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I like that when collecting items his hand comes out and grabs it. It makes a lot of sense here of course. I wonder if this will become more of an emergent trend. I remember Chris praising the last of us for its collecting animation

Once more games start doing this I feel the ones that don't will seem dated. (Skyrim, bioshock)

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I don't trust gametrailers opinion on anything. They've been given the same preview footage as everyone else and made up some bullshit to talk over it, I don't believe anyone at gametrailers have played it recently unlike eurogamer who said explicitly that they had played it at a preview event

Fuck gametrailers, they're just telling you what you want to hear

They mention the sprawling city to explore (which they've been saying for a year) but have we actually had any evidence of this? Maybe this preview is a linear tutorial and the game opens up afterwards, or maybe, I fear, the sprawling city will just be a bunch of interconnecting corridors

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I really don't pay attention to previews one way or the other. I only linked it because it said positive things about the game like Frentic Pony was asking for.

 

I haven't followed the progress of this game very closely, but I was of course hoping it would end up being good. Shame if that is not going to happen. Oh well, the game and the reviews will be out soon enough.

 

Has Dishonored 2 been confirmed yet?

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They must be working on it

I thought exactly the same thing this morning, that this game will probably not give us the kind of freedom dishonored had.

I really like the player movement and contextual animations on show here though, the parting of curtains and the 'swooping'. I hope dishonored borrow liberally from what's on offer here

Dishonored came out oct 2012, how long does it take to make a video game sequel these days?

Edit. Sessler kinda likes it:

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I love the previous Thief games, and I understand that a lot of the criticism directed towards the reboot can come across like the NMA crowd and Fallout 3, but the key difference is the latter was an awesome game. Thief has all the hallmarks of a disaster. It's been rebooted 3 times (it began life a direct sequel, the aptly titled Thief 4, then became a third-person open-world Assassin's Creed-style adventure and now is a first-person stealth game) and clearly lacks an identity. 

 

My biggest concern is that while original games were basically about taking a systemic approach to environmental navigation, Eidos Montreal have opted for a contextual approach for the reboot which seems to be missing the point. It could be a neat stealth game but it won't be Thief. Instead of being able to place a rope-arrow on any wooden surface the City now has a silly ordnance has predetermined spots ready for Garrett. Thief has loads of gadgets but most of them boil down to being differently skinned door openers. It doesn't have any of the stand-out abilities or powers that Dishonored or HR had.

 

Dishonored, to me, is a game that builds organic environments and gives the player a selection of tools and abilities that can use at their own leisure. So when you analyse an environment and think about how you'll handle it, get through, take out dudes or whatever, there's a high level of experimentation and agency driven problem solving to your behavioral choices. You're not sure what you can climb or where you can blink to but you'll damn well try anyway and in most cases succeed.
 
Thief feels very precisely designed in play and structure. You can only climb/grapple specifically designated ledges/vents/ropes. Your inability to jump or lean or haul over obstacles without being in the right spot and pressing the contextual does feel like freedom of control has been somewhat taken from the player. I think maybe they've over contextualised your functions, even if you can do them often, for the sake of giving you a visually impressive full body awareness and presence in the game world (which is really excellent in in Thief), but the actual control and play has nowhere near the sense of freedom and agency of Dishonored.
 

I loved Human Revolution, but that was a different internal team. Previews are usually chock-full of superlatives and it's pretty rare to see folks so down on a game. I'm trying to be optimistic but when I see sequences like this it's hard not to think that Eidos Montreal have a disaster on their hands. Skip to 12:23 for the worst offender.

 

 

What's Thief's hook? Why force unskippable, full-body awareness animations if you're going to constantly take control away from me to cut to third-person cutscenes? Being able to customize the UI and difficulty states is neat, but only in terms of artificial restrictions and limitations; having Garrett fail a mission if he's seen or takes damage might make for a much more difficult experience, but not a more interesting one. Thief was an amazing anecdote generator back in the day. I don't think that will be the case this time around. It used to, and could be, so much more.

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17 minutes of gameplay:

 

 

I honestly can't tell how proscribed, or unproscribed, the gameplay is from this clip. If it's true that you can only get past this gate by going through the jewelers then... ehhhh. I hope the mask thing is at least a sideobjective.

 

But otherwise this seems... I like how directional the sound is, even if a lot of incidental things that should be making sound aren't there (lightning without thunder? An industrial fan that's totally silent... etc.) I even like how it looks. I wasn't really a fan of Dishonored's pasty lack of detail, and I usually enjoy painterlay stuff. And I really like how first person it is, how you can look around while still picking a lock and etc. But the dialogue is just awful, Garret's constant talking to himself comes off slightly psychopathy, the music is utterly inappropriate at the end, the abrupt and short cutoff of every light is weird to look at.

 

And since it was a perfect run through I've no idea how the game's AI is other than they can notice that the fire went out, but not that the jewels that they were ogling a minute ago are now gone. I've been down on this game a lot, and that's probably because I really, really want a good game LIKE this, just like I really wanted to enjoy stealthing through Dishonored more than I did. But I'm just not sure it's happening, and really don't want to reward a developer or publisher for dishing out the PR and a coat of paint of a game I might like, without actually delivering the game itself.

 

Will wait for reviews from reliable sources like Rockpapershotgun 

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1h and 45 min of gameolay here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVy9a3dpjSY

 

Yeah... It's really kind of weird how you can be in the shadows and nobody notices you, even if the shadow is not that dark at all? I never played a Thief game before, but is it how it always worked? It requires a huge sense of disbelief... Maybe he is just playing in braindead easy though.

 

Anyway, even if that's how the game plays on normal, I think I'll enjoy it, it's a game I got for free with my videocard, and I love how it looks, the environment is really nice, the gameplay seems super easy but not really boring, just not exciting. But I wouldn't buy it for full price after seeing this video.

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Sorry if this has been mentioned, but are those NPC barks intentionally ridiculous?

 

"Who caused that noise?!"

"When I find you, you'll wish I hadn't!"

 

I still haven't played any of the Thiefs, but I remember people poking fun at getting called a taffer in Thi3f, so maybe it's an ongoing jokey hallmark?

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Sorry if this has been mentioned, but are those NPC barks intentionally ridiculous?

 

"Who caused that noise?!"

"When I find you, you'll wish I hadn't!"

 

I still haven't played any of the Thiefs, but I remember people poking fun at getting called a taffer in Thi3f, so maybe it's an ongoing jokey hallmark?

 

Yeah, Thief's guard dialogue was fairly humorous, specially with all the made up insults and slang. One of the greatest joys of playing Thief 1 and 2 is overhearing the silly guard conversations. The bear pits argument at the very start of Thief 1 is one hell of a good first impression, imo.   :P

 

Watching that previously linked video and replaying some of Thief really makes me wish AAA video games aimed somewhere different than just "dark, grim, and depressing". I'd take sarcastic, darkly humorous, and snarky Garrett over brooding, boring, "MY GIRLFRIEND FELL INTO A HELL HOLE AT THE START OF THE GAME" Garrett.

 

Also, interesting facts: this was Ken Levine's first game he ever wrote for. Writing credit also to Terri Brosius, voice of Shodan and voice actress/writer other subsequent Looking Glass games and Looking Glass inspired games. Also, the wife of Eric Brosius, composer of the System Shock 2 soundtrack.

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I watched the 17 minute video and it doesn't seem as bad as people have been fearing (except for the bits where Garret talks to himself). Even if the Jewelry shop is the only way through the level, that ain't so much different from the original Thiefs.

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I think you meant 6-7 is pretty bad for the traditional gaming review scale. Because it is. Huh! Surprised (and pleased?) RPS likes it.

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Having read both the RPS and Stealth Bastard reviews, I'm so torn. I've actually never played the pantheon of PC stealth games (Thief 1-3, Blood Money, etc?), but I love Dishonored and hate Assassin's Creed. This Thief is a chimera of those alluring from one side but repugnant from the other. For $45 $35 it might be worth finding out.

 

*edit* Welp, picked it up from GreenManGaming. I like the genre enough to make this worth a try, plus Square Enix is the only big publisher doing games on PC that aren't anti-consumer.

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The RPS review was positive with some caveats, but I have to say those caveats are going to be really important for a lot of people. What I loved about the Thief trilogy wasn't so much that they were stealth games, but that they were immersive sims, and it sounds like that quality has been totally drained from this new game with context-sensitive commands, severely prescribing how you use your toolkit, and other sorts of contrivances.

 

Personally I would advise everyone to just pick up the original trilogy from GOG. I think all those games still hold up really well (even the third one which a lot of people dismissed when it was released but really had the best story of the three games).

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Bizarrely, it does sound like most of the things that made Thief so distinct — and that Dishonored was pretty much built upon, leading to a lot of its success — aren't present in Thief 4.

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Personally I would advise everyone to just pick up the original trilogy from GOG. I think all those games still hold up really well (even the third one which a lot of people dismissed when it was released but really had the best story of the three games).

Also, you should try The Dark Mod, which is a free standalone game (despite the name) that recreates the atmosphere of the original Thief games in the Doom 3 engine. There was also a thread here about it, with a few map recommendations from my limited experience (my ancient computer can't handle the more detailed levels).

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Yeah the Dark Mod is great! The AI behavior doesn't quite sit right with me, but that's not such a big deal because it isn't like the AI behavior in the original game was anything particularly sophisticated...

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Whoooooo, I was RIGHT!

 

I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad. I just like being right. So ignore this post completely while I make an ass of myself publicly, by myself.

 

WHOOOOOOOOOOO! Predictions confirmed, WHOOOOOOOOOO!  :o   :P  ^_^  ^_^ 

 

Ok, now that I'm done being smug I can resume being disappointed. Dishonored sold well motherfuckers! So did Deus Ex 3! What exactly don't you get about the gameplay in these games??  :getmecoat  :blink: Who knows, maybe that... LOTR but not really game will get it right. Shadow of Mordor? Whatever. Point is, they seem to understand the concept of giving you a wide ranging toolbox and open levels (it even seems openworldish) and then telling you "complete this objective however you wish". And that's awesome.

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WHOOOOOOOOOOO! Predictions confirmed, WHOOOOOOOOOO!  :o   :P  ^_^  ^_^ 

 

What predictions? I haven't followed this thread, just like with the game.

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Frenetic Pony hates video games, and he's happy that other people hate this one in particular.

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Frenetic Pony hates video games, and he's happy that other people hate this one in particular.

 

Hey, I don't hate JUST video games. I've got hatred to go around, for other subjects.

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