Why was Thief 3... - by rob1727
rob1727 on 28/9/2009 at 12:17
so different from 1&2?
Was it due to different dev perspective/philosophy?
Was it a case of having to create a game/engine that would have multi-platform compatibility?
Was it an attempt to broaden appeal to a younger market? (financial planning for the series)
A mix of the above or something different entirely?
Am asking as there seems to be a lot of "make it like 1&2 please" on the Thief4 forums and am curious if there is actually any chance of a reboot.
If anyone feels inclined to shed some light I promise not to water arrow you...
Yours in tafferness
voodoo47 on 28/9/2009 at 14:32
mix of 2 and 3,I would say.as result,t3 has been developed for both pc and xbox at the same time,and that can never be a good thing,as it always fu*ks up the game for pc players in the process,more or less (thief3 being the "less",deus ex2 being the "more" :rolleyes:),as the game must be made to fit the lower standard (the console).the proper process would be creating the game normally for pc,release it,and bastardize and dumb it down for the console release later.unfortunatelly,the first way is cheaper and simplier,and more and more crappy console ports are released these days..just look at the latest wolfenstein and its awkward mouse,checkpoint saving system and auto-regenerating health (!!!!!!!)-I would realy like to beat the guy who did this to that game to pulp and then tell him to "get to cover to heal".
New Horizon on 28/9/2009 at 15:10
Actually, a mix of all 3.
Warren Spektor pretty much said in interviews that he didn't 'get' Thief and didn't understand the philosophy of waiting around in the shadows for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. He wanted the game to be more combative and action oriented.
All of the answers to your questions are out there on the internet.
Goldmoon Dawn on 28/9/2009 at 17:00
Quote Posted by rob1727
so different from 1&2?
I can only assume right off the top that you, for whatever reasons, have not actually played the first two games. First of all, if you take away all of the opinions on what made the first two much better games, the facts are truly unavoidable. The first games had *huge* Missions. You started each Mission with *one* load screen, then were launched into an hour or two long adventure. Each Mission had an overwhelming sense of completion. There were no interuptions as you plotted your way through the Mission. Because water and rope arrows were available, it enhanced the already fulfilling experience. The longer you are allowed to stay in a Mission determines how immersive the overall activity becomes. You could start a Mission with only one load screen and spend several hours completing it. Because the engine truly provided a vehicle for serious entertainment, the Mission designers took full advantage when calculating their Missions. The team that developed the first Thief game had spent years in the trenches as it were, studying with the likes of Richard Garriott. Thief: The Dark Project was the pinnacle of their combined abilities, efforts, and experience. Thief: Deadly Shadow was made by an entirely different team. :) If you really want to know more about this topic here are a couple of my favorite runaways, (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1759209#post1759209) 1 (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98337) 2 (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117618) 3 (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120869) 4
ascottk on 28/9/2009 at 19:27
Engine and design limitations:
* Flesh (renderer) written by one guy who disappeared. Devs left with an engine they didn't know how to work with.
* Havok (physics) was still pretty young & it looks to me like the library was more suited for collisions, ragdolls, and realism (but without special effects like anti-gravity, water, etc.). Later Havok libraries seem to have support for water physics.
* The coders/programmers who hacked Unreal to fit in Flesh and Havok left very little creative opportunities like:
[indent]* a very limited triggerscript implementation and terrible triggerscript design (no inheritance: the ability to have a child of a script with one variable changed would do wonders, no nesting, fixed and hidden variables which we found out we can reveal more by editing the unrealscript, hard coded property IDs which are needed for triggerscript usage, and you can't save just one Tscript so the editor saves them all!
* A lot of hidden actors and variables in the editor which we found out we can reveal more by editing the unrealscript again[/indent]
* The coders/programmers hard coded just about everything (removed all the functions from the unreal classes and hard coded them) so crouching footsteps are out, unable to add more movements to the player since we don't know how to call the animations yet, and general lack of modularity which makes a very mod-unfriendly game (and frustrated the original designers from what it seems).
Animations did not reflect T1 & T2 and they are extremely rough around the edges (Garrett's walking animations do not loop very well which results in the hitching movement everyone complains about). The camera bone attachment can be animated independently but it looks like the original animators just left it alone. And yes, the animations do effect how the camera moves and yes, I wish there was a way to tweak camera variables through an .ini file.
& these were just some the technical issues surrounding TDS . . .
ZylonBane on 28/9/2009 at 20:17
Quote Posted by rob1727
Why was Thief 3...
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