NeoGAF

Originally Posted by shinobi602

Kind of a belittling (and incorrect) way to try to prove your point. There's plenty of great discussion on the board every day.

Yes, there are and this isn't my point. Stopping and forbid discussions, because you don't like the opinion is the problem.

I hope they use HBAO+ instead of the usual shit implementations. I'm please to see contact hardening shadows though.

As a lover of the Thief franchise (and Deus EX including HR) I'm going to remain hopeful.

I also found Dishonored to be (aside from a few gameplay mechanics) solid but nothing amazing.

Nixxes always deliver great PC ports. The only problem they had was TresFX support on Nvidia cards.

Originally Posted by Derrick01

and you really need to play Deus Ex

I've been recommended this before, too. Maybe one day, or when the fancy-new-technology remake comes out... Ha!

Originally Posted by The Smoking Bun

The difference is that Human Revolution manages to capture 80% of the brilliance of the original Deus Ex and is better in that it doesn't bombard you with pseudo-philosophical drivel all the time. Conversely Thief 2014... does not let you jump. What the hell?! Evolution is making Garret move like Faith from Mirror's Edge which would be very cool but to remove something as rudimentary as jumping? That's regression. Oh and scripted action sequences where you just press forward. None of the Deus Ex games have that yet Thief 2014 does.

Also, LOL! HEADSHOT!! BRUTAL KILL! 1000 XP ++ CONCEPT ART UNLOCKED!

So, Dishonored is a better Thief game than Thief 4? :P

Originally Posted by The Smoking Bun

The industry is a bloated mess and getting worse as evidenced by the Fee to Play madness we are seeing with games like Ryse and Forza. We need another crash. No one will dare make anything REMOTELY unique or different for fear of incurring huge losses. Look to the indie scene for creative game design.

And look at how ingrained the Indie scene is becoming in the video game community. Games like Minecraft, Spelunky, and Hotline Miami are getting consistently uttered alongside AAA games. I think the line that segments "Indie" from "Big Studio" is going to blur, especially with Sony's massive embrace of the little guys.

Originally Posted by The Smoking Bun

The industry is a bloated mess and getting worse as evidenced by the Fee to Play madness we are seeing with games like Ryse and Forza. We need another crash. No one will dare make anything REMOTELY unique or different for fear of incurring huge losses. Look to the indie scene for creative game design.

i agree for the most part. i don't think a crash is necessary though. the industry just needs a change in the way it fundamentally views certain things. i think price point is an issue. the idea that everything sold on a disc has to be $60 is ridiculous. why not spend $3-$5 million on something unique/different and sell it for $30 if it doesn't quite have the same amount content as a standard $60 game. admittedly, digital sales is helping to change that and i think it's much needed.

there are other areas that i could ramble on about, but i'm not going to bother doing so here. i'd really like to make the move from being a business application developer to working within the industry and at least trying to push for some of the changes needed. hopefully that's something that i can pursue sooner rather than later.

Originally Posted by Thrax

As a lover of the Thief franchise (and Deus EX including HR) I'm going to remain hopeful.

I'm looking at Thief like I would at a new IP takes inspiration from Thief games, without trying to directly replicate them. It's not going to be similar to them but I'm still curious to try what Eidos Montreal has been cooking all those years.

I didn't know the game is using Mantle. Does it mean it's going to run on Mantle on AMD GPUs and on DirectX on nVidia GPUs? I'm looking forward to the benchmarks.

Originally Posted by angular graphics

AMD sponsored title so nah. Maybe AMD's HDAO.

edit: After all their latest port-job used it: http://community.amd.com/community/a...y-tressfx-hair

Ill take that over stuff like BF4s basic HBAO. I'm using HDAO in Far Cry 3 and I have been happy with its application.

If what you guys want is a mechanical evolution of Thief, I suggest snagging the completely free, standalone mod of doom 3: The Dark Mod

It's a bit rough around the graphical edges, but great nonetheless.

Originally Posted by shinobi602

But just saying a game will turn out to be shit when we haven't a chance to experience it is a tough call. I think all games should at least be given a chance to come out, so I can't forbid anyone from having a discussion, no one can, but I think you're overthinking this.

There have been a few hands-on articles that were not very positive so you can't suggest that all the negativity is baseless.

Originally Posted by Orayn

It has few meaningful similarities to the previous games at all, they're just zombifying the IP for a quick buck.

See this is what I'm talking about. I'm all for criticizing some of these new/removed elements, god knows QTE's have no place in it and the lack of jumping is a concern, but this is the kind of extreme stance that just stifles any sort of discussion. It's a stealth game. I watched a walkthrough where you're sneaking around stealing keys from unaware guards, putting out torches with water arrows, climbing up a rope arrow into a building going in the back way rather than the front door, there was no action and no QTE's. It was very much a game that looked like Thief, unmistakably.

Now, there are concerns, of course. The map design is the best part of the old games, and I don't anticipate this game will match it, because, well, nothing else ever had or has, so why would this, but it doesn't need to do that to be a good stealth game. I have no idea how big these new maps are, but I can at least tell that they aren't corridors and you've got multiple ways in to buildings and what looks to be several ways to progress past guard encounters, including all of the old tools if you want to fuck with them. So it's pretty obviously a Thief-like game. It's going way too far to say that what we've seen is soooooOOOoo much different than the other games that this can surely be nothing but a shit cash-in. The XP/QTE/ACTION SETPIECE stuff that supposedly ruins this game had almost no presence in what I've seen compared to what looked to be normal stealth and stealing in a medieval castle.

The lack of jumping and the rope arrow thing are legitimate concerns and are an obvious downgrade, but there's some serious overstatement of how vital these elements are, especially rope arrows. They were not the defining mechanics of those games, and many of the best mission designs could actually be done pretty well with a context sensitive jump and the same rope arrow system that this game uses (for basic traversal and accessing alternate routes). Will I miss some of the more jump-heavy levels like Life of the Party and some of the zanier rope arrow shortcuts? Hell yeah. Will that doom this game? Fuck no. The focus mechanics to me are the biggest issue, but apparently their use is governed by consumables and "optional", so hopefully they won't mess up the balance that much when you choose not to use them. Stealth games usually have plenty of fluff mechanics and tools that can be easily ignored if one wants to ghost it or no-kill it or whatever, so I'm not losing my shit yet.

(no jumping means we won't get anything as shitty as the Mage Tower sections, so I'm happy with that at least)

When Blacklist came out and we could actually speak about how the new elements fit in to the classic Splinter Cell design, for better and worse, it was nice. Ultimately it turned out well, not everything worked but nothing was remotely gamebreaking or stealth-killing, and we could take apart the game in an objective way with. But holy shit all the threads leading up to it were pure tripe. Truly terrible reading. I hope this game ends up the same way (it could go either way) because right now people have their mind made up that this isn't The Dark Project therefore it must be Tomb Raider 2013, like how Blacklist was largely regarded as Vanquish Dudebro Edition until it came out.

Originally Posted by LeBart

"This game is not an exact copy of this other game I really like that was released 3 centuries ago! It can't possibly be any good!"

Oh, come on. A lot of what they've shown is at odds with what Thief was.

They decided to slap the Thief name on this. You get the good and the when you do that. Publishers don't get to just enjoy the benefits of tapping into an established franchise.

I still have it pre-ordered (from an AMD promotion) and I will likely get some enjoyment out of it but nothing they've shown points to it being the kind of game Theif was.

Originally Posted by revolverjgw

See this is what I'm talking about. I'm all for criticizing some of these new/removed elements, god knows QTE's have no place in it and the lack of jumping is a concern, but this is the kind of extreme stance that just stifles any sort of discussion. It's a stealth game. I watched a walkthrough where you're sneaking around stealing keys from unaware guards, putting out torches with water arrows, climbing up a rope arrow into a building going in the back way rather than the front door, there was no action and no QTE's. It was very much a game that looked like Thief, unmistakably.

Now, there are concerns, of course. The map design is the best part of the old games, and I don't anticipate this game will match it, because, well, nothing else ever had or has, so why would this, but it doesn't need to do that to be a good stealth game. I have no idea how big these new maps are, but I can at least tell that they aren't corridors and you've got multiple ways in to buildings and what looks to be several ways to progress past guard encounters, including all of the old tools if you want to fuck with them. So it's pretty obviously a Thief-like game. It's going way too far to say that what we've seen is soooooOOOoo much different than the other games that this can surely be nothing but a shit cash-in. The XP/QTE/ACTION SETPIECE stuff that supposedly ruins this game had almost no presence in what I've seen compared to what looked to be normal stealth and stealing in a medieval castle.

The lack of jumping and the rope arrow thing are legitimate concerns and are an obvious downgrade, but there's some serious overstatement of how vital these elements are, especially rope arrows. They were not the defining mechanics of those games, and many of the best mission designs could actually be done pretty well with a context sensitive jump and the same rope arrow system that this game uses (for basic traversal and accessing alternate routes). Will I miss some of the more jump-heavy levels like Life of the Party and some of the zanier rope arrow shortcuts? Hell yeah. Will that doom this game? Fuck no. The focus mechanics to me are the biggest issue, but apparently their use is governed by consumables and "optional", so hopefully they won't mess up the balance that much when you choose not to use them. Stealth games usually have plenty of fluff mechanics and tools that can be easily ignored if one wants to ghost it or no-kill it or whatever, so I'm not losing my shit yet.

(no jumping means we won't get anything as shitty as the Mage Tower sections, so I'm happy with that at least)

When Blacklist came out and we could actually speak about how the new elements fit in to the classic Splinter Cell design, for better and worse, it was nice. Ultimately it turned out well, not everything worked but nothing was remotely gamebreaking or stealth-killing, and we could take apart the game in an objective way with. But holy shit all the threads leading up to it were pure tripe. Truly terrible reading. I hope this game ends up the same way (it could go either way) because right now people have their mind made up that this isn't The Dark Project therefore it must be Tomb Raider 2013, like how Blacklist was largely regarded as Vanquish Dudebro Edition until it came out.

Fantastic post.

Originally Posted by revolverjgw

The focus mechanics to me are the biggest issue, but apparently their use is governed by consumables and "optional"

Yes. They have definitely stated that the focus (and other things) can be turned off in the options to allow a more pure Thief experience. So if they're telling the truth, it shouldn't be much of an issue.