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Thief IV

Of the games I'm most eagerly awaiting (besides Diablo III), one of them is Thief IV. The other is Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.
 
Everyone in my family (wife and 2 sons) are hoping there will be a thief 4 soon. No one has pulled off the stealth thing better than the thief series.
 
Can't wait for Thief 4, but I fear that multiplatform development with consoles is going to lower the tone just like Thief 3, which would be an enormous shame.
 
I hope this is a reality. I will be buying if it is. I really enjoyed Deadly Shadows.
 
I almost hope they do one because it was one of my favorite games of all time- the original thief was the best game I've ever played-. If they make one now it will be because they'll most likely milk the sleeper franchise. Let's hope that doesn't happen, and they won't take advantage of us, but any reasonable person should know that will probably happen anyway and they'll make one and it probably will suck.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Can't wait for Thief 4, but I fear that multiplatform development with consoles is going to lower the tone just like Thief 3, which would be an enormous shame.
Click to expand...

I liked Thief 3 quite a bit, and I think that the Shalebridge Cradle may be one of the finest examples of thoughtful level design in gaming history.
 
Mark_Warner said:
I liked Thief 3 quite a bit, and I think that the Shalebridge Cradle may be one of the finest examples of thoughtful level design in gaming history.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

I'm not sure where the Thief 3 hate really comes from myself. I've seen haters equate Thief 3 with Deus Ex:IW and I just don't follow that one at all.

Shalebridge Cradle in particular is a masterpiece of level design of any game I've ever played.
 
Q-BZ said:
Agreed.

I'm not sure where the Thief 3 hate really comes from myself. I've seen haters equate Thief 3 with Deus Ex:IW and I just don't follow that one at all.

Shalebridge Cradle in particular is a masterpiece of level design of any game I've ever played.
Click to expand...

Yes it is. I also don't understand the Thief 3 hate.
 
Q-BZ said:
Agreed.

I'm not sure where the Thief 3 hate really comes from myself. I've seen haters equate Thief 3 with Deus Ex:IW and I just don't follow that one at all.

Shalebridge Cradle in particular is a masterpiece of level design of any game I've ever played.
Click to expand...

Climber said:
Yes it is. I also don't understand the Thief 3 hate.
Click to expand...

It is probably because it didn't follow the same mission structure as the first two, it didn't use The Dark Engine like the first two, and it wasn't developed by Looking Glass, like the first two.

They are all understandable points, but I think Deadly Shadows stands up quite well on its own merits, and within the context of The Dark Project and The Metal Age.
 
I never played any of the thiefs. I have heard they are some of the best games out there though so I might have to pick up this one if it comes to fruition.
 
Shit. I was almost hoping Eidos didn't try to revive the series.

Well, first off the bat -- the logo looks a tad stupid. I mean, Thi4f? Really!?

Yes, I'm a downer. Deal with it :)
 
I cannot WAIT for this to come out!!! Thief and Deus EX (barring Deus Ex 2) were the greatest games of all time!

Still can't believe they are bringing it back! That's great!

Some things to keep in mind:

1. The protagonist HAS to be Garrett played by Stephen Russell. Anything less will be a total failure.
2. Don't make the game consoley.
3. Don't use the Unreal engine. There are plenty of other engines out there that can do the job much better than the cartoony Unreal engine. The original UT engine (UT99) was much better than the garbage they released in 2003.
4. Expand the dialogue. The dialogue in Thief 1/2 far outdid the joke of the dialogue in Thief 3.
 
ajm786 said:
I cannot WAIT for this to come out!!! Thief and Deus EX (barring Deus Ex 2) were the greatest games of all time!

Still can't believe they are bringing it back! That's great!

Some things to keep in mind:

1. The protagonist HAS to be Garrett played by Stephen Russell. Anything less will be a total failure.
2. Don't make the game consoley.
3. Don't use the Unreal engine. There are plenty of other engines out there that can do the job much better than the cartoony Unreal engine. The original UT engine (UT99) was much better than the garbage they released in 2003.
4. Expand the dialogue. The dialogue in Thief 1/2 far outdid the joke of the dialogue in Thief 3.
Click to expand...

1) Agreed.
2) Agreed.
3) An engine does not make a game cartoony. The art direction does. UE3 would probably work fine for Thief 4, but I'd rather see something a bit more precise, like CryEngine 2, Source, or even LithTech Jupiter EX. Or, maybe they can roll their own and make it great as a sort of tribue to The Dark Engine.
4) I don't remember Thief I/II well enough to compare the dialog.
 
Mark_Warner said:
1) Agreed.
2) Agreed.
3) An engine does not make a game cartoony. The art direction does. UE3 would probably work fine for Thief 4, but I'd rather see something a bit more precise, like CryEngine 2, Source, or even LithTech Jupiter EX. Or, maybe they can roll their own and make it great as a sort of tribue to The Dark Engine.
4) I don't remember Thief I/II well enough to compare the dialog.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there are so many different options out there in terms of game engines, I can't see why not they could choose from something else.

My brother and sisters still play Thief 1/2. The dialog is absolutely hilarious, and, although there is a set amount, it's nowhere near as scripted as the mass majority of games these days where a character will only say one or 2 things and then repeat over and over.
 
Mark_Warner said:
I liked Thief 3 quite a bit, and I think that the Shalebridge Cradle may be one of the finest examples of thoughtful level design in gaming history.
Click to expand...

The Shalebridge Cradle was a fantastic level, maybe one of the best level designs created in recent years. A single level doesn't rescue gameplay from a badly built game however.

Climber said:
Yes it is. I also don't understand the Thief 3 hate.
Click to expand...

The 3rd installment was fairly heavily dumbed down for the multiplatform crowd. This was a problem because the originals were niche games, they were built for a specific type of gamer, it required a type of lateral thinking that had never really been well explored before, so the first 2 games were quite unique and about as far from generic as you could get.

Here's a few things that really killed Thief 3 for me:

  • Arrow trails, bright shiney arrow trails that were left behind to sort of show you the arc of your arrow, the sort of thing you expect coming out the back of a sword in a manga movie, great for futuristic japanese cartoons, bad for steampunk medievil.
  • Bright blue obnoxious opaque highlighting on everything, instead of the subtle transparent light grey.
  • 3rd person view, no...just no.
  • Removal of rope arrows, and subsequently the sort of puzzles that required them...thats a major facepalm right there
  • Loading parts in level, the PC version had them and didn't need them, neither the originals had loading zones and Thief 2 in particular had some city sized maps, the restrictions of the consoles were brought to the PC once again. They could have at least made them a door or something like that, but they put these stupid looking blue swirly clouds all over the place, again just "in your face" obnoxious.
  • Glinting loot, apparantly console players can't find loot on their own like you had to in the originals, it has to have a massive glint on it to show you what was valuable and made it easier to find in the dark.
  • Easy lock picking, it looked good at first but while theres analogue movement around the circle the only sweet spots are at the N,S,E,W positions, so you just tap WASD quickly to find it and click, you could pick even the hardest locks in a second. Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.
  • Movement was god awful, it was built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.
  • The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.

The first 2 games were a masterpiece, there was only minimal complaints from the fans of the original, and Thief 2 fixed all those things and raised the bar somewhat significantly.

They were games of the highest gameplay quality for the fans of that type of game, and lets be honest, it's a niche and there's not many of us (in comparison to say Halo)

But quality was never sacraficed for attracting more players, it was never dumbed down, and thats the way the core Thief fans really liked it, ghosting entire missions and alike, I'd even go so far to say that it was elitest, which I'm usualy against by the way.

Thief 3 felt like a very cheap immitation, it's like having all the fine tuned craftsmanship of a mercedez car, with all the high quality materials and engineering going in to building a truly fine machine and then slapping in leapord skin seat covers, adding large rims, some "fly" LCD screens, adding neon lights and spray painting it purple.

if the consoles want their own variant, so they can add jetpacks and lasers and all that other cool stuff that teenagers enjoy then great! Go and build a Thief 360 for the xbox and keep them happy with their own "special" variant, then come back and work on the "proper" Thief, the way it's meant to be done.

Don't mix the 2, it just doesn't work. I can't accurately explain how mad it made me to see Thief 3 ruined by consolitis and honestly I hold out no hope for Thief 4 being PC only exclusive, so unless the developers are willing to actually develop both versions completely and totally seperately then it's basically going to come out like Thief 3 again and a great many of the oldschool fans are going to be incredibly pissed off.

Sorry it was a bit ranty :)
 
^^^^^^^

Very close to my thoughts as well.

I hope they understand that the Thief 4 that is "most wanted" has nothing to do with Thief 3.
 
wrangler said:
^^^^^^^

Very close to my thoughts as well.

I hope they understand that the Thief 4 that is "most wanted" has nothing to do with Thief 3.
Click to expand...

Whatever. I want Thief 4 because of thief 3.


and I hope it's full of mostly quicktime events.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.
Click to expand...
Ahh...good memories of Thief lockpicking. I always loved the "OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT" moments during the final stages of a pick when a patrolling guard comes 'round the corner. Often times you didn't have an easy exit if you wanted to abort the pick, so you'd end up having to follow through and frantically get yourself through the door. Classic stuff.
 
phide said:
Ahh...good memories of Thief lockpicking. I always loved the "OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT" moments during the final stages of a pick when a patrolling guard comes 'round the corner. Often times you didn't have an easy exit if you wanted to abort the pick, so you'd end up having to follow through and frantically get yourself through the door. Classic stuff.
Click to expand...

This...THIS is classic Thief.

Some memorable moments in Thief 2 in the police station picking doors on the 2nd floor in the light knowing there was about 20 guards in the joint. You'd have about 8 fingers in use, you'd be crouching, leaning forward and left for maximum reach, holding lockpick, with your other finger poised above the next lockpick type ready to switch when you heard the *click*

Some fantastic memories right there. I badly want to experience that with modern day graphics and up to date technologies which is why I really hope they get this itteration "right".
 
This is great news. Thief is one of the games that got me into PC gaming when the original Came out. I hope that it doesn't turn out to be a "console port" that would be a travesty. Lets all pray to the PC gods that Eidos listen's to the community and makes this one for the history books.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Here's a few things that really killed Thief 3 for me:

  • Arrow trails, bright shiney arrow trails that were left behind to sort of show you the arc of your arrow, the sort of thing you expect coming out the back of a sword in a manga movie, great for futuristic japanese cartoons, bad for steampunk medievil.
  • Bright blue obnoxious opaque highlighting on everything, instead of the subtle transparent light grey.
  • 3rd person view, no...just no.
  • Removal of rope arrows, and subsequently the sort of puzzles that required them...thats a major facepalm right there
  • Loading parts in level, the PC version had them and didn't need them, neither the originals had loading zones and Thief 2 in particular had some city sized maps, the restrictions of the consoles were brought to the PC once again. They could have at least made them a door or something like that, but they put these stupid looking blue swirly clouds all over the place, again just "in your face" obnoxious.
  • Glinting loot, apparantly console players can't find loot on their own like you had to in the originals, it has to have a massive glint on it to show you what was valuable and made it easier to find in the dark.
  • Easy lock picking, it looked good at first but while theres analogue movement around the circle the only sweet spots are at the N,S,E,W positions, so you just tap WASD quickly to find it and click, you could pick even the hardest locks in a second. Locks in the originals reuqired fiddling between sets of lock picks and had a minimum time delay to pick, this was great tension building if you had to be in the light to pick the lock and there was patrols about, you'd be bouncing up and down in your chair shouting "c'mooooon" at the screen afraid a guard would spot you and blow all your hard work.
  • Movement was god awful, it was built a 3rd person game and 1st person view was an afterthought it seems, it was awkward as your body rotated in strange ways making movement in 1st person extremely irritating.
  • The back to the wall feature cheapened the game, it made you practically impossible to spot in even mildly dark areas, it was a sort of failsafe that always worked, no need to plan ahead and monitor guard routes, and time everything well, just pop out of the shadows and if a guard comes hug the wall and safe as houses, just lame.
Click to expand...

You had the choice of playing in 1st person or 3rd person, so the existence of 3rd person play shouldn't have been a problem for you. Except, agreed, the annoying 3rd person movement was still taking place even in 1st person mode.

From what I recall, though, it was possible to change the .ini files to turn off the headbob and much of the 3rd person movement, so your movement was fairly normal in 1st person. Maybe you weren't aware this was possible?

As for the levels not being able to load at once, each level was broken into 2 parts, so you had to zone back and forth a couple times while doing a level. Since a thief level involves hours of slowly sneaking around in the dark, this really wasn't too bad. While this totally killed Deux Ex 2 (which came out around the same time using the same game engine), to me it really wasn't a problem for thief 3.

As for the glinting loot, what I recall is that playing on Expert mode (as any thief player should), finding all the necessary loot was challenging enough that I really didn't mind having that pile of coins or whatever glinting at me.
 
yeah there was an ass load of mods which fixed everything from the highlight colour, arrow streaks, glinting loot etc, the game was stull way below par with even all that fixed.

Sure it looked nicer than before, but the missions didn't come close to Thief 2's, I just didn't enjoy Thief 3 at all, by the clock tower mission I had basically given up, but I've played the original 2 through many times, I'm considering reinstalling Thief2 actually, I'm just wondering how it will behave in Win7.

I hear theres a request in for the dark engine source code to be released so compatability patches can be written etc, have to keep an eye on that one :)
 
I loved the first Thief, then had a huge break from PC gaming during the ps2 and xbox era, and finally built a new computer in 2006 (same as in sig, but with the 8800gtx, 680i, and e6600) and went back and played all the old games I missed. Thief 2 being one of them, it was awesome. I also played Thief 3 and while I could tell a big difference it was still a decent game.

However, I think that the developers are finally realizing that by spending just a little more money on the PC version of a game that they can easily make a nice profit in this day of digital distribution. It seems that Capcom got the message by adding extra features to RE5, SFIV, and Bionic Commando, so hopefully Thief 4 and Dues Ex 3 will both go back to their roots while at the same time enlightening more people to a different style of game that they might get hooked on. The only way to pull it off in Thief without dumbing down gameplay is to put lots and lots of work into a highly addicting demo that blows people away. If its one of those play it, delete-it-right-after demos, then I think it will not do well.
 
So, Thief 4 is apparently being produced by this guy. He has, supposedly, four titles under his belt, all of them fairly shitty. He was the director on 2002's Die Hard: Vendetta for the Gamecube (metascore 54). He was director again on Rogue Ops for the Gamecube (metascore 65). And, again, on 2005's Constantine for the PS2 (metascore 58).

Awesome. Obviously Thief 4 is in fantastic hands :rolleyes:
 
phide said:
So, Thief 4 is apparently being produced by this guy. He has, supposedly, four titles under his belt, all of them fairly shitty. He was the director on 2002's Die Hard: Vendetta for the Gamecube (metascore 54). He was director again on Rogue Ops for the Gamecube (metascore 65). And, again, on 2005's Constantine for the PS2 (metascore 58).

Awesome. Obviously Thief 4 is in fantastic hands :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Shit.

Where did you get that info from???
 
phide said:
Here at Eidos Montreal's site and here at MobyGames. If you want to harass him on Facebook, by all means :)
Click to expand...

I do see your point, but I'm not sure anyone could have pulled a quality game out of those turds.

At any rate, I'm going to give Eidos Montreal the benefit of the doubt until the game comes out. Ultimately it is their property to do with what they want. If they make a crap game out of one of my favorite gaming franchises, then it will be time to burn the loveless heathens at the stake. There's really nothing any of us can do about it either way.
 
Mark_Warner said:
At any rate, I'm going to give Eidos Montreal the benefit of the doubt until the game comes out. Ultimately it is their property to do with what they want. If they make a crap game out of one of my favorite gaming franchises, then it will be time to burn the loveless heathens at the stake. There's really nothing any of us can do about it either way.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree with this, they deserve the benefit of the doubt, but remember folks that if you want to get your opinion counted it needs to be done early, during the design and planning stage they need to know the expectations of the users who plan on buying the game.

Head on over to their forum and vote in the polls and post your opinions, theres a very strong overall trend of people disliking Thief3 and liking the first 2 a lot more, hopefully they'll pick up on this and the game will come out with only mild consolitis rather than plagued with it.
 
Mark_Warner said:
I do see your point, but I'm not sure anyone could have pulled a quality game out of those turds.
Click to expand...
What concerns me is that this guy seems to have no clear experience with the PC platform, having only demonstrated an ability to ship passable console titles. I really don't think it bodes well if this is the guy they've chosen to essentially steer the course of a AAA multi-platform game (especially one with impressively high expectations as Thief 4).

Granted, Deadly Shadows was developed under Warren Spector, and it still came out pretty rough, so having a great producer at the helm isn't everything, but damn. I look at Aguera's rap sheet and it just looks to me as if Eidos isn't taking this seriously at all.
 
Mark_Warner said:
It is probably because it didn't follow the same mission structure as the first two, it didn't use The Dark Engine like the first two, and it wasn't developed by Looking Glass, like the first two.

They are all understandable points, but I think Deadly Shadows stands up quite well on its own merits, and within the context of The Dark Project and The Metal Age.
Click to expand...

You would have preferred T3 to have the same engine...that if I remember right, would crash if you had multiple CPUs?

T3 certainly was less of a "puzzle" game - and I missed that, but only to a degree. The game still made my list for top games I'll replay. But hey, I'm the guy who treated Thief 2 not as a puzzle/sneak game, but rather timed every gaurd so I could kill them all....except that missing towards the end with the clock (the one where you first case the place, then go back and actually rob it. You couldn't even be seen by a gaurd, else you failed.)

T3 was, IMO, a very good game. Not up to par with T1/2, but still very good.
 
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