Chade on 18/1/2011 at 22:11

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Heh ... in Garrett's case, it probably wouldn't be for love.

It could be the culmination of a series of missions in which Garrett plants his name in some birth records, acquires a bunch of props, and passes himself off as a noble fit to marry some hugely rich daughter ... whose grand-mother just happened to have a famous fancy ring kept under lock and key.

Of course, he wouldn't actually get married, on account of sneaking out past the wedding congregation with the ring, not to mention half the wedding gifts.

That's the only thing I can think of anyway ... any other ideas?

jtr7 on 19/1/2011 at 06:54

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I would like to see larger areas, but I would not want generic filler or wide expanses or large forest areas as filler to make it all bigger. Densisty and increased accessibility is superior for a Thief game, more places to infiltrate, not just streets and rooftops, but I'd like larger mission maps, too. Life of the Party + Ambush x most buildings and floors and sewers accessible = ginormous (one map that big has multiple times the play area of all of TDS combined)! I don't think a real virtual City, Thief-style, can be done without multiple Blu-Ray discs. Full of filler and inaccessible buildings can make it possible to build in a timely manner and reasonable large budget, but then, it wouldn't be what Thief offers differently than other games. One map that big would certainly feel sand-boxy, and 15 maps that big would be generous. Pagan portals (used judiciously and according to a solid Pagan idiom) could help fight retreading. I'm afraid Garrett would have to be able to build them himself to avoid grinding and other open-world drawbacks. As for loot and equipment limits, there's no good solution but to keep it in chapters and isolated mission maps, which we need to get away from even the TDS-level of obvious forced limits on powerful gear and none on money. The fiction is important and will be hurt if the player can cover too much ground and from wild angles.

jtr7 on 19/1/2011 at 11:34

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I find it unacceptable that a single TDP mission could have more world-building than the whole of TDS. T4 should not concern itself with "cutting away the fat", especially when most of it was not even concerned with game-mechanics but creating atmosphere and a sense of a much larger world, with a history, arts, industry, the wilds, an ecosystem, an infrastructure, geology, mystery, power, tech, magic, wannabes and terrible masters, government, law, seafaring, and diverse and distant peoples, most of whom we never meet, but without who much would not exist as Garrett knows it.

negativeliberty on 19/1/2011 at 17:54

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It could be done, and still easily fit on a standard dual layer dvd (two DVD9's is also pretty common for games right now, although that's mostly down to bad compression and or lots and lots of dialog or cutscenes), especially now that tessellation is becoming more widespread to help increase the complexity of the geometry without increasing the memory footprint or graphical load too much. That's not to say it's easy, of course. The level of research and detail we've come to expect is of course even harder to pull off on such a scale. It's more a matter of development resources and (lack of) vision, rather than technical 'limitations' (unfortunately it was the reverse when they were making TDS or it might've been a totally different game).

One benefit for a Thief game having a more open world "like TDS" (well, hopefully not) is that it won't require an epic amount of dialog, since Garrett isn't meant to interact with most of the people that fill the world 'between' actual locale-specific missions other than stealing their valuables.

Of course the real question as you say is what it'll do to the gameplay. If you can just nab some purses and buy 50 water arrows at any of a dozen Thief gear shops there won't be much of a challenge, nor will it push people to explore each mission thoroughly. Of course the solutions to those problems are often not that hard to find (such as, you know, not having such idiotic shops at all). Overall though, I'd much rather have them create the illusion of a vast City (and with vast sections thereof) instead of actually making it a vast sandbox - mainly because I have serious doubts as to the competence of quite literally any developer to make such a version of The City, let alone Eidos Montreal.

negativeliberty on 19/1/2011 at 23:13

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Sure, although to be fair hardly every building or structure in TDP/TMA had an interior, and I'd go with "very little filler" (depends on your definition, however zero filler is impractical/impossible). I still think such a City would easily fit on a single DVD9, even with lots of interior spaces. The minimum we should expect of the buildings we can't venture inside though is being able to get on the roofs or otherwise use them to our benefit. The problem isn't so much in the (size of the) geometries as it is in the developmental process. Of course, we don't know what engine will be used, and I don't want T4 to repeat the mistakes of TDS, which is why I'd prefer the simple solution of classic style enormous missions and City sections, and the illusion/suggestion of an open-world City, possibly even more so than in the first two games.