Thief IV and Assassin's Creed

jtr7 on 9/3/2011 at 01:19

Getting to places in unusual and plentiful ways with and without tools of the trade, and gaining access to more places across larger maps, and increasing each as player skills increase, are all hugely more important than style points, fancy animations, acrobatics, martial artisan grace, and showing off kewlness, in a Thief game. Being aware of every square meter and how one is crossing through the gamespace in 3 Dimensions ought to be the focus, never cinematic superheroics.

Chade on 9/3/2011 at 02:30

Are you implying that SE is focussed on style points and fancy animations?

Blue Sky on 9/3/2011 at 12:14

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

I think you could have a good system based on that. To quote myself from another thread:

Hmm... It's interesting, and it could work, but is it a bit too complicated? Especially the "temporary holds with a % chance" thing, which could be rather confusing. Maybe that's me being a bit linear, but it does annoy me in games when you're not sure if what you're trying is what you're meant to do, or if it's just difficult to do, and the idea of a climbing technique which may not always work would be frustrating.

Briareos H on 9/3/2011 at 13:16

Yes. Game mechanisms are successful when they strike the right balance between being open and taxing enough to grant freedom and reward emergent ideas and being always 100% predictable.

% chances of player character failure have no place in a game having player skill at its core (which is what I believe jtr7 wanted to say?). Though it could be circumvented using the tool failure argument.

The rest of SE's suggestions are great, I would really like to see that in Thief 4. Climbing the walls of a narrow alley to reach an higher window in first person would feel awesome (especially since a third person wouldn't work in a narrow passageway, unless you explicitly take the camera control from the player and place it Splinter Cell style). There would be the risk of having level design showing too obviously the places where you're supposed to mantle like that, but that is a different debate which will have to be addressed anyway for all game mechanisms.

Blue Sky on 11/3/2011 at 09:00

Quote Posted by Briareos H

There would be the risk of having level design showing too obviously the places where you're supposed to mantle like that, but that is a different debate which will have to be addressed anyway for all game mechanisms.

This is another thing which impresses me about Assassin's Creed... Whereas in TDS a climbable wall texture is painfully obvious, I find the variety of textures, overhangs, and decorative nobbles used in AC to be a lot more in keeping with the architecture of the buildings, and you gradually learn to tell what you can climb up and what you can't through trial and error until it becomes second nature.

There's a lot of things in AC which stand out a mile and make no sense (those weird "rooftop garden" tent things which just so happen to be dotted around on top of all the houses for you to hide in...and no guard ever thinks to look in them), but 90% of the time the climbing is very seamless, which is genuinely impressive.

Still a heavily flawed game, mind. Maybe I should try the sequel.

green stone on 8/5/2011 at 17:05

Yea. I like Thief series very much. The best stealth game ever made.
If you guys love this kind of game i recommended NOLF - no one live forever. an 60`s cold war based game with all elements like music , sound , ambient , clothes etcetera. Very similar to thief with stealth , improvising and hidden ( secret ) areas. They are two parts but as usual the first is the best. :angel:

Beleg Cúthalion on 8/5/2011 at 18:54

Quote Posted by Blue Sky

Ah...well... you can climb every brick wall texture in TDS and this is more or less consistent. The knobs and trims and balconies and ladders in AC being less painfully obvious must be a matter of taste I guess. :erg:

Alic on 10/5/2011 at 21:15

Wouldn't giving parkour abilities to Garrett eliminate the need for stealth? Garrett has limited mobility, which is why he must focus on strategically travelling and remaining undetected. It kind of spoils the fun if you dont have to worry about being stealthy, you can just jump around a bit to get where you want to go. (although the existing thief games do kind of have this problem to an extent...in a lot of instances you can run away and they will just forget about you after a couple of minutes. That should be improved in thief 4)

In my opinion, Garrett's existing abilities should be improved i.e. manteling etc. and I think the ability to hang/shimmy from ledges would be decent

Blue Sky on 24/5/2011 at 17:23

Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion

No I do see your point. But I dunno, I think the AC climbing is so much more sophisticated than a simple "this is a wall you can climb" texture. As in, it actually requires the player to start recognising what is climbable and what isn't in AC...it's something you learn. Pretty quickly, sure, but there's still a lot of variation and trial and error involved.

Of course I gave up playing AC about half way through. Awful game.

Beleg Cúthalion on 24/5/2011 at 18:52

Well, I agree that climbing is made much more sophisticated looking but when almost everything in a city is climbable (and thus a bit ridiculous with all the trims and ladders, short: what I mentioned above), this is but a mere cover for an otherwise rather similar approach. If these climbing "points" of AC were less common (i.e. more real) and there was actually some climbing system needed to access it instead of just pressing the up arrow on your keyboard, this would indeed be a higher level.