Thief 4.. 101 Gameplay trailer


Garrett

Advanced Member
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,255
Location
Workington, Cumbria, UK
I know I've already posted another Thief 4 thread, but I think this warrants particular attention.. pretty much all you need to know follows..

https://www.youtube.com/embed/L_HEeHUmzjI?feature=oembed

my suspicions (& fears) are unfortunately confirmed.. of course I'm still gonna be playing, had it on pre-order since forever

Let's just say that my exciteometer has recently plummeted
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm still totally looking forward to it; pre-ordered. Hoping to replay parts of T3 soon ..

Its a shame they're not using the old voice actor (why not?!) yet still using 'Garrett'; it looks more actiony, but then.. Deus Ex:HR was probably one of my favorite games _ever_ and same house (not same team I'm afraid), and it also had the potential for wild action or pure stealth. It does look like they're downplaying the 'no kill' though.. the old games being 'mission failed, you hurt someone', but at the same time.. its been 10+ years depending which game you're looking at.. times have changed, peopel cahnge. Games were perhjaps more single of focus then, where modern games have the mantra of trying to pack in multiple objectives, with the best games having the bases all covered. Collector? Explorer? Violence? shoudl all be optional, and reward them all in different ways.

I think we have to hold judgement.. it is hard to see their vision through the marketing fluff; the visuals look good, and the video does not suggest the heart is removed; just emphasis on a different facet than before.

I see some peopel are mad about 'zombies' and so on.. but lets cut to the chase; Thief 1 had some _great_ early levels (Steal stuff!), and most of the game spiraled into demos, underworld etc .. using the same mechanics, but basicly a save the world from the Trickster God. That was annoying at the time, but the mechanics were good enough to carry the game. People seem to ignore the fact that Thief 1 was misguided :) Thief 2 was more trying to be about the thievery, and Thief 3 as well.. so at the time, they got the message. We wanted stealth-action.

So in light of DX:HR and a generally pretty talented dev house, I think T4 is certainly worth some attention.

We shouldn't have preordered, and just waited for reviews .. but damnit, Thief (and Civ, Portal, HL3, Elder Scrolls..) is a title you just jump at.

jeff
 
I'm still totally looking forward to it; pre-ordered. Hoping to replay parts of T3 soon ..

Its a shame they're not using the old voice actor (why not?!)
Yep, the loss of Stephen Russell was a huge disappointment, one of the real iconic game voices (up there with the legendary Tony Jay imho) which added immeasurably to the overall experience.. don't know the reasons, sure I read somewhere that the man himself was still interested in doing it.. other contractual obligations perhaps?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
No surprise there... a kind of hybrid between TR and DX... good visual but not a single point that make other thief games great...

might have been an interesting if they didn't choose to defile the thief series by making that game part of it.

At least we got the dark mod...
 
I've never actually tried any of the various Dark Mods around; I just play Skyrim as if it was Thief :eek:

What makes Thief great though, to you? And are those missing from T4, demonstrably?

Atmosphere is pretty big for me; DX:HR was an utterly fantastic game, but a good piece of that was due to the outstanding musical score, pacing, and the visuals; they pulled off a bueatiful cyberpunk world with homage to Blade Runner.

Thief1 was a new kind of game, so blew us away; Thief2 was basicly same engine with some tweaks; that early engine was generally worse than other engines of the time, but it did do the stealth mechanic pretty darned well.. first of its kind. The dialog ('taffer!') was amusing, the storyline was pretty good (if too much on the demons and such), but the atmosphere was rich; sneaking around in the dark, nearly juping out of your chair when a chain would screach as a zombie moved in a cellar .. it was tight. You ahd to 'play it right' .. dragging the bodies around so they'd not be found etc, pulled you in; you could play it like an FPS (not well), and it would suck. But playing it 'right', was beautiful.

This studio is known for music and visuals, and from the demos you can't really tell if they're making any of the above not doable; they're certainly leaning on more action in the trailer, which is a poor sign.. but maybe thats just how the trailer player is doing it, and the target audience they want to rope in.

Look at DX:HR .. same sort of stuff in the trailers, in all trailers.

So, I think they're getting undue flak; theres nothing saying they've made a bad game, but theres a few 'hmmms' in the trailers.

2 weeks :)

jeff
 
Standalone? What engine does it use? I See there is a 2GB download up front :)

It used to be a mod for some engine or another, so I'd passed it by.. didnt' want t buy that engine at the time :)

jeff
 
Standalone? What engine does it use? I See there is a 2GB download up front :)
It uses the open source doom 3 engine. So it is quite nice. And it is a bunch a full remade mission. A campaign is still in the making but is making progress.

Thied 4 looks like Hitman...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Read some interesting bits ..

Apparently they were fairly insistent that voice acting was same guy as the animation acting; Stephen didn't want to do all the acrobatic with sensors all over himself, just voice, so they decided to cut him for someone who would do both. (That may be marketing coverup for 'he was expensive', who knows.)

Also of note .. in the videos, they show a lot of 'features', but as in previous Thief games you can turn off features, to get more points; ie: you can turn off the ability to slow time, or targeting indicators, etc, and leave yourself with barebones skillset for higher awards at the end.

It all sounds fairly reasonable, so to me.. just comes down to if they can pull it off; is the atmosphere 'right', does it 'feal right'? Is it all about the slow knockout? Thats all I ask...

jeff
 
it's been a long time since I last paid attention to review scores from magazine... as long as they get some money trown at them they gives good grades, no matter the game and habitually eye candy is more important than gameplay in theses reviews... there's lot of things I don't like in this video trough some other things looks good, I'll probably buy this game when I'll find it for less than 10$...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There are some positive reviews as well:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/24/thief-review/

I've only given it an hour so far, and I liked where they were going. Its not perfect, and you can see some 'modern' lame influences; you can also see 'this is the studio that made Deus Ex: HR!' which is a good thing :)

The early missions at least are very tunnely; chasing the girl is .. okay, but goofy.

A lot of the reviews seem mad because its.. like Thief. They're mad its not more Quake-like.. more actiony or something. It has slow pace.. like the original; it has tight focus, like the original.

Its good looking, has decent music; it has some non-game-breaking bugs .. like sure, the guard may light his cigarette 100 times in a row.. so what? it doesn't bother me.. its slightly suboptimal, but not a big deal.

I've had no crashes, it runs great, looks gorgeous.

The terrain sometimes looks climable when its not, and rope arrows sort of suck now. But in general.. its a pretty good attempt at a modern reboot, to please modern and old school sensibilities both. Like Thief 1.5, with a nicer engine, but missing a few beloved bits (like the rope arrow freedom.)

Can't write much now, rushing this, kid screaming in my ear..

But yeah, its pretty good. Depends how anal you are.. if you're unforgiving and nitpicking sure.. but if you're just wanting some thiefy .. its prety good. I like how they mention Basso etc.

It does annoy me they swear a lot, but not with Taffer :/

jeff
 
I can't really comment as I don't have it... however it seems most of my fears were confirmed by people having it:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14880-thief-4-is-trash/page__view__findpost__p__338410

so basically:

  • useless AI.
  • really bad sounds.
  • no real freedom... you can't jump except where it's expected, there's lot of invisible wall...
  • and to make it worst it seems the current version is quite heavily bugged...
edit: finally a worthwhile review... http://sneakybastards.net/stealthreview/thief-review/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Its not roses for sure, but its not that bad either; a lot of these reviews paint this picture of utter atrocity.. but it is not; in each of say 10 facets, it is perfect in none of them; but it is surely not a 1 out of 10 in all of them, either. There are a lot of load scenes, but I didn't really care as long as the puzzles were decent.. I notice now that all the reviews point them out :) Stuff like that .. measured to the best game of all time, it is a pale shadow say; but measures against average games, it is better than most. I'd say its a square 7 out of 10, maybe more or less a point depending what you wanted. Its no Deus Ex, sadly, but its a pretty good game.

But yeah, it misses hard on a few things (rope arrows being the most notable), but its not like one of those Monster Truck games which is utterly astoundinglky bad; they _tried_, they just _missed_.

Pick it up on a sale maybe, unelss your game queue is full; I'm enjoying it, but I think Deadly Shadows and Dark Project and MEtal Age are .. better, in their time.

jeff
 
Back
Top