Thief 4. I shit you not.

[Yegolev]

That's ridiculous.  Asian cities will be run by corporations also.  And by "asian" I mean Asia and North America.

[K9]

Most of those civilians were either secretly part of, in debt to, working for, escaping from, or defined by being a victim of, the aforementioned mafia.

I think to call it racist overstates the case, but in the grim dark future, all american cities are dominated by corporations, all Asian cities are dominated by crime lords, while Europe and Africa cease to exist.

It is known.

Tae Yong Medical dominated Shanghai far more than the mafia I thought. I think if anything the point is that life is pretty grim everywhere.

[Ingmar]

You can do grimdark future without also trotting out horrifying minstrel show caricatures.

[tgr]

I googled the article's author, and sure enough he's black himself, which explains at least part of the focus on the one black woman in the game. And I came to thinking, what would happen if the article had been written by a white dude, and letitia had been some white stereotypical bum or whatever.

I'm guessing nobody'd give a fuck.

[Ingmar]

...

[Teleku]

You can do grimdark future without also trotting out horrifying minstrel show caricatures.

I really didn't pick up on any racist overtones when I played the game either.  Ehh, to each his own I guess, but I can't really get behind that article.

[Paelos]

It's a mishandled character, not a hate crime. I think intent matters when it comes to racial caricatures. I think the intent was to create an informant bum who speaks in the vernacular of the street, not a shot at black society. They just failed miserably at the slang and tone.

You pick up on racist overtones when the intent is to be racist. That's why many people didn't notice.

[Ingmar]

Deliberate racism is not the only kind of racism. You don't have to actively hate black people to pick up the cultural background radiation that shapes your biases to the point where you could create that character (or see that character) and not really understand what is wrong with it.

Things like goonswarm using racist language because lol we're edgy and we want to offend the "oversensitive" is absolutely part of that problem.

[Paelos]

You're reaching there. There was no racist language here. There was a vocal pattern.

[tgr]

Utterly irrelevant. Replace that character with, say, the most stereotypical white redneck you can imagine. Give that character an over the top redneck dialect.

Is it still "a racist scene"?

[Paelos]

Were I you, I would have bowed out of this gracefully a while ago.

[Ingmar]

Utterly irrelevant. Replace that character with, say, the most stereotypical white redneck you can imagine. Give that character an over the top redneck dialect.

Is it still "a racist scene"?

Man, I give up. You're unreachable.

[Sky]

Drm is racist.

[Sjofn]

No no, it's WORSE than racism.

[tgr]

Man, I give up. You're unreachable.

As if you're "trying to reach" me.

The root of this whole tangent is that here:

And the boss fights and the racial portrayals.

you claim that DXHR has "racial portrayals". I'm asking you if it would still be considered a "racial portrayal" which would get anyone's knickers in a twist if it had been, say, a redneck in that scene instead. It's a simple yes/no question, one which I guess you're not in the mood to answer so you go after my character instead.

[HaemishM]

I think it best that this discussion of "racial portrayals" gets sidelined since it has fuckall to do with Thief 4 and is likely to land all this in Politics land.

[Rasix]

[Ingmar]

Have a baffling article about the weird design decisions that led them to this version of Garrett, then:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-04-what-do-the-joker-brandon-lee-a-raccoon-and-an-outlaw-have-in-common-they-all-went-into-reinventing-garrett

Because when I think 'fresh new design', my mind immediately leaps to 90s movies.

[HaemishM]

I'm not so sure Grimdark Minion of Darkness is the right look for Garrett. 

[Fabricated]

DX:HR Had it's faults but inventory management? That's a new one. I never had any trouble finding bullets or felt like it was tedious to do so.

I'm just overcriticizing the game because it burned me out on playthrough 1 because I liked weapons that were completely unfeasible to use due to ammo constraints/size

Learned my lesson, used pistol instead on my second try.

Yeah, the plasma rifle and peps were literally useless by the time you had the inventory to reliably use them. Well, the peps had a use RIGHT at the end.

[Sky]

Is that Racism Turtle?

[eldaec]

I totally fail to understand why Garrett is now a teenage vampire goth.

I always thought of Deckard as the obvious model for him.

[Sheepherder]

DX:HR Had it's faults but inventory management? That's a new one. I never had any trouble finding bullets or felt like it was tedious to do so.

I'm just overcriticizing the game because it burned me out on playthrough 1 because I liked weapons that were completely unfeasible to use due to ammo constraints/size

Learned my lesson, used pistol instead on my second try.

Yeah, the plasma rifle and peps were literally useless by the time you had the inventory to reliably use them. Well, the peps had a use RIGHT at the end.

Hint: there's a debug menu hack.  It makes Deus Ex about a wallpunching cyborg ninja with a high explosive firing revolver rather than SimHobo 2011: the Quest for Discarded Liquor.

[Sky]

If we could change the subject for a minute.

http://www.yogscast.com/videos/exclusive-thief-2014-interview

[tgr]

The small snippets they provide do look interesting, but I'm still interested in seeing how big they make the city, and how natural/alive they can manage to make it feel.

[Sky]

I hope it's small focused levels. The game works much better as a self-contained job level concept, just loading in the interior of the lord's estate (or whatever). I don't see what streets add, really. Maybe I'm just wary thanks to Deadly Shadows keystone kops nonsense. All the time spent working on a city environment is less time making missions better.

At any rate. When the debate between two of the senior guys is whether to use attacks as a last resort or not at all...it does seem like the direction is good. Hopefully Square Enix leaves the team alone.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The fact they mention ghosting vs stealth knock outs vs combat leads me to believe it will very much be like deus ex in terms of level size.  Not fully open world but certainly large stages with chapter breaks to evaluate progress.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Ok, this is Thief.  Nothing but good old first person theft in abundance and if you're not playing at master difficulty, you're just an amateur. 

minor con:the character design for Garret isn't awesome but it's first person so you know, doesn't matter much.  This is the original style gameplay with a few modern conveniences added: peeking in locks/around corners, dashing but all the bars I expected a Thief game to meet, they met. 

[Sky]

[Rendakor]

Weren't we talking about this in another thread somewhere? I remember recent discussion on it but all I see before Lakov's post is the old racism derail.

[Sky]

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19896.msg1266483#msg1266483

Don't mistake my use of one of my favorite gifs, I hope it's awesome.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's not the perfect thief game but it IS thief.

[Quinton]

There are also options to turn off the various visual assists, onscreen hints, and whatnot if you want a more immersive experience. 

[Goreschach]

So is this the part where everyone acts butthurt because the game is actually good?

[Quinton]

I'll just be pleasantly surprised!

Having played through the intro bits (up to the tower), it seems to offer some reasonable sneakery and thievery gameplay, and I'm cautiously optimistic.