WWWWolf on 24/5/2008 at 16:04
Quote Posted by Kin
4) And the last one the story. Finaly a game that has a story to tell. A game that will not force you to "kill your story trough" but "unroll" it in real time trough conversations and redables.
From what I've experienced, Thief games are a rather confounding paradox in that they're extremely open-ended... and at the same time, highly mission-oriented. (They don't needlessly limit you, but they don't make things open and let you bore yourself with excess wandering.) They have an amazing story... and at the same time they completely allow you to disregard those finer points of the plot and just go whack guards in the head with the club.
I've often been thinking of one of the most challenging tasks that the game developers have when developing the games, and that would be "how do I make a game that has a story, without making a story that incidentally has a game?" There's been a lot of debate on whether or not video games are "art" - one of the biggest criticisms I've heard is that games don't necessarily do anything
differently from other forms of media. Are video games as narration just a new, more interactive branch of film arts?
A practical illustration: If you'd sit a highly cynical art critic in front of, say, Final Fantasy VII, they'd probably say "yeah, this is a very poignant and artful experience...
comparable to other 3D animation films I've seen."
My contrary point to these has been the
Metroid series, and now that I've played this series, I'm happy to add the
Thief series to the list. You can tell a story in a way that doesn't limit what you are doing as a
game player. Non-interactive parts are short and minimal; in many cases, story bits are integrated to the game experience itself (in
Metroid: Zero Mission there's a scene where you see the baddies move items away from your grasp, and you can later come back with a vengeance to get it; in
Thief II "Eavesdropping", you get to listen to a bit of story as an outsider before you know what you must do next). You are given objectives that somehow mesh with the background story; the game doesn't force you to take specific paths to those objectives, you get to figure out how to do that yourself.
What a load of rambling. :) So, to the second point of mine: Thief gameplay
makes sense. The immersion of the games, at least, comes to me from the fact that the stuff you do makes sense in its own way. How do you deal with a guard? You hide behind a corner or in a shadow, peek around, see guard pass by, and bap them in the back of the head. Bloody
brilliant. Doing it this way is probably too
obvious for some game houses.
Third point I like: The games are forgiving, but not too forgiving. There's leniency in doing some of the stuff. For example, I'm playing
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes right now, and ye gods, the security is tight like a drum to the point that it's not even funny at parts. Make one fart, and there's a Giant Alert(tm)(r)(c) and the attack team won't leave a stone unturned. Poof, you're dead. [edit: no pun intended] Mind you, I thought it was still a great leap up from original
MGS, where guards were far too easily outwitted. But what I like about
Thief guards is that, well, they're not super-bright but not super-stupid either - they
feel human: while they're unaware, they make mistakes, when you make a small mistake they don't necessarily believe their eyes or ears... but when reasonably convinced, they unleash their terrifying, cunning fury on you, and
then it's time to start getting afraid. That's the good part: You're not scared all the time, but when you have the reason to be scared, you
will be.Okay, I hope this makes sense :)
Goldmoon Dawn on 24/5/2008 at 16:19
Quote Posted by Dia
Now give me back the coinpurse you just nicked from me, you Taffer!
;)
Only if you put that cute pirate costume back on, now that yer back home and all.. :ebil:
Dia on 24/5/2008 at 16:37
I will if you will.
:sly:
God I love this place!!! :cheeky:
Weasel on 24/5/2008 at 20:56
Quote Posted by WWWWolf
Okay, I hope this makes sense :)
That's a great analysis of Thief! Thief strikes just the right balance between all of the factors you mentioned. You said it much better than I could have.
Going off topic for a minute, have you played Shadow of the Colossus (for PS2)? Thief and Metroid are two of my favorite series, and SotC is right up there on my list. It's another game that does a great job of making the story emerge through gameplay. The story is even less detailed than most of the Metroid games (in terms of concrete information presented to the player), but it's emotionally evocative. The game embodies a strong "less is more" philosophy. Where most games would fill an area with small enemies to keep the player "entertained," this game world is desolate and empty, heightening the affect when you finally track down a towering colossus.
Arod Nine on 25/5/2008 at 03:29
I'll tell you why I get immersed in the Thief universe. It's dark. To see anything properly I need to play at night, turn out the lights and occasionally get right up close to the monitor. That blocks out the real world and dumps me into the City.
DrK on 25/5/2008 at 11:54
To me, it's mainly 4 things :
1 - The immersion, strong atmosphere and the fact everything is believable : I always have the feel that if the Old City existed in real life, it would actually work.
2 - The thief universe, mythology, etc...
3 - the subtlety and inteligence of its gameplay
4 - Fan-missions, dromed and the community around the game, which make the game immortal. :thumb:
Peanuckle on 27/5/2008 at 06:32
One thing I like about Thief is how there's an incentive to act like a Thief, and not just rambo it. Bioshock was apparently supposed to allow the player to sneak through, but that didn't turn out so well. Other games that employ "stealth" have maybe one level devoted to it so much that you have no choice BUT to sneak, even though running and gunning would make more sense/be easier.
Thief gives you the option, and it's up to you to choose whether to sneak or run and... sword?
I also love the guard AI. For all it's "primitiveness," it's some of the most human AI I've ever seen in games.
Cerebration on 27/5/2008 at 12:00
A long post, so apologies in advance:
I caught a mention in one of the other threads about 'Death to Spies', which was released last year. I missed it first time around so I tried out the demo and it wasn't long before I realised that even ten years on, Thief is still the mark when it comes to implementing stealth in an FPS. So, here's an explanation of what doesn't make a spectacular stealth game.
Death to Spies is very similar to Hitman: each obstacle takes quite a lot of planning and you're never quite sure whether or not your actions will arouse suspicion. Unfortunately the logic behind this tends to be a bit hit and miss. Some examples: starting off, I managed to chloroform a patrolling German guard and so was able to steal his uniform. The game told me that keeping my soviet backpack and tommy gun would arouse suspicion, so I took his standard issue rifle and tried walking past a further patrol. No good. After restarting I kept my gear and instead used my finely-honed Thief skills to sneak past patrols, crawling along the ground and hiding in patches of long grass. This was far from easy, as the forced third person persepctive means that approaching enemies while still observing them means you have to walk in a sideways crablike fashion.
All this rolling about in the undergrowth was taking a toll on the framerate, so I decided to turn down some of the graphics options - only then did I discover that the grass I was hiding in was in fact a purely cosmetic feature and so (presumably) had no bearing on my visibility. This kind of broke the game for me. So, I turned on the map and there overlaid on the 3D view was a simple diagram of the terrain with the guards and their viewcones, and after a few minutes I found myself ignoring what was going on in the background completely as it didn't actually provide any feedback. While you can tell by their movements if the guards are on alert, your main tools in identifying your stealthiness are a few icons that pop up when you're near an enemy. Usually you'll only have a few seconds to react to this and often you only find out that you're acting suspiciously once you’ve passed a point of no return. Say you were simply walking up to a guard in a stolen uniform and the 'stealth meter' starts rising, you have very little choice but to get a weapon out and go for the kill, as walking or running away would also be regarded as suspicious. Basically, until an enemy hoves into view you have no idea whether or not you will be detected, and the only feedback you get is that the viewcones on the map turn red and people start shooting at you. As for the icons - call me picky but I shouldn't have to tell whether or not I'm under suspicion by waiting for some abstract piece of data to pop up on the HUD. If I wanted that, I would have simply set up a console dump from the game's AI system.
So, what's my point? Well, if you're going to make a stealth game, you simply cannot compromise on the elements that make stealth work, the most important of which is feedback. The appropriately-named Haggard Games could have done well by reading some of Randy Smith's GDC presentations on analogue interaction structures to know how this sort of thing should be done.
Next point, a positive one this time. I've been replaying TDS and this time around have made a point of playing on Expert so I can really see the AI at work. It's great to their reaction when they notice something's missing or has been moved about, and makes them feel much more human. Also another thing I like is when the AIs talk to each other. Ever since TDP, the AIs have had to react differently depending on whether they are with friends or not, as this determines whether they are likely to run away to get help or flee. However the extra vocalisation in TDS make it much more apparent – it’s a case of making the AI appear smarter without introducing completely new functionality. I was being hunted by a couple of Hammers outside St Edgar’s when one said something like ‘One of us will find you, sooner or later’, while the other said something like ‘Quiet brother! If we listen he might give himself away.’ Similarly, when a servant fetches a guard you can hear them having a meaningful but non-scripted conversation as they approach you.
Chade on 27/5/2008 at 12:25
While I don't want to deny everything you said about Death to Spies, I found that the stealth was quite easy to understand.
If you are disguised, you can walk past all guards of a low enough "level" The higher "level" your disguise, the more guards you can walk past. The 2d overlay tells you which guards will find be fooled by your disguise, so you know in advance what you can and can't do. There's also an alertness meter that goes up if a guard sees you do something suspicious. It is often possible to walk away from a suspicious guard, although of course it all depends on just how how suspicious the guard finds you and how quickly you can get out of there. I found the game system easier to work with (albeit more limiting) then Hitman, and was able to get perfect stats on my third play through of the demo*.
That being said, it's true that the meat of the game takes place in the 2d overlay, which is a real shame.
* This was on the easiest difficulty level, admittedly. But even so, getting no unnecessary kills is not that easy.
phide on 27/5/2008 at 16:11
A) First-person perspective. Yeah, it's been mentioned before, but I really do think this is an absolutely critical aspect of proper stealth gameplay. Third-person stealth games are interesting in their own right, but I've never been too fond of seeing the character I'm playing, and I've found that too many sacrifices have to made to movement/control to make a third-person perspective not look terribly jarring. See Deadly Shadows' laggy movement.
B) Excessively simple, responsive controls and mechanics (Thief and Thief 2). Picking up and dropping bodies does not halt player action or play any sort of animation. Approaching an adversary with a weapon drawn does not impact player movement. The usage of items is instantaneous, and their effects are instantaneous. Gameplay is not bogged down by having too many different functions/abilities. Simply put, gameplay mechanics are uncomplicated and simplistic even if the actual mission parameters are not, and the mechanics and controls are easily grasped and become instinctual quickly. The game is about as difficult for one to understand as Quake despite gameplay being vastly more complex and intricate. It's a true testament to Looking Glass for having pulled off such a feat.
C) Difficulty without difficulty. This one is a bit hard to explain, but higher difficulty levels correspond more to higher levels of player patience than higher levels of player skill. A patient player should be able to negotiate any mission on Expert without having a high level of skill and without an extreme emphasis on precision (generally). This is unlike many other first-person games where speed, precision and, to a great extent, quick reflexes, are necessary to negotiate higher skill levels. This creates a game that's widely attractive to both casual players, hardcore players and everything in between.
D) Emphasis on exploration and open-endedness. This sort of comes with the territory, but most OMs are designed to allow the player a great deal of freedom with respect to how he or she negotiates each mission area and loot placement encourages players to explore every nook and cranny of the map. This maximizes the potential 'depth' of each mission. Other stealth games tend to fall short by limiting players to a very linear path.
E) Tasteful, unobtrusive humour. You guys know what I mean.
F) The sound. Every God damn sound is important in addition to being well-done. In many other games, sounds get triggered because we have expectations that certain actions or certain things make sounds and not because they have a real impact on gameplay. This was pretty exciting when Thief first came out, and it's still exciting.
