.thief-thecircle.com/guides/bestiary/#ratbeasts) here)
These are the funny-talking little guys with tails and swords you meet towards the and of The Dark Project I'm talking about. Their being called 'Apebeasts' is easy enough to explain; that's what they are known as in Dromed. Of course, people point out that apes don't have tails so the name doesn't make much sense. But never the less that's what they are.
What I cannot find or work out is how they came to be widely known as Ratmen as well. Some reviewers even refered to them as such.
They're pretty odd characters whose origins in development seem a little confused (hence the name in dromed). I'm wondering if there were some game guides or previews and publicity that named them so before the game came out in non english speaking countries. Or something.
I dunno. Does anyone have any theories?
(I suppose I should read the dev diary one of these days)
Martin Karne on 9/1/2007 at 07:54
Oh those ratmen, for some reason I couldn't connect Thief with ratmen, and instead I kept recalling those ratmen from Arx Fatalis.
dlw6 on 9/1/2007 at 09:14
Here is my wild guess: we called the Maw critters from TDP "ratmen" because they looked and acted like anthropomorphic rats, and the name stuck. If the developers were aiming for apebeasts in TDP, what they got was monkey-men instead, so they were probably too embarrassed to tell us our mistake. You know how touchy the fan base can be.:p
Don
Melan on 9/1/2007 at 09:26
The critters look and act like humanoid rats, so I guess the name stuck. Regarding their inspiration, it is possible that Thief's distant, but still recognisable Lankhmar influences are shining through here - in Fritz Leiber's short stories and novels, featuring the exploits of two roguish swordsmen in a dark and sinful fantasy metropolis, ratmen and ordinary rats feature heavily. Or maybe they are just badly designed apes? :erm:
nicked on 9/1/2007 at 13:08
I think they are supposed to be rats aren't they? I mean there's ratmen in Thief 3 - surely those are all one and the same. Dromed can be misleading after all... :joke:
ganac on 9/1/2007 at 22:30
That link to the circle page needs to be updated for T3.
Muzman on 10/1/2007 at 04:13
I never really thought they looked like rats. I guess the voices and their noses might lead to that conclusion (and their tails not being very monkey like). But they don't move at all like I think a giant rat would.
It occured to me that after the confusion/misnaming of apebeasts/ratmen in thief 2 they made them genuine ape creatures, then made unmistakable ratmen for T: DS.
Lightfall on 10/1/2007 at 05:17
I think the ratmen in Thief 3 were a different creature altogether. For one thing, they looked like they were about two meters tall, as opposed to the original "apebeasts" which were a bit smaller than Garrett, who is not a particularly tall man himself (observe cutscenes or stand next to a Hammerite/City Watchman.)
Second point, Garrett's words upon spotting them in Kurshok sound as though he is seeing something new:
"Giant rats... great."
Maybe that's just my take on it, but it seems as though he'd say something different if he was re-encountering Maw critters.
nicked on 10/1/2007 at 13:40
Although that was probably just for the XBox crowd who didn't even know it was a sequel! :laff:
Apebeasts make more sense, as they used to be Constantine's guards - men to monkeys makes more sense than men to rats.
TafferMonkeys! on 11/1/2007 at 10:29
If I may, I have a general theory on this.
Basically, what i'm thinking is when "Thief: The Dark Project" was made the developers and creature designers were thinking of "Monkey Men" but ended up calling them "ApeBeast" or something like that. No one probably really stopped to think if Apes had tails (or maybe they didn't care. It IS a fantasy setting after all). Looking at the concept art from TDP they really seem like Baboon Men, so I personally don't associate them as "Rat Men". STILL, it's possible they were also thinking of rat-ish beastmen and kinda took a strange route along the way to creating them.
When "Thief 2: The Metal Age" came out with their "ApeBeast" it looked considerably more like "Apes" -- that is to say they had no tails and their faces more resembled an ape or ape-like beast. If they were intending to make "Rat Men" they could have just touched-up the first Thief's "ApeBeast" but they removed the tails and called the new model "ApeBeast".
When "Thief: Deadly Shadows" (Thief 3) came out, there was a noticeable absence of any "ApeBeast", but "RatBeast" WERE present and looked somewhat similar to the "ApeBeast" from Thief 1. What I think happened here was the developers, in essence, realized the "ApeBeast" from Thief 1 seemed a little like Rats, and they decided to finally ADD "RatBeast" to intentionally create a distinction between the Ape-Creatures in previous Thief games from "RatBeast" which are finally introduced in Thief 3.
Ultimately, I think there was an "ideal-in-essence" for Thief 1 "ApeBeast" to be Rat-esque -- but in the end they became "Ape". Thief 3 seemed like a good chance for them to finally make a genuine "RatBeast" and therefore we now have "RatBeast". So, IN-ESSENCE, Thief 1 "ApeBeast" embodied a "RatBeast" ideal I believe -- but they made better "Apes" in the end (Regardless of the fact they had tails).
Personally, I like to believe there are TWO kinds of "ApeBeast" (Tricky Baboons and more Tribal primitive Apes) and "RatBeast" are a seperate party but related in the "man-like-beast" sense.
