Lovecraftian on 27/1/2008 at 03:43
Quote Posted by jtr7
The Pagans didn't say "bes" so frikkin' much in the other games. That one word alone has caused the majority of distaste. Also, in the first two games, there were Pagans that knew how to speak like a Cityhead. No Pagans speak "normal" while dealing with Garrett in TDS.
I totally agree. In the cutscene after Trail of Blood Viktoria appears with two human accomplices, and this is highly likely to be her two chief lieutenants - we can safely assume this is Dyan and Lorkspur. They speak normally , showing that pagans can grasp city speak, yet in the next game all their correspondence is in their pidgin and their followers all seem to have grown more childlike.
Just these niggling things in DS that still get me, i'm so picky :D
jtr7 on 27/1/2008 at 03:50
Consolitis and the "dumbing down" seem to have infected the designers' approach in too many instances. It's inaccurate to blame everything on the young console demographic leanings of TDS, but it does sum up how we feel.
Could Viktoria and Constantine speak perfect Cityhead because they were powerful beings? It seems to take more energy for them to speak Paganese. :p
theBlackman on 27/1/2008 at 06:16
I too missed the freedom that Ropearrows gave the player, but I can live with the gloves. What I can't live with is two walls side by side with exactly the same texture where I can climb wall A, but can't climb wall B.
That kind of "Mickey Mouse" manipulation of the player is, in my never humble opinion, insulting and indicative of poor design. No matter what the reason (We don't want you to go there. That's going to let you do something we did not plan), that kind of designing is a bucket full of "Meadow Muffins".
jtr7 on 27/1/2008 at 07:28
Exactly.
SubJeff on 27/1/2008 at 10:39
It wasn't a fault of the climbing gloves per se though, but rather the level design.
I wasn't too bothered about lack of rope arrows when I first heard about it and the gloves because correctly implemented the gloves would have been fantastic.
But they weren't and they're not.
Roll on TDM.
jtr7 on 27/1/2008 at 10:48
Exactly.
Goldmoon Dawn on 28/1/2008 at 00:02
I gotta admit, jtr. Everything you've done in this thread rings solid and true. As you may already know, I completely agree with your views on Thief fans and Deadly fans. Very well put, in fact I wasn't sure exactly how I felt myself until I read this thread. Nice work.
deathshadow on 28/1/2008 at 11:23
Three years and the bitch-fest is still going strong ;) I love it because yes, it was that bad.
What I hated? The stiff backed character animations, where all the guards walked around like they needed a chiropracter. It's called motion capture, USE it. Hell, the character animations from T1 & 2 were more believable despite the simpler models - they made the morrowind character animations look GOOD.
The animations really did seem to be the weak spot - and it only got worse the closer you were to them - like the arrows (that travelled at lightspeed with little or no drop and goofy 'trails' - I missed the gentle arcs of just the arrow!), the blackjack that would swing so fast if you blinked you'd miss it (here's a hint, nobody can raise and drop a blackjack in under a 30th of a second), that it was NOT a blackjack!!! A BLACKJACK is lead shot or smooth beach pebbles in a leather sack designed to not bash the skull open ... unlike say... a billy club with METAL SPIKES - so much for 'killing is for amatures'. If you're going to call something a blackjack - maybe, just maybe it should BE A BLACKJACK!!!
THEN you had the goof assed ragdoll - yeah, that's SO much more believable having EVERY person you knock out bend over backwards in an inverse C. RIGHT.
Even the little shit, like the purple-blue glow on EVERYTHING, and the frob - GOOD GOD, I thought something was wrong with my video card the first time I frobbed something. Yeah, that dayglow cyan crap was SUCH a great idea... between that and making every bit of loot glow from 100 miles away - made one long for the days of crawling around on the floor of Bafford's bedroom going "where's that damned ring again?"
AND THE ENGINE - it wasn't ready for primetime on DEx2, what the HELL made them think it was a good idea for T: DS? Slow as molassas on even the BEST hardware when it came out - Out of morbid curiousity I installed it on my current machine (Q6600 oc'd to 2.7ghz, factory OC'd 575mhz 640 meg Ge8800GTS) and I it still chokes at anything over 1024x768 - horrid for a game that doesn't even OFFER AA.
It even suffered from the same problem engines like Doom 3 and Unreal 3 have with absurdly overblown specular - NOTHING actually shines like that - in a number of ways it made everything seem more cartoonish and fake than anything in the original 2 games.
It also shares another 'problem' with Doom 3 - levels the size of postage stamps. These newer engines with their higher polycounts are all well and good - but for **** sake DO SOMETHING with it. Thief 1 and 2 were known for their expansive levels - I still remember getting to soulforge and going "where the hell does this END?!?" - The bank alone would be what? Five levels or so in T: DS? I had to laugh my ass off when GTA: SA came out at about the same time and managed three cities and an equal amout of countryside without a single loading screen to be found anywhere
It's kind of sad - you add the newest "enhancement pack" for thief 2, run it on a Ge8 with the ddraw fix, up it to 1600x1200 with 8x multisampling - and you know what, to me it looks WAY BETTER than anything Deadly Shadows had to offer.
New Horizon on 28/1/2008 at 18:19
Quote Posted by deathshadow
It also shares another 'problem' with Doom 3 - levels the size of postage stamps. These newer engines with their higher polycounts are all well and good - but for **** sake DO SOMETHING with it.
Just to clarify. The doom 3
engine is more than capable of larger levels, but the doom 3
game was
designed to be more claustrophobic.
The T3 engine can do larger levels as well, but they were cut in half for xbox memory constraints.
jtr7 on 28/1/2008 at 18:28
Quote:
AND THE ENGINE - it wasn't ready for primetime on DEx2, what the HELL made them think it was a good idea for T: DS? Slow as molassas on even the BEST hardware when it came out - Out of morbid curiousity I installed it on my current machine (Q6600 oc'd to 2.7ghz, factory OC'd 575mhz 640 meg Ge8800GTS) and I it still chokes at anything over 1024x768 - horrid for a game that doesn't even OFFER AA.
I understand your frustration, but there's something else going on, as the choking isn't a problem for most. If you were inclined to play TDS more, the help fora may be able to pinpoint the real problem.
