Thief: Deadly Shadows has gone Gold

[cevik]

If there is anyone left that cares, the new Thief title is gold and will ship May 25th.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040505/sfw071_1.html

[HaemishM]

I care. Really, I do.

I may not once it's released, but we'll see.

[WayAbvPar]

I may be to only sorry SOB on this site that has never played any incarnation of this series. The only reason I can think of is maybe they were released during the low spots on my PC upgrade chart (when my formerly uber system is now archaic in comparison to game specs...a point I am rapidly approaching AGAIN).

[schild]

I preordered. I think I'll warez it to try it first. But I really fucking love Thief. Deus Ex 2 may have broken me forever though.

[Sky]

Thief overtook the Ultima franchise as my favorite, something that amazed me. I really dug Deus Ex, but I had reservations about the sequel which proved to be well-founded, thus I never bought DE2. And THAT'S what is making me nervous.

I'm both giddy with excitement and turtled with fear.

[Comstar]

I shall await reviews on these boards with great interest. Will it be another DXIW fiasco, or did they learn thier lessons and make a far better game because of it?

[Alluvian]

buildings and streets appear to be different 'zones' which would right there ruin the game for me entirely.  Hopefully the things I have heard are wrong.

[Anonymous]

Given the release timeframe, I seriously doubt anything was learned from DXIW.  Perhaps those lessons will be applied on the next iteration of DX and Thief.

Or maybe Spector will continue to shoot for huge number of sales on consoles.  Hm.  Tough call!  (Not.)

[Alluvian]

Spector is making the next Tomb Raider game next I believe.  Whoop.  (the whoop was sarcasm)

[Alrindel]

I may be to only sorry SOB on this site that has never played any incarnation of this series.

I tried the free demo and never managed to complete so much as the first mission.

[Rasix]

After all of the praise, I found Thief 2 incredibly underwhelming.  The sound was great, that part was spot on, but the rest of the game wasn't fun.  

I think it's because I have a somewhat love/hate relationship with sneakers.   I love the Splinter Cell games, but that's because I'm not playing a complete pussy and often I just sneak enough to the point where I can clobber someone.   In thief I felt like a complete weakling.  

On the flip side, there's Hitman series where you can take about 200 shots from a machine gun before you go down.  In a game that obviously wants you to bloody up the world, it sure has a nice way of telling you after a mission that you sucked and killed too many people.   The game is ridiculously hard (IMO) if you want avoid bloodshed until your target.  You get spotted pretty damn easily and there's always a goddamn choke point you HAVE to go through that's swarming with badguys on covering all angles.  Leaves too little room for error for someone that doesn't want to sit there for 5 minutes plotting the guard's patrol routes so you can slip in that 5 second interval when they're not looking right at you.  (Sorry for the aside)

And then there's BG&E, which is kind of like a puzzle sneaker.  Well done and it never gets annoying (and simple, just stay out of LOS).

I guess I just don't know what's so incredibly special about the thief series.  It just seemed woefully average, with decent AI and superb sound.  Maybe I'll try it again, after I finish SC: PT and get bored of CoH.

[HaemishM]

I guess I just don't know what's so incredibly special about the thief series.  It just seemed woefully average, with decent AI and superb sound.  

Light sources making a difference in gameplay, at a time when light sources were just barely being used as decoration. Thief predated SC. Sure, Garrett was a pussy in most combats. One thing Thief had that SC did not was a bit more freedom is completing mission objectives.

[Sky]

In thief I felt like a complete weakling.

The series wasn't called 'Assassin', despite what Spector and others might think.

I always played on max difficulty and tried for no KO's, not just no kills. It's a game about sneaking, not killing. Of course the lead is a total pussy, he's not supposed to engage in combat. But don't feel bad, as I mentioned, Spector doesn't understand that, either.

I was thinking of buying Thief3 regardless of any mangling done to the formula, but on second thought...I may hold out for the feedback after release. I can always play Thief2 again, I guess.

The thief series revolutionized sound propagation, AI alert levels, and lighting effects (gameplay-wise, not shiny-wise).

[Rasix]

Hey, I didn't like the game, I didn't like the lead.  Be less of a dick.

Edited to be less harsh.

[Alluvian]

I didn't like thief either, mainly because of the inept bow in a game that featured archery to a large degree.

I had a plastic bow in my basement that fired rubber suction cup tipped arrows that had more distance and less arc than that pathetic excuse for a bow.  The bow consisted of a straight piece of plastic and a string.

[Sky]

Didn't realize I was being a dick, I was explaining why Garrett was a pushover in combat. I don't care if you like the game or not :P

Alluvian, I long ago got over the fact that things in games don't function as their real-world analogs. I mean, play a rifleman in SWG for a while, hehe. Max range of 65m!

[Comstar]

I finished Thief II, went back and finished Thief I and was replaying Thief II before I found our you could kill unsuspecting people with the bow.

Water arrows, rope arrows and the odd gas arrow all the way! Plus the odd fire arrow to blow up mechs.

[Alluvian]

It's not so much that I expected realism, but I found aiming the thing to be more of a pain in the neck than fun.

I think I like third person sneaker more than first person as well.  Your body position is VERY important in a sneaky game and in fps you just don't have that information.  I don't know if my ass is sticking out behind this pillar in fps, but I do in third person.  I also find the leaning around corners thing to be cumbersome, much easier to get the exact same effect by swinging the camera around in third person.  Third person also gives you a little more realistic field of view that includes peripheral vision and not tunnel vision like fps.  Just personal preference things really.

Aiming the bow would be better in first person, and I also don't like games that switch perspective all the time so I am kind of SOL.  Although I never liked how the bow fired anyway, so doubt bow shooting will be entertaining in the least for me no matter what perspective it is in.

Streets and interior being two zones would kill the game for me though.  What fun I did have in the second one was constantly hanging around on catwalks and ledges and stuff like that.

Maybe I should reinstall it for the 6th time or so, heh.  Thief is like DX1 to me.  It is a game I should like, and really WANT to like, but it just leaves me flat for some reason.

[Rasix]

Sorry for digging up this corpse but.. Penny Arcade linked to a good preview of the game.  

Sounds very interesting as do all sneaker games to me (I can't put my finger on why I dislike them so).  Doubt I'd like it, but it doesn't sound like the DE2'd the series.

[geldonyetich]

I bought Deus Ex 2.  I even like Deus Ex 2, though I acknowledge it's nifty lighting system addition wasn't enough for the game to hold a candle to Deus Ex 1, if you pardon the pun.   Deus Ex 2 is a textbook example of a situation where too much streamlining is a bad thing.   The engine's nice, though.

So Thief 3, which is using the same parent the Deus Ex 2 engine was built from, is a shoe in for me.   Assuming I can get the scratch to afford the game.   Ah well, the only other game I'm even considering buying is Half-Life 2... and it's months and months away.   For everything else, there's City of Heroes.

[Big Gulp]

The engine's nice, though.

I'm of the opinion that the engine's a clunky motherfucker.  Splinter Cells 1 & 2, while not quite having all of the doodads are able to pull off some impressive lighting effects without bringing a halfway decent rig to it's knees.

For an impressive engine I'm looking at FarCry.  Huge areas, really great detail, and very smooth the whole way through.

[Morfiend]

I havent played Thief since the area where you are sneaking along in the dark dungeon, and a fucking corpse jumps up at you.

Fucker almost gave me a heart attack.


I'll play this new thief if there are no zombies.

[Big Gulp]

I'll play this new thief if there are no zombies.

Scuttlebutt is that zombies are indeed back in the game.  I always hated the friggin' undead.  Killer robots I can get behind, but I really hated the undead missions in the first Thief.

[geldonyetich]

I'm of the opinion that the engine's a clunky motherfucker.  Splinter Cells 1 & 2, while not quite having all of the doodads are able to pull off some impressive lighting effects without bringing a halfway decent rig to it's knees.

It's misleading.   They've this "MouseLagThreshold" setting that makes the engine seem far clunkier than it is.  Setting it to 0 (in the Default.ini) makes the engine run quite smooth with absolutely no loss of detail.

For an impressive engine I'm looking at FarCry.  Huge areas, really great detail, and very smooth the whole way through.

The Far Cry engine is quite good, no doubt about it.  Beautiful outdoor areas, the ragdoll and physics seem considerably better implemented than Deus Ex 2's engine (although Deus Ex 2 let you manipulate objects more than just pushing/shooting things so it's hard to give Far Cry's physics engine a really good test).   The dynamic lighting's much better in Deus Ex 2, though, I like that one room where there's a doll up against a light source and it casts a eiree human-like shadow against the wall.

Ironically, I'm stuck on Far Cry in the regulator after having turned the three steam valves and blowing it.   The very next room (with all the troops and the two ospreys dropping more) *lags terribly*, to the point where I can't even shoot the soldiers without them warping past my crosshair, that shoots down this "very smooth the whole way through" thing for me.    My rig (AMD 2000 W/ 1 gig 2700 Ram, ATI Radeon 9700 w/ 128) should qualify as "half decent", but I'm probalby going to have to turn the detail below it's current 'medium' setting to get past there.

[Sky]

So....anyone take the plunge? For the children?

[HaemishM]

What have the children done for me?

[Sky]

"You know what I say? FUCK the children!" - G. Carlin

[WayAbvPar]

"You know what I say? FUCK the children!" - M. Jackson

FIFY.

[Alluvian]

Big Gulp wrote:
I'm of the opinion that the engine's a clunky motherfucker. Splinter Cells 1 & 2, while not quite having all of the doodads are able to pull off some impressive lighting effects without bringing a halfway decent rig to it's knees.

It's misleading. They've this "MouseLagThreshold" setting that makes the engine seem far clunkier than it is. Setting it to 0 (in the Default.ini) makes the engine run quite smooth with absolutely no loss of detail.

No, that isn't what I would call it.  I am on the clunky motherfucker bandwagon.  The framerate was SHIT in 800x600 on my system. (amd 2500+ with TI4200 overclocked).

I have finished farcry on my system and the area you mention did not give me any trouble that I can recall.  This is at 1024X768 at whatever default settings it gave me.  I can say easily they are a Far Cry (bad pun) better than the graphics in DX2.  Frankly I think DX2 looked pretty crappy outside of the lighting effects that are already better in Splinter Cell IMO.  And splinter cell also ran FAR FAR better than DX2 for me (from playing the two pandora tomorrow demos).  SC2 was easily playable and smooth at 1024x768.  DX2 dropped under 5 fps for me at that resolution.

The engine was an utter DOG.  If I was alone in this I would say that maybe it just didn't like something about my system, but I have seen a LOT of negative commentary backing up my performance problems in DX2.  Changing the mouse settings did not fix it or even make any noticable difference for me.  It was the frame rate, not the sluggishness that pissed me off.


Thief 3 using the same engine just assures I will not buy it.  I might pirate it though if I happen to see it while looking for something else.  Although the thought of zombies makes even that somewhat unlikely.

[edited to add]
If there is enough positive feedback on the engine quality having improved, I will pirate it or play a demo if it exists to see how it works on my system.  If it runs well and is fun I will buy it.  SC:PT from motionsless screenshots looks much prettier and ran GREAT on my system so I give Thief no excuse to not also run great.  Physics is not that excuse, MP2 and farcry also ran great on my system.

[geldonyetich]

No, that isn't what I would call it [the Deus Ex: Invisible War's Engine].  I am on the clunky motherfucker bandwagon. The framerate was SHIT in 800x600 on my system. (amd 2500+ with TI4200 overclocked).

I'll jump on the "ahead of it's time" bandwagon, given the incredible work they put into simulating "real" light.    However, at the same time, I'll agree that the engine is both somewhat slow (though playable enough on my AMD 2000 with a Radeon 9700 AIW) and the graphics are not nearly as good looking as those you'd see in engines such as The Source engine or Far Cry.   In fact, comparitively quite ugly.   But I don't play my games with graphics as the first emphesis.

Changing the mouse settings did not fix it or even make any noticable difference for me. It was the frame rate, not the sluggishness that pissed me off.

Just to be clear, we're not talking about "the mouse settings", but rather something called "mouselagtheshold" that you have to manually go in and modify on the Default.ini, right?   For me, once I set that to 0, the game runs much, much smoother.  (This is Deus Ex 2 I'm talking about, and not Thief (III): Deadly Shadows, which had no such setting.)

So....anyone take the plunge? For the children?

So yes, I bought Thief: Deadly Shadows today.   I've played through the first two missions and am on the first free-form city wandering part now.   Though I'm barely a few hours into the game (and probably have about 40 or so hours in front of me to complete it at this rate) I have to mirror the statements of both Gamespy (80%) and Gamespot (8.3).  

Thief III carries on the tradition of Thief I and Thief II.   The added gameplay innovations (such as togglable 3rd person, manual lock picking, visiting fences and shops, and persistant gear between missions) aren't good enough to raise the bar higher.   The engine glitches (zoning mid-mission, rubbery ragdolls) aren't bad enough to lower the bar either.    So while the polygon count may be higher, the engine may be capable of more advanced physics, and the lighting has received a major upgrade (lighting being one of the few things Deus Ex 2 did right), in the end Thief III is ultimately just more Thief.

(Of course, this is coming from me, Mr. "Deus Ex 2 was alright, though it was no Deus Ex 1", so if you have declared holy jihad against the engine itself, you've already decided to give this game a miss.   That said, I do think they've learned from some of their mistakes, and the engine seems to run without quite as many wierd glitches in Thief 3 as there was in Deus Ex 2.)

The good news is that more Thief is a good thing.   Deadly Shadows succeeds in carrying off the interesting pseudo-midevil-steampunk universe Thief takes place in very well.   Garret's original voice actor is on task and laying down the practically sarcastic tone we know and love him for.   All the other sounds I've run into, especially voice work for the NPCs, is the best I've seen yet in a Thief game.   The oft times spooky/surreal environments to sneak your way through is there.    Poking through wealthy noble's dirty laundry (figuratively) is there.  Last but most importantly: It feels like Thief, and manages to carry that same feeling of creeping your way around like no other series can.

[schild]

Picked it up this morning. Given how much I have to do today, I may beat it in one sitting just like DX2. If so, reports on disappointment will follow.

[schild]

First piece of drama queening. I can't change keybindings without crashing. Fucking Ionstorm.

[Sky]

I bought it, I'm a huge fanboi of the first two, so I kinda knew I would :)

I play thief VERY SLOWLY. It took me months to finish the first two, and I've replayed them to completion at least once. So I'm in Lord Edgar or whoever's castle, about halfway done scouring the place.

After tweaking options and keybindings, I dropped into the tutorial and suddenly I felt a cold ball of fear begin to grow in my stomach. The game engine was a total pig! Any time shadows were being drawn, it was chugging. Then I realized I had my D3D settings to 16xFSAA, 16xAF. Woops. My dumb ass figured this out after I had just finished the tutorial, so I went back through it again with more reasonable scene processing (4xAA, 4xAF on barton 3000+, 1GB pc3200, 9800pro) and it runs like buttah. Whew.

It's Thief. Playing through the first mission is bringing back that vibe. A HUGE sigh of relief was heard from my apartment. They hit the major points, and time will tell if the subtleties were nailed as well.

On the other hand, there's already been a bunch of minor bugs and a little bigger AI bug. Seems once in a while an npc on a raised alert status won't go back to his patrol after the alert lowers, he just stands there staring at a wall or whatever. I've seen it three times halfway through the  first mission in the castle. Not a huge problem, but it shouldn't be there.

Other things are guards sheathing their swords and the sword reverting to some default state where it's pointing straight upwards...but on his hip, because he had sheathed it.

But like I said, nothing that really detracts from the Thief vibe too much. I'm guardedly optimistic. It seems like they didn't screw it up, which is all I asked for. It wasn'y broken, and it seems they didn't try mucking with the formula to 'fix' things.

I even like the 3rd person view, I switch back and forth situationally, I just wish I could bind camera zoom (close up brings you to first-person view) to the mouse wheel like, you know, almost every game in existance. Ahh well.

I'm pretty happy, but again, I'm a Thief fanboi. So it's a positive that I'm happy so far, but also a given in a way...

[Alluvian]

Seems once in a while an npc on a raised alert status won't go back to his patrol after the alert lowers, he just stands there staring at a wall or whatever. I've seen it three times halfway through the first mission in the castle. Not a huge problem, but it shouldn't be there.

Are there missions where you cannot kill anyone in them?  If so, this could easily be game breaking if a guard gets 'stuck' staring down a hallway you have to pass.  There may be no way past except to kill him.  Not having played the game I can't say for sure, but it raises concerns.  Hopefully they will patch the bug out, but I can't imagine they don't know about it if it is that common.

I like the positive reviews so far.  I would like to like this game, but the engine still scares me.

Anyone playing on a circa TI4200 card?  Can it run in 1024x768?  I can't tolerate games in 800x600 anymore like DX2 forced me into.

[Sky]

DX2 forced 800x600? Criminy! Criminal! No, this scales up to 1600x1200. Unfortunately, they are hard-coded resolutions, and the switches seem to be like "resolution=3" with 3 being 1024x768. I did find a viewport setting that I tried to tweak (I play in 1280x720, a widescreen res, 16:9), but it didn't work. Stretched 4:3 games are unfair to some and whatnot.

As far as the guard's thing, raising his alert again by jostling crates or using a noisemaker should take care of that bug. I play hardcore, no kills, and as few KO's as possible. One reason I play so slowly :)