Thief Reboot (coming 2014)

mtbush said:
Absolution gets way too much [H]ate around these parts. Is it a perfect game? Hell no...but I think they did a damn good job with what they had to work with.
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Yeah, honestly I do not understand the hate either, as the game was actually reviewed pretty favorably and most of us on here seemed to like the game. It's not perfect but it was a pretty good effort.
 
mtbush said:
Absolution gets way too much [H]ate around these parts. Is it a perfect game? Hell no...but I think they did a damn good job with what they had to work with.
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The problem with Absolution, as i understand it, is that playing on the higher difficulties is essentially broken.

If you play on "Professional" where your special skill (I forget the name..) is disabled, disguises are basically broken. The AI see through them immediately.

The game is designed around the use of a mechanic that fans of the old games would want to disable and it becomes broken when it isn't used.

Thief does not suffer from this problem. Focus helps you find things in the environment and can help you deal with guards and other enemies more easily, but the game and all of its aspects remain functional even without Focus.
 
Andrmgic said:
The problem with Absolution, as i understand it, is that playing on the higher difficulties is essentially broken.

If you play on "Professional" where your special skill (I forget the name..) is disabled, disguises are basically broken. The AI see through them immediately.

The game is designed around the use of a mechanic that fans of the old games would want to disable and it becomes broken when it isn't used.

Thief does not suffer from this problem. Focus helps you find things in the environment and can help you deal with guards and other enemies more easily, but the game and all of its aspects remain functional even without Focus.
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Partially correct. If you play on normal (higher difficulties are indeed broken) you can still turn off all the gimmicks and hand holding options in the menus and do just fine. That's what I did.

The hate is overblown on both Absolution and this new Thief game.

When my own nerd rage of "not Blood Money The Next Generation" subsided after my first playthrough of Absolution I walked away from it for six months. Then I decided one day to fire it up and I found that I enjoyed the replay a lot more when I simply took it on its own merits and without any "Blood Money next gen" hangover.
 
That's good to know. Professional was really the difficulty I wanted to play on, but I'm glad to know that you can avoid using the handholding options if you play on normal.

In any case, I'm glad that Eidos Montreal didn't make the same mistake with Thief.
 
Thief is nealy identical to hitman absolution. Bigger budgets and more complex engines yet the games are missing depth/mechanics and level design that made the older games so good. It's inexcusable really, both games deserve every bit of hate they get.

Take something like how important the surface you walked on and how much noise it made in the older thief games was is almost completely vacant to the point of not making a difference anymore except for some puddles in the new game.
 
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yourgrandma said:
Thief is nealy identical to hitman absolution. Bigger budgets and more complex engines yet the games are missing depth/mechanics and level design that made the older games so good. It's inexcusable really, both games deserve every bit of hate they get.

Take something like how important the surface you walked on and how much noise it made in the older thief games was is almost completely vacant to the point of not making a difference anymore except for some puddles in the new game.
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Well, I agree to some extent. I think that the level at which the newer reboots failed to live up to the previous franchise is about equal between those titles. As for hate...I have seen some rabid hate of Absolution that I just don't understand. Other than the disguise mechanic which I agree was fairly broken, and the stupid wrestling bit, the game was pretty good IMO.
 
I got through a little bit staying up way too late last night and I've got mixed feelings.

The atmosphere is nice, it has the kind of feeling I remember from the old Thief games, but the dialogue is so jarring, it immediately breaks me out of the immersion every time Garrett or.. whats her name open their mouths, and while the graphics arent low quality, the facial shapes are just, creepy?

I'll mess with it when I'm not in FFXIV:ARR or playing the new South Park game, but I'm glad I didnt shell out $60 for it. At $26 I'm not too disappointed, though depending on how the game progresses, that may change. ;)
 
Jarring because it's poorly-written or because the acting is sub-par?

On a related note, is AMD's TrueAudio supported out of the box? Any comments on the overall audio experience with that?
 
Andrmgic said:
If you play on "Professional" where your special skill (I forget the name..) is disabled, disguises are basically broken. The AI see through them immediately.
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Huh? I walked by people with the disguises no problem. The harder difficultly makes it so people of the same disguise will recognize you. But others will not. It adds strategy and different approaches to the gameplay. Instead of just grabbing any disguise and walking in free.

Hitman and Thief are both awesome games.

Thief is one of the best stealth games I have played in along time. If not the best I have ever played.

Q-BZ said:
Absolutely. Should never have been conceived or included in the game.
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It's optional :/
 
Playing on master.

I tend to turn off music when i play games.. Good games have great ambient sounds.. sadly when it came to a cut scene, there was no sound at all.. I restarted right before the cutscene with music back up, and there was the sound.
Old x-fi xtreme music btw.
 
wonderfield said:
Jarring because it's poorly-written or because the acting is sub-par?

On a related note, is AMD's TrueAudio supported out of the box? Any comments on the overall audio experience with that?
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I'd say both, unfortunately. There are definitely some cring-worthy lines of dialog and the two characters you hear the most (Garret and Erin) have bad delivery in some cases.

Also, you have a mish mash of accents (English cockney, upperclass; New Yorker, Canadian) -- it's pretty jarring. I remember the first games had various accents, but I didn't mind it in those for some reason. it's really annoying to hear Garret's New York "TV accent" (which to a native NYC-er like myself sounds very fake and overly-emphasized) followed by Erin's Canadian "aboots", followed by a badly-imitated cockney accent (as pointed out by my British wife). If you're going to do multiple accents, make sure you source actors who can actually do them: it's one thing to have a set of actors doing the same accent badly, it's another to have multiple accents done badly. I don't know, maybe I'm being overly-sensitive, but found this aspect really threw off the vraisemblance.

Moreover, the audio balancing is a total mess. At times one line of dialog from a gaurd 20m away will be louder than everything else, and others, you won't be able to hear someone in a cutscene over the music. There's a particular cutscene (the one where Garret meets the charitable guy in the sanitorium) where you can't hear several lines he says over background effects. I tried switching audio settings, but it's definitely a balance issues in the tracks.
 
harmattan said:
I'd say both, unfortunately. There are definitely some cring-worthy lines of dialog and the two characters you hear the most (Garret and Erin) have bad delivery in some cases.
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I'd say your post pretty much covered my impressions. I really miss the old voice for Garrett, he nailed it imho. The new voice just doesnt sound like he's even trying to play the role.
 
2 hours into the game. Mind you, i play at a slow pace.. I like to to explore every room, and try to steal everything.. enjoying it so far. Has that feeling of "oh shit hope I don't get caught" lol.
 
Well I hope the deal that was posted comes back around again. My main concern isn't really the price, as I'm sure it'll be $25 on Steam sooner or later, but I want to get the DLC that it included (Steam doesn't appear to have the Bank Heist mission; I don't care about the booster packs). Anyone know if there's more DLC coming later for the game? If so I'd entertain waiting for the "deluxe" version that bundles all of it, but I'm not sure I can hold out that long and I'd hate to wait for nothing if there's no more DLC planned. :eek:
 
In the first mission, is there a way back to the first area after you've dropped down at Stonecutter's Court by the jewelers? Realized I must have missed at least a letter there and I can't find a way up the way I came :-\

Never mind. Even loading a save before I dropped, you can't go back that I can see. Ugh. Replayed it.

EDIT 2: No per-level leaderboards? So half-assed.
 
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It's pretty good, the only thing I really dislike is stealing shit like pens and fountain ink. That seems fucking retarded to me.
 
Weenis said:
It's pretty good, the only thing I really dislike is stealing shit like pens and fountain ink. That seems fucking retarded to me.
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Get used to it because that seems to be pretty much the whole game. It's a"sneak around and press E a bunch" simulator. :p
 
yeah audio needs remixing.. People sound like they are right next to you, no sense of sound direction imo. They could muffle the the voices a little bit when people are in a different room than you, but nope, sounds like they are all right next to you.
 
There's a companion app which features a map and some other stuff, but they want money for it. Actually, pre-orders are supposed to get it for free, but I tried the 'promo version' and it doesn't think I own the game. So I go to the SE site and look at my account, and no, none of my SE games are registered there. I guess because they're steam games (account is linked!). They don't take steam keys to register either.

So I try the Free version of the app, thinking maybe it will 'unlock' if I log in. Nope. That version only have some videos/pictures. The 'map' button is locked and displays a dialog saying "EXCLUSIVE CONTENT - Unlock the full THIEF Companion app on February 25 2014 by pre-ordering THEIF from participating retailers or purchasing it on Google Play Store."

Does this mean Steam-preorders aren't valid, or is the app just not updated?

Guess that explains why the map in the game is pretty much useless, at least I can't find my way anywhere that isn't a trackable location.
 
hypertek said:
yeah audio needs remixing.. People sound like they are right next to you, no sense of sound direction imo. They could muffle the the voices a little bit when people are in a different room than you, but nope, sounds like they are all right next to you.
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I'm early in the game, I just finished that area where that watch guard was looking in the window of the jewelry store. I was in the store and could hear them talking outside and it sounded like they were inside. There's maybe a hint of volume reduction on their voice, but absolutely no added effect to indicate that they weren't inside the building. I am although happy that they used an updated version of the Wwise audio API that now supports 7.1 output. Just too bad they skimped on the audio effects. I wonder if that'll change when they add support for AMD's TrueAudio.
 
So I've played for 9 hours total (not straight) and I think I'm interested enough to continue with this game until I'm done. I like the stealth stuff and I'm dying to find out WTH "gloop" is and why I was out of it for a year. The story seems to be progressing slowly but I do keep wandering off and exploring so maybe that's my fault.

I haven't played the original games so I don't have any point of reference for how they were but I like this reboot so far.

Also, they REALLY need to do something about the sound. After playing it long enough, it's just really funky how loud and clear voices are that are not directly within earshot and are behind walls, etc..
 
That's disappointing about the sound being screwy, as it tends to be more important to the gameplay in a game like this. This isn't Super Mario Bros. :p

Maybe it'll get patched.
 
The original Thief (1998) supported hardware-based wave tracing. The Thief reboot (2014) supports playback of audio files, with or without amplitude reduction.

*sigh*
 
wonderfield said:
The original Thief (1998) supported hardware-based wave tracing. The Thief reboot (2014) supports playback of audio files, with or without amplitude reduction.

*sigh*
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Yep. Massively disappointing. Again.

Thief's strongest suit has always been superb, hardware accelerated, directional sound that truly added to the atmosphere. Sounds like this Thief's audio was just an afterthought. :mad:
 
I have played about two hours, think I'll wait till the "True Audio" patch comes out before continuing.
 
Talk about a fuck up. One of the main selling points of the Dark engine was its positional audio. It's one of the main reasons LGS continued with it and used it for System Shock 2.
Is this really the same team that did Deus Ex:HR? How did they get that one so right and this so wrong??
 
I searched Google for info regarding Thief and TrueAudio, and so far all they seem to be talking about is how TrueAudio can offload audio processing from the CPU and on to the GPU with no mention of actual improvement in quality of the audio effects. "Amplitude reduction" is a very good phrase for that (wonderfield).

How is that even relevant to actual AUDIO? I'm running a lowly first-gen i7 and Thief uses maybe ~35% of my CPU on average. GO AHEAD, load it up with audio processing! There's an options menu in PC games for a reason, if it's going to put a significant load on the CPU then make an option to disable any advanced audio processing so people that are trying to play on laptops can have their fun. CPU/software-based audio processing is what we have now days since we have so much CPU power and Creative sucks at providing stable drivers and support for technology they own (A3D, EAX).

If the TrueAudio actually adds some nice effects, I'll be jealous since I don't have an AMD card. But I'm not optimistic. Wwise is the audio middleware that Thief uses and it is what is responsible for applying environmental audio effects. Wwise will also be responsible for offloading the audio work to the AMD GPU. If Wwise still isn't making the call on what voices need to be modified, it can offload to the GPU all day long and still sound like the voice is right next to you. Of course, it's not completely Wwise's fault, it's up to the devs to implement that functionality.
 
Does anyone have (or experienced) any of the console version?

I'm just curious if the audio performance/characteristics is different from the current PC version and consoles (or if there is an variance among the consoles even)?
 
Megalith said:
Is it just me or does the 64-bit version run worse?
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The only performance issue I'm seeing is when the game first loads from my save, there's some bumpiness or hitching while it loads everything into video memory. It clears up after 5-10 seconds and runs fine. I might take a look at the 32bit version, though.
 
guitarguy6 said:
Who else had beat the game? Worst game ending since Rage....
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You clearly didn't play Tomb Raider

LeviathanZERO said:
Talk about a fuck up. One of the main selling points of the Dark engine was its positional audio. It's one of the main reasons LGS continued with it and used it for System Shock 2.
Is this really the same team that did Deus Ex:HR? How did they get that one so right and this so wrong??
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Game had positional audio for me. Maybe check your setup.
 
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