Digital Nightfall on 4/9/2008 at 05:29
Quote Posted by Solabusca
Joss Whedon.
Serenity. Leaf. Wind. Soar.
Enough said.
.j.
<img src=http://www.digital-nightfall.com/leafonthewind.jpg>
jtr7 on 4/9/2008 at 06:37
Speaking of impalement, I would've loved it if the Keepers had remained badasses while corruption crept in, slowly, and left the Keepers powerless and in shock, spiraling into chaos, having relied too long on the glyphs as the climax of the story, with Garrett doing what only he can do, and averting the ultimate disaster. You can tell the devs had that in mind. Instead, Orland was blatantly unbalanced from the start and had been allowed to become and remain First Keeper, while acting in an intolerable and juvenile fashion, and complacency and forgetfulness ran rampant throughout the Order without explanation, while they tolerated strange happenings and just kept asking why. There's no real indication that they were without oral histories, so the dependency on books for all of it, not even the enforced memories of several generations, strikes me as lame.
There had to have always been a bureaucracy, but the Keeper's corruption was presented to us as always having been there, and it was only when Gamall began to put the final parts of her plan in motion, that the corruption become enough. Wishy-washy isn't a kind of corruption I can accept. If Orland had been a man deserving of his position, and Gamall had been the devil-like whisper in his ear stoking the fire of resentment against Garrett, and no one suspected the leadership was unbalanced until it was too late--including the player and Garrett... If all the Keepers were true to the Keeper mission statement until the shocking revelation... If the Keepers had cunning and higher intelligence than Garrett, but Garrett did their dirty work, and yeah, thought outside the box books...
Damn it, the foundation was there! Too bad they couldn't afford to pay a fantasy writer and make a game for matured audience. And I'm not talking gore or sex...:sly:...but mature views.
Why was Fred so weak? Maybe he saw Orland as the father he never had? :p
The foundation is there, poorly executed, and written for children. The Cradle part of the story shouldn't have been the scariest in comparison to the fall of the Keepers. The Enforcers shouldn't have been AI, really, but special effects.
Solabusca on 4/9/2008 at 07:35
Quote Posted by jtr7
Speaking of impalement, I would've loved it if the Keepers had remained badasses while corruption crept in, slowly, and left the Keepers powerless and in shock, spiraling into chaos, having relied too long on the glyphs as the climax of the story, with Garrett doing what only he can do, and averting the ultimate disaster. You can tell the devs had that in mind. Instead, Orland was blatantly unbalanced
from the start and had been allowed to become and remain First Keeper, while acting in an intolerable and juvenile fashion, and complacency and forgetfulness ran rampant throughout the Order without explanation, while they tolerated strange happenings and just kept asking why. There's no real indication that they were without oral histories, so the dependency on books for all of it, not even the enforced memories of several generations, strikes me as lame.
Welllllll... Orland is shown to be bitter about Garrett's betrayal in Thief 2. He is a bit over the top, I will give you credit.
And as to the oral history - two things to recall are that the glyphs are
changing, and seem to have a pervasive and insidious effect on the Keepers themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that their memories have been affected as well. Additionally - look at how written history trumps oral in the modern world - specifically, Soviet-era history books and propaganda. If Gamall has been twisting things, making one or two minor changes here and there in the books, the effects could (would) cascade.
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There had to have always been a bureaucracy, but the Keeper's corruption was presented to us as always having been there, and it was only when Gamall began to put the final parts of her plan in motion, that the corruption become
enough. Wishy-washy isn't a kind of corruption I can accept. If Orland had been a man deserving of his position, and Gamall had been the devil-like whisper in his ear stoking the fire of resentment against Garrett, and no one suspected the leadership was unbalanced until it was too late--including the player and Garrett... If all the Keepers were true to the Keeper mission statement until the shocking revelation... If the Keepers had cunning and higher intelligence than Garrett, but Garrett did their dirty work, and yeah, thought outside the
box books...
Again, the insidious whispering campaign against Garrett has been ongoing for years. What you're suggesting, I saw in the storyline. Unfortunately, you're also accurate in that it was writ big, versus with subtlety. Perhaps for the target console audience, but hey.
The Keepers in the game(s) do show cunning, do show higher intelligence - but in all three games have less 'street-savvy' than Garrett. And that seems to be something they've lost as the centuries have passed.
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Damn it, the foundation was there! Too bad they couldn't afford to pay a fantasy writer and make a game for matured audience. And I'm not talking gore or sex...:sly:...but mature views.
Why was Fred so weak? Maybe he saw Orland as the father he never had? :p
I'm ... not quite sure what you're getting at here. The story had it's mature themes. And gore, sex, and madness.
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The foundation is there, poorly executed, and written for children. The Cradle part of the story shouldn't have been the scariest in comparison to the fall of the Keepers. The Enforcers shouldn't have been AI, really, but special effects.
I'll disagree about the fact that the story is written for children. I found it pretty damned compelling, and a lot of the side-stories more than a little dark. Too dark for kiddies, unless cannibalistic, skin-ripping ogre-women are commonplace for the Dora the Explorer set.
Kidding!
My problems are more on the implementation side. I found that the Faction mechanics were an interesting idea, but absolute SHITE in implementation. Basically something that could have been SO much more interesting. And some of the 'cut' material really bothers me. Like the tax-collector scene.
I will agree, however, that the Enforcers should have been a special effect vs. an AI. You have no idea how much I wish someone would have uploaded a link to the scripts mentioned in the (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94953) Remake the Keeper Assassins thread. I don't care how big it was, I'd have made use of it. Because the Assassins should have been AWESOME.
.j.
jtr7 on 4/9/2008 at 08:32
Grimm's Fairy Tales were dark, violent, and gory (originally, as you know) and they were for kids. I read them before they were toned down. "Henry and the Hag" was for kids. :cheeky: Is Snow White stilled banned in some European country (can't remember which one). I've been told by a few peers that the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence of Dumbo really disturbed them.
Mature, I'm talking Cambridge University/MIT students reading Umberto Eco, Jack Vance, and Fritz Leiber, not junior editions. Cue Don LaFontaine: "In a world where red pen corrections on young students' test papers have been considered too stressful..."
We could have seen a single Keeper knowing a fact a one point, and unable to recall it another time, and that would've been enough. We could've seen Caduca go mad and self-destruct screaming Garrett's name! Okay, that's a bit much, heh heh.
I like your ideas, Sola'. Thanks for sharing. :)
Yes. The makings are there, the evidence of intellect behind-the-scenes is there, but the target audience for this Mature game was youngsters. How old were you when you saw Alien? I loved it at eight years old, so did many of my peers, and it wasn't over my head and it didn't give me nightmares. Curiously, John Carpenter's The Thing, six years later, was more disturbing to me. I thought American Werewolf in London was great, and I do not consider myself a horror fan. Thief is more suggestive, but not in a way that my imagination conjures up real sensations of horror beyond what is there.
Ya know, it occurs to me that there's a potential allegory about the current U.S. presidency.
Solabusca on 4/9/2008 at 09:10
Quote Posted by jtr7
Grimm's Fairy Tales were dark, violent, and gory (originally, as you know) and they were for kids. I read them before they were toned down. "Henry and the Hag" was for kids. :cheeky: Is
Snow White stilled banned in some European country (can't remember which one). I've been told by a few peers that the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence of
Dumbo really disturbed them.
Exactly why I said kidding. But those sorts of tales haven't been 'appropriate' for kids since the 70's. (I won't even get into the original versions - Perrault was a bloody bastard, and he TONED DOWN the original folktales).
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Mature, I'm talking Cambridge University/MIT students reading Umberto Eco, Jack Vance, and Fritz Leiber, not junior editions. Cue Don LaFontaine: "In a world where red pen corrections on young students' test papers have been considered too stressful..."
Eco should really not be mentioned in the same paragraph. Vance and Leiber wrote for pulps. Eco is a infinitely more erudite, and always writes on a few layers.
Leiber's Lankhmar books, while incredibly amusing, are pretty much thinly-veiled authorial self-insertion adventures. Leiber, in case you were wondering, is Fafhrd. It's broad pulp adventure at it's finest. Escapism, with no underlying metaphors.
Trust me, I'm not knocking it. I've got copies of all the
Swords books, as well as a fine collection of Lankhmar gaming material. I say that as a Lit grad.
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We could have seen a single Keeper knowing a fact a one point, and unable to recall it another time, and that would've been enough. We could've seen Caduca go mad and self-destruct screaming Garrett's name! Okay, that's a bit much, heh heh.
Wellllll... let me point out the cabal of Keepers who've realized something's up and decide to help G out. A secret group within the secret group. A faction at odds with itself.
As to Gamall - I did like the 'power has faded' ending, the crone, power broken, feeling her magics slipping away, fading - like the glyph she tries to draw.
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I like your ideas, Sola'. Thanks for sharing. :)
And I'm damned charming, as well as smart.
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Yes. The makings are there, the evidence of intellect behind-the-scenes is there, but the target audience for this Mature game was youngsters. How old were you when you saw Alien? I loved it at eight years old, so did many of my peers, and it wasn't over my head and it didn't give me nightmares. Curiously, John Carpenter's
The Thing, six years later, was more disturbing to me. I thought
American Werewolf in London was great, and I do not consider myself a horror fan.
Thief is more suggestive, but not in a way that my imagination conjures up real sensations of horror beyond what is there.
Alien is an extremely different movie from the Thing. It's very much an old-fashioned horror/monster movie with sci-fi trappings - the monster stalks the isolated people from the shadows, knocking them off one by one. Throw in a suggestion of rape (the facehuggers) and bloodshed, a smidgen of betrayal from an authority figure (The Company in the form of Ash and Father) and you have all the tropes.
The Thing, on the other hand, is something completely different. It's similar in that it's a new take on an old-school 'monster-hunting-us' film, but it's made much worse by the fact that the monster is one or more of the main characters. It's paranoia/claustrophobia/helplessness served up with a melange of the terror of infection and the innate organic disgust at the nature of the Other. Similar themes can be found in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Beast Must Die, and others. Fear of the Enemy Within, in all it's varied forms. Gamall is a fine example of just that!
And
An American Werewolf In London is really more of a comedy (albiet one with horror trappings). Black comedy, I suppose is the proper term. Impressive special effects for the transformations, even at the time!
Why yes, I did do a lot of film-crit as well as lit-crit in my University days. Hell, my ex did a fairly hefty essay on the Alien cycle in our Cyborgs in Cinema class (4th year English course; one of my favourites).
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Ya know, it occurs to me that there's a potential allegory about the current U.S. presidency.
I won't even touch that with a twenty-foot pole. The Enemy Within? Oh, hells yes.
.j.
Oh, one last note - to touch back to the opening of this conversational aside - do yourself a favour and track down a copy of
The Company of Wolves. Little Red Riding Hood, spiced liberally with Werewolves and surreal dream imagery.
jtr7 on 4/9/2008 at 09:37
"Mature, I'm talking Cambridge University/MIT students reading Umberto Eco, Jack Vance, and Fritz Leiber, not junior editions."
...Because that is some of what fed the Dark Project devs. Thief lumps their influence together, and that is why I've read them. None of my friends here at home will read those authors, or have any interest in Thief. :(
And yes. The ingredients of a great finish to the trilogy are there in TDS, but I was not sold, and only over time have I softened and grown to accept as much as I have. It has those many layers that are often overlooked, which I delight in exploring, so that hasn't been a disappointment. I've been trying to make sense of it all so it will seem whole, but mostly because I love Thief and the creativity it inspires.:D
My father first rented the movie that was made of A Company of Wolves, then he made a copy, and later bought the book. Some of the chapters in the movie held zero interest for me, while others intrigued, so I skimmed the book, and read specific chapters. It was trippy stuff, with things I hadn't seen before, or juxtapositions of ideas, so I kept revisiting it out of morbid fascination, but never really connecting fully with it. This was before I had any interest in reading novels--an unhealthy by-product of crappy school experiences.
jay pettitt on 4/9/2008 at 09:50
The Keepers were shown to be mostly bumbling fuddy-duddies, not quite what I had come to expect. That whole Keeper Section and Abysmal Gale mess could have been handled with a lot more subterfuge and mystery.
Quote Posted by Solabusca
Garrett spent the previous two games becoming less self-interested and more interested in what the Keepers were about. Watch the end of the second game again.
That's more like it.
- "Let thy furnace be fueled"
- "Builder fuel us."You're right, he did. He also became less and less
interesting along the way. He stopped being self determined and at abrasive odds with the world and instead gave in to the will of other people. Garret became someone who runs errands and goes on 'missions'.
The crux is, when you're running errands for someone else your actions are legitimised. The sense of trespass is gone along with half the tension, the uncertainty and the wonder; and that, in essence, is why Thief 3, no matter how high it tried to raise the stakes with monsters and the end of the world and all that stuff, felt like an inconsequential video game through out - not the classic, edge of seat Thief experience.
(except of course the Cradle, where the sense of trespass was alive? and well)
Sure, Thief IV could overcome the problems Thief 3 left behind, it could yet rock, could be brilliantly conceived, crafted and written - but that kind of quality is rare indeed in the video game business and there will be a lot of people wanting to continue the precedent set by Deadly Shadows for fear of alienating those who discovered Thief on the X-Box and who haven't discovered the earlier titles.
Watch the end of the third game again and compare with the other two. Anyone want more of that?
Beleg Cúthalion on 4/9/2008 at 13:30
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
He stopped being self determined and at abrasive odds with the world and instead gave in to the will of other people. Garret became someone who runs errands and goes on 'missions'.
When I think of the lot of FMs (even before TDS, but you might correct me) beginning with "The Keepers want me to...", I believe the phrase Digital Nightfall quoted is utmost correct, even if many guys around here think they are capable of making better things with editors than any professional studio could. I think the variety of what people see in Thief makes it utmost difficult again to know what
every fan the majority of the fans wants to see.
And back to topic: As mentioned somewhere before, I'd like to see more antiseptic policy. Meddling with City wardens and nobility, overthrows in society provide IMHO a context big enough for an interesting story without too much magic and supernatural mystery.
ladderman on 4/9/2008 at 20:42
hello
what would the thief 4 storyline be...?.well for me i would like to see the missing part of garret's life explained,how he went through his training and nearly became an enforcer.a young garret learning the ways of stealth and infiltration(i bet on these first few training missions he not so cocksure of himself),not like he was on lord bafford's manor briefing.thank you
colin
jtr7 on 4/9/2008 at 20:45
Ah yes. Another vote for a prequel.:)
