The Shroud on 14/1/2013 at 23:43

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3 years ago, I made the following post in this thread:

(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129711)



The idea received a fair amount of approval from the community back then, and as I've been patiently waiting for news about Thief 4, I've been a bit curious about just how many Thief fans would be intrigued by this premise. If Eidos Montreal doesn't go that route (and I wouldn't expect that they would), maybe it could be the next big fan project?

Things I'd really like the game to feature are as follows:


* Vast, fully explorable city that matches the series' cutscenes (comparable in size to Skyrim if possible)
* Same atmosphere as in TDP (dark, cold, windy, lonely, unwelcoming)
* Much greater emphasis on rooftop-burglary (like in Life of the Party), mansion sweeps, and classic thieving
* More typical thieving equipment (grappling hook, magnifying glass, glass cutter, caltrops, etc)
* Heavy Hammerite presence/patrols, no City Watch, low Pagan presence
* Hidden Keeper outposts and occasional glyph warnings
* Garrett's tenement, where the player can store loot and thieving equipment
* Cutty's pawnshop, where the player can fence stolen items
* Farkus' shop, where the player can purchase specially crafted thieving gear
* The Crippled Burrick pub, where the player can meet with associates and informants

How many of you would be interested in a Thief game like this?

jtr7 on 15/1/2013 at 00:02

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It was the first time, and they were expensive, purchased only with the money from the Horn of Quintus. The remnant in the gamefiles lists them at 4000, but we don't really know in-game what the Horn paid out for G. Basso was his lockpicking/safecracking pal long enough for G to care enough to spring him for a small favor we never heard the follow-through on, but it seemed to not work out nearly as well as the lockpicking skill he soon acquired. Garrett never picks a single lock until Assassins! and the numbers of types of locks, particularly safes (Basso "the Boxman"), grows after he just so happens to help Basso in Running Interference and mentions a possible favor for doing so. But canon's actual data on the matter is not that important, especially in fanon, where personal fun takes precedent, I will presume.

The Shroud on 15/1/2013 at 02:25

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To reiterate a point I've made many times before, this is jtr7's personal assumption, not a fact that is actually stated or alluded to anywhere in canon. He's inferring that because Garrett purchased "some new tools" at the beginning of Assassins! in TDP, which included a set of lockpicks, that this was the first time Garrett ever used lockpicks of any kind in his entire career as a professional thief. Obviously, that is very presumptuous. It's also highly unlikely that a thief with Garrett's experience would never have had to pick any locks during all of his past jobs until he got a new set of picks from Farkus in TDP.

As for why Garrett needed to invest in some new lockpicks if he had had lockpicks before, I can think of some very simple explanations:

1. The developers didn't want to add lockpicking challenges until mid-game (I think we can agree this is the literal reason).
2. Cheap lockpicks are flimsy and break easily; Garrett might have broken the ones he had before.
3. Low-quality lockpicks likely degrade with regular useage; even if Garrett still had some old picks, it was time to get a new and more durable set.


Actually, the reason given in TDP for Garrett breaking Basso out of Cragscleft was that Garrett had his eye on Basso's sister and expected her to be very grateful for getting Basso out. No mention was ever made that Garrett had any need for Basso's safecracking skills, or that that played into his motives for rescuing him from Cragscleft. Again, you're treating your assumptions as facts, which you shouldn't.


That was clearly a gameplay-oriented decision on the part of the developers. They evidently felt that locked doors and lockpicking was a more intermediate type of challenge which needed to be saved for later in the game, after the player had mastered the basics during the first few missions. I don't tend to agree with that decision, but nonetheless, it was obviously by design. Regardless, that's about gameplay, and limiting locked doors and lockpicks with which to pick them to mid-game for the player is entirely separate from whether Garrett, the character, actually picked locks before in his career. By the same token, you wouldn't presume that just because the player doesn't get rope arrows until Down In The Bonehoard, that Garrett himself never used them before during his many past jobs. That's a silly and illogical conclusion to infer.


Again, pure game design, and therefore it should be viewed within that context rather than taken as literally as you're taking it. Also, given that Running Interference was the very first mission in TMA, of course challenges were bound to grow more complex in subsequent missions.


The thing is, there just isn't any actual statement in canon one way or the other regarding whether Garrett picked locks before Assassins!, so it's a non-issue in the first place. And that's all to the good, since, as you rightly pointed out, fun should take precedence.

jtr7 on 15/1/2013 at 09:28

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I'll just say this and no more:

If this is about Garrett we know, then make it about Garrett we know. Respect his established story, his world, his arc, his chronology, his acquaintances, and so on. If not, change the character's name or set the story up front as an alternate universe kind of thing, or else it will just clash with everyone's personal notions. It makes no sense to go with a prequel of THE Mr. Garrett, and empower him beyond what he has available to him in the days before the Bafford job. At least those of us who will know even this much of this fan project's intentions, if it's ever completed and shared, will know right off that it deviates in many key points from the first second, and will likely further deviate and diverge from much we find familiar and familial, and will have been warned for better or worse. I will not be shocked or affronted, therefore.

While I expect it to be inventive and have clever moments, it will no doubt never make sense to me, personally, why Garrett, and The City, and this period of time in HIS life were the focus of a new story, if this story's take on the character's development and the tech available to him at any given point aren't beholden to much of what we know of them. He's bad ass, and not because of tech or devices. He was impressive without Keeper training, and without tech, but needed more to become successful, and have self-imposed rent issues, rather than seriously barely eating enough.

I will never understand, until it's finally explained, why the restrictions imposed by The City and its tech, the idiom of the factions, the character of Garrett, no matter how powerful and skilled Garrett is all by himself, with no devices, with only light and shadow and trickery and ego, are considered by many creative persons to be stifling, not a delicious challenge with so many complex avenues to explore that don't ignore anything, yet stay true to what Garrett would know at that point, mindful of what he could not know. There's so much to mine and so much to expand without adding in new devices or character traits. It could be great and inventive and keeping to the established elements.

With projects like these, I always wonder who the intended audience is and why it's brought up before fans, not those who would eat it up and not question it from a seasoned perspective. If the established concepts are boring or stifling, start fresh, or call it what it is: an alternative game for those who never really got into what the devs were doing, or a reboot.

I know I'm in a tiny minority, but just make an FM or campaign, and you'll have players, regardless of what you invent, impose, twist, or personalize for your own satisfaction. The fiction won't be taken too seriously, unless it's surprising in a delightful way, so it's best if you marry the level design well to whatever is written, and don't write too much for readables, as it's generally considered not fun to read and read, nevermind the translation issues. Just getting it done is a huge accomplishment that deserves its own respect.

The potential is already in place without yanking it into a confrontational, combative, action-oriented game, where stealth is only an option, instead of the other way around.

Constance on 15/1/2013 at 17:19

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I agree with jtr7 here.
I guess you can't really make a prequel to Thief, or you would be very limited by what you can "make happen" if you want to be true to what we know of Garrett's universe.
B01.avi in Thief 1 says enough about how poor Garrett was before he met the keepers :
« I was a kid. No parents, no home. Running messages and picking pockets to keep my ribs from meeting my spine. »
There is no way he would have been stealing thousands or even hundreds loot in manors at the time, and he most likely didn't have to pay a rent.
But it's alright with me if you tell it's another skilled guy in the same universe/time frame.